Chapter 9 Dustin #2
“Oh yeah. We were babbling to the blackjack dealer, weren’t we?”
“Yes. And of course, they couldn’t reach us for comment,” I muttered. “We just woke up.”
“Do you think this got shared on Twitter? What do you think the hashtag is?”
I shrugged. “#Vegaslove?”
She pulled up Twitter, but she didn’t have to search far. Her hand began to shake. “Dear God. We’re the featured story on Twitter.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Welp. So much for that annulment.”
Catarina puffed out her cheeks, exhaling loudly. “What have we done? This has over twenty-thousand retweets!”
I rubbed my forehead with my thumb and index finger. Struggling to think clearly, I pulled up the number for Freddie’s and called immediately.
“Freddie speaking,” he answered.
“Oh perfect,” I said, putting him on speaker phone. “Freddie. This is Dustin LeBlanc.”
“Good morning Mr. LeBlanc! How are you and your lovely bride doing today?”
“Not good, Freddie. Because your chapel—can I call it a chapel?—shared our wedding video, which has already been viewed millions of times.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. You didn’t check the ‘full privacy’ box when you signed your papers with us.”
“Full privacy box?! What the fuck! First, I was three sheets to the wind last night, and second, why the fuck would I need to check a box so that you don’t share a video of my personal wedding with the world?”
There was a long pause on the other end of the phone, and Freddie cleared his throat.
“Sir, we’re a twenty-four-hour marriage chapel.
I’m not sure what you expected. We had every legal right to publish that video.
We didn’t think it would be a big deal. And actually, many couples appreciate the gesture. ”
I pursed my lips in anger, then hung up. “Dammit! Well, first things first. We need to get our story straight. If people know we just met each other barely forty-eight hours before we got married . . .”
“Technically, we met at eight P.M. or so in the elevator Friday night,” she corrected.
“Yeah, you’re right. That’s almost forty hours before our marriage ceremony.”
She frowned. “This is like a real-life horror version of The Hangover.”
I scoffed. “How so?”
“The part where Andy Bernard from The Office gets married to that stripper.”
“You mean Ed Helms?” I looked her up and down. “You don’t look anything like Heather Graham in that movie, though.”
“Okay, I know. But . . . you get the idea.”
She stood up with her hands on her hips, and we made eye contact. “You look way hotter,” I said, and she blushed.
“We’ve got to get our story straight,” I added.
“Yes. For starters, we’ll say we met in college. Apparently, we drunkenly said that last night to Freddie—or someone—and it made it onto the video. Why would we say that? But we’ll go with it.”
“I have no idea why we would say that.”
“I did forget a little bit of what happened in the casino. I remember when we came back up here to the room, though. Where’d you go to school again?”
“Yale for undergrad.”
“Seriously? Damn. You’re a smartypants.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Ohio State.”
She bit her lip. “Shit.”
“What?”
“I went to the University of Michigan for med school.”
I dropped my jaw. The two schools were well-known rivals, and although it was a mostly friendly rivalry, sometimes it seemed more serious than that. “Seriously? Fuck. If I had known that I definitely wouldn’t have married you.”
“Dustin! We need to get serious. I’m getting kicked out of the country. Let’s get our story straight.”
A stroke of genius hit me. “We met in line for a bar after one of my games in college. You’re a puck bunny.”
She smiled sweetly, but it seemed a little fake, and walked over to me. “Honey. If you ever call me a puck bunny again, I’ll divorce you.”
“You’ll what?” I growled, standing up. I went over to my suitcase and put on some fresh briefs.
“I said, ‘I’ll divorce you.’”
“Don’t throw that around lightly, like it’s an actual threat. We’re in this together.”
“Fine. But I don’t appreciate that term ‘puck bunny.’ I just don’t like it.”
“You’re married to a hockey player now. It stands to reason that, you know, you find hockey players hot. That’s what a puck bunny is.”
“I don’t find hockey players hot, though.”
“Oh?” I arched an eyebrow and walked back over to her. She was still sitting on the bed in a towel.
“That’s right,” she said, looking up at me defiantly.
“So just me?” I gritted out.
She didn’t answer.
“I’ll make you a deal,” I said in a low voice, running my hand along her chin. “If you’re not wet right now, I won’t ever call you a puck bunny again.”
Her lips parted, and I pointed her chin up toward me with my index finger. She didn’t say anything, but her heart was hammering so hard I could feel the vibrations through her chin.
We kept our eyes locked on each other as I undid her towel, revealing her gorgeous naked body in all its glory as she leaned back on her hands.
“It’s okay to be turned on,” I told her. “It’s only natural I mean, I am.”
It was the curve of her hips.
The hardness of her nipples.
The way her beautiful brown eyes reflected the light.
She turned me on like crazy.
I slid my hand slowly down the side of her body, and I could practically feel the desire emanating from her. She felt hot.
Once my finger got past her belly button, she bit her lip, holding back a smile.
With a gentle push, I spread her left leg to the side and landed my finger on her clit.
It was slick.
“No fair,” she whispered. “We just had sex twenty minutes ago. I still have an afterglow.”
I smirked. She wanted to challenge me, and I liked that in my wife. But I was also not a doormat.
“I don’t really care about you being a puck bunny,” I growled. “But when you say you’re not attracted to hockey players, well, that’s an outright lie. I’ll have no lying in my presence.”
“Fine,” she moaned. “Not normally attracted to hockey players. Just you.” I lifted my finger off her clit.
“Well, I’m glad we cleared that up,” I said.
Just then, my phone rang again. It was Coach Slanch. I picked it up and put it on speaker phone.
“Just what in the hell did you get yourself into now? I specifically told you no Vegas weddings.”
“Sorry Coach,” I winked at Cat. “There’s this thing called true love.”
“True love?” Slanch barked. “Jesus Christ LeBlanc, you must think I was born yesterday. I’ve seen the wedding video.”
“You have?”
“Christ, the entire country has seen it. You know what junkies people are for a sensational news story these days. And this has all the elements. Celebrity, drinking. I told you not to snapchat!”
“I deleted my snapchat, though,” I pointed out. “They leaked the video.”
“I need you to be real with me. Did you marry a one-night stand?”
“No, Coach.”
“Thank God. So it’s a hoax?”
“I’ve known her for two nights. Not one.”
Coach Slanch must have been holding his hand over the receiver, because all I could make out were unintelligible swears until he came back to the phone and said, “That’s not fucking funny, LeBlanc.”
I looked over at Cat, and I decided in that very moment, I needed to believe everything I said about us from now on. “Look, Coach. Cat’s the one. If you have a problem with that—”
“I don’t have a problem with it. But I just hope to God you know what you’re doing.”
“So is that why you called me? To give me marital advice?”
“No. I called you to tell you that you were being traded, but the deal is now on hold.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Old Man Bells pulled the trigger on a trade to send you to Los Angeles late last night. But Los Angeles is refusing it because they think you’re a total headcase, and not worth the trouble of a trade after that video from last night circulated. They don’t want a character issue.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “So you’re saying my Vegas wedding saved me from being traded?” It wasn’t exactly the reasoning I was looking for, but if it kept me on the team, it worked. I was ecstatic.
“Yes,” Coach Slanch said. “But that’s not all.”
“No?”
“Old Man Bells is starting up another trade, to Florida.”
“Florida? Gross. He knows I can’t stand hot weather hockey.”
“You’ve really gone and done it now,” he added. “He’s pissed. I’ve never seen him like this. I don’t know if someone put a bug in his ear or what, but he wants you gone.”
I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach. I was surprised when Cat grabbed my hand.
“Coach, is there anything I can do?”
He exhaled a deep breath. “Look, I need to know. Is this marriage shit for real? What exactly happened?”
I pursed my lips and looked Cat in the eye. “Yes,” I said. “This ‘marriage shit’ is for real. I met an old fling and, well, we’re in love.”
Coach Slanch was silent for a moment. “An ‘old fling,’ eh?”
I winked at Cat. “Yes. We met in college. It’s a long story. Everything’s under control, coach. Don’t you worry.”
I hung up, and Cat was staring at me.
“Well, looks like we’re an ‘old fling’ now,” I said. “You think you can pull that off?”
“Is the Pope Catholic?”
“Last time I checked.”