Chapter 20
CATARINA
“Have you been bowling before, Catarina?” Dustin’s papaw asked as I looked over all of the available bowling balls.
“I went a couple times in college. We had a bowling night once a year.”
“Well let me help you here.” He walked up to the balls and picked one out, a baby blue colored ball. “This one here’s a beginner’s bowling ball.”
I thanked him and we headed back to the lane where Dustin was entering the names for our game.
“The computer is broken,” he said, pressing in vain at some of the buttons.
I shrugged. “That’s okay. We can just play for fun, right?”
“Half the fun is entering inappropriate initials or nicknames since the computer only accepts three letters, though.”
“We could ask for a different lane.”
“Good idea, let’s head to the front desk.”
I abandoned my baby blue ball and we headed back to the front desk. It was almost seven P.M. now, and Rolling Pins was getting backed up with people. Dustin had been shoulder patted about a million times and congratulated for his playing.
“Dustin,” I whispered, putting my hand on his shoulder as we waited in line. “How do you feel?”
He cleared his throat. “Not great. I thought this would be a tiny ceremony. I specifically told my family, ‘close family only.’”
“Looks like the word got out to your extended family.”
“Forget extended family, the entire town is here!”
“Do you feel bad about it?”
“Because it’s a ruse?”
“Yes,” I gulped.
“Yeah,” he said. “A little.”
“I feel guilty too.”
He brought his eyes to mine, then leaned in and whispered in my ear. “There’s only one way I’ve been dealing with that.”
“How?”
“Just pretend that we really are married and in love. Like, pretend so hard we’re not pretending.”
“So it’s like method acting?” I reflected, thinking back to a theater class I took freshman year of college.
“Call it whatever you want,” he said. “We’re in it now. I mean, not like we weren’t before.”
We got to the front of the line, and Dustin explained that our lane was malfunctioning. The attendant wasted no time in helping us. And by ‘helping us,’ I mean he made his voice into a megaphone and shouted to the crowd. “Would anyone here like to share their lane with Mr. and Mrs. LeBlanc?!”
I felt a swift shoulder tap and was a little dumbfounded by the face I saw.
“Jackie?”
“Oh hi there, Miss—I mean Mrs.—LeBlanc.”
She wore tight white dress pants and a blue tube top, and she was looking rather hot. If I was a real bride I would have been upset for her showing me up in the white jeans and flowery blouse I wore.
“We have a lane you can share,” she continued. Dustin seemed similarly thrown off. “You seem out of it. Your grandmother gave the organization the invite. My grandfather couldn’t make it, so they sent me in their stead. I brought my—well, my Raymond.”
The man next to her nodded curtly. He was solidly built, tall, and wearing a black shirt and jeans.
“Alright,” Dustin said reluctantly, although I could tell he was looking around for some of his family members to play with.
Nevertheless, we headed over to the lane she and Raymond had reserved, and Dustin set about entering all of our initials.
I was CAT, Raymond was RAY, Dustin was DAL, and Jackie was OWN.
Because she wanted to reiterate that she was the owner?
We started the game, and Jackie insisted that she had some ‘business’ to talk over with Dustin for the first few rounds, so I hung out with Raymond, who was a man of very few words, and a fan of nodding and smiling.
Welp, this is going great I thought, until Raymond missed the pins completely and let out a curse in Spanish.
“De dónde eres?” I asked him. “Where are you from?”
“From Girona,” he replied, in Spanish.
I sensed his Catalan accent and started speaking to him in Catalan.
I found out how he was an international fashion model, just in the United States for a few weeks.
I assumed he was Jackie’s boyfriend, but he laughed and said they were just friends.
After a couple of rounds of drinks, we all had finished one game, and we decided to just keep going.
Raymond was my new best friend, and I was getting the sense that something strange was up with Jackie and Dustin.
“She likes him,” Raymond blurted out. “Oh boy. I’m not supposed to be telling you this stuff. Don’t tell her I told you. She’s lovesick.”
My eyes widened, and I choked on my drink. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Lovesick.” He glanced at Jackie, then leaned in to whisper to me. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. But I feel a little obligated.”
I got up and bowled a frame since it was my turn. “And what’s Dustin say?”
“He says she’s out of her mind. But he loves that team so much. Oh boy. I’ve said too much. She’s going to kill me if she finds out.” Raymond took another sip of his drink. “Luckily, I’ll be back in Spain in another week.”
A big part of me couldn’t believe what I was hearing from Raymond’s mouth.
But then the truth hit me that I had really only known Dustin for one week. If I had a skeleton in my closet, what was to stop Dustin from having one?
At least one. Or two.
When Dustin took his next turn to bowl, I made like I ‘accidentally’ brushed into him, linked my finger in his belt loop, and got on my tippy toes for a kiss.
He returned it, and although my eyes weren’t open, I swore I could feel the heat from Jackie blazing onto us. Oddly, knowing we had a captive audience made me want more.
I slid my hand into Dustin’s back jean pocket and kept it there. Hockey players weren’t known for their asses but after this personal experience, I decided it was just because they were covered in so much equipment when they were skating around.
All of a sudden, we were making out right there in front of our lanes and we weren’t stopping. I heard Jackie’s voice, faint, saying something like ‘Are you two going to let me have my turn?’
It didn’t matter because a few moments later, the whole rowdy crowd started egging us on, hooting while we went at it. It felt like everyone in the bowling alley had stopped bowling and eyes were just on us.
My body flooded with a magnificent feeling of warmth. Heat and something like love filled me, for these people whose son and cousin and friend was a celebrity hockey star, but they didn’t seem to care so much about that as much as about someone they knew had found love.
The fact that no one knew the truth made me feel fake. But beyond the lying, there was a truth between Dustin and I that was still nascent. A tinge of wonder and hope ate at me as we finished our night because I knew the feelings inside me weren’t imaginary.
I didn’t have time to tell him any of this, though, and when we got in our car and headed to the afterparty at the bar I nonchalantly asked him, “What were you and Jackie talking about?”
He looked at me slowly, then turned back to the road.
“She suspects we’re faking it. I told her we weren’t. But she said she swore, if we were, she would find out and end us.”
“Jesus.”
“I know,” he shrugged.
“Do you think she’ll really do it?”
“She’s crazy enough.”