Chapter 24
Joss
“Geez Louise, what’s she doing in a Jugs jersey way over here?”
It’s not the first time I’ve heard that since walking into the U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis this afternoon, and I doubt it will be the last. I can’t even be mad about it, any more than I could be mad when I ordered a drink at concessions and got ribbed for calling it a soda instead of a pop and for wearing red instead of purple. The Minnesota accent is too fun to get mad at their mildest of insults, and I’m mostly upset at how well Gabe has apparently squashed his own accent.
I haven’t seen him since yesterday morning when he dropped me off at the airport, and he’s been in a state over the fact that I had to go solo on the first two days of the trip. He’s on the clock, after all. Team protocol.
But I’m loving this. I’ve spent the last six years on my own. There are some days I don’t have another human being in reaching distance for the entire day. I love Gabe, I’d rather him smother me than not be in my life at all, but Minneapolis is a new adventure for me. I’m having a blast.
I visited four local fabric shops in the area yesterday and this morning. I called them in advance, casually dropped my name in the conversation, and three of the four ladies asked me to do a meet and greet. I graciously accepted — graciously to them, but it was really the purpose of the call.
I don’t know, maybe it’s petty and self-indulgent, but I bask in those meet and greets. I absorb the adoration from the quilters who come by like I’d absorb sunlight. And that fourth shop? The moment I walked in, the lady at the cutting table looked up, got halfway through her rote greeting, and wrecked her cut. “Oh my word, you’re Joss Page.”
So yeah, I get an impromptu meet and greet there, too. It’s the guiltiest of pleasures, filling me with all those happy good feelings from back in my pageant days, when I was routinely getting Miss Congeniality if I wasn’t winning the tiara itself.
I’ve just sat down in the sea of purple when the lady two seats down comments on the jersey. I’m ready to ignore it, but then a heavy hand lands on my shoulder and a friendly voice behind me says, “Yeah, no, it’s Shaunessy’s jersey. You come down from Duluth for the game?”
The man behind me looks as friendly as he sounds, wearing a silly Viking helmet with fake — hopefully — fishing lures dangling from it and a Vikings tee, but also the biggest grin and a bushy white Santa beard. I want to say yes, I’m from Duluth, to hide the fact that I’m on a first-name basis with half the team, but there’s no way I’d be able to pass with my voice. My mother put me in diction classes for years so I wouldn’t sound like a Southern hillbilly, but I can only pull off neutral.
“I’m Gabe’s girlfriend,” I admit, feeling better about that than lying, even if it’s going to make me a spectacle.
The guy on my other side slaps my back too hard. “Well then, you’re family!” he yells, obviously drunk but happy.
I make fast friends with my neighbors after that, trading friendly jabs but grudgingly complimenting each other’s teams. They’re as stressed as I am when Merrick has to be helped off the field at the beginning of the first quarter, but they have him iced down, taped up, and back on the sideline halfway through the second quarter.
By then, the Vikings have pulled ahead of the Jugs and are leading by nine at the half. They’re taking the field again and we’re speculating about whether Merrick is going to be put back in when I hear, “Joss? Oh my god, Joss, it is you!” from down the way.
I lean forward to look past the rest of the spectators to see Rachel in her Gabriel’s Angels halo on the stairs. “What on earth are you doing here?” I yell back with an incredulous laugh.
“I’m at a conference in Minneapolis this weekend!” She pushes her way to me, but everyone’s happy to get out of her way. No one ever claimed the seat next to me, so there’s room for her. “Came in a day early to see the boys.”
I nearly ask her why call center workers would need to have a conference, but then it hits me I don’t know all that much about her and there are all sorts of conferences for hobbies, including hobbies I really don’t need to know my students are into. Instead I go with, “How did you find me in fifty thousand people?”
She points at the gigantic screen showing everyone getting set up for the kick-off. We’re the receivers, and Merrick still isn’t on the field. Crud.
“You were on the jumbotron, and the section number was visible. Thought I’d come investigate. This isn’t crazy, is it?”
I laugh. “It’s a crazy coincidence, but I’m glad you’re here.” As she sits, I notice she’s got a container of the cookies she always makes for Gabe in her bag, but this time, there’s a letter taped to the top of it, folded so I can’t see what it says. “Did you want me to give those to Gabe?”
She looks down at her bag and closes it quickly. “Oops! No, those aren’t for Gabe. I’m . . . meeting coworkers after the game. It’s for them.” She sounds flustered, so I’m betting they’re not coworkers at all.
She’s here for some weird sex convention, I just know it.
Merrick does eventually make it back onto the field, but we still end up losing in a nail-biter. My neighbors and I exchange encouraging good games as we file out of the stadium, and I have Rachel to commiserate with until Gabe texts me where to meet him and the rental car.
“You wanna get a room for the night?” I ask him the moment he intercepts me at the closest section of the path that keeps him out of Viking fan traffic. He looks tired, bummed out from the loss. I know he’s wearing a boring black hoodie and navy sweatpants to avoid attention, but the lack of pink Party Animal cat makes him look that much sadder. He brightens up when I’m close enough for him to snag me and reel me in, but he’s slumped and he holds me for too long.
“Nah, I’d rather get home.”
“Are you sure? It’s going to be one a.m. by the time we get there.”
“Yeah. Ma’s gonna have a breakfast casserole for us. She’ll be bummed if we’re not there for it.”
I feel really bad that they lost this one. I never played sports, but I can imagine this was a big deal, going back to where he grew up — roughly — and losing. Still, I peel back so I can look him in the eye and say, “Oh, sweetheart. It’s called hotdish. Get it right.”
“Well, now, you are just the prettiest girlfriend Gabriel has ever had,” Mrs. Shaunessy says, looking me up and down. “Isn’t she absolutely beautiful, Hank? Way prettier than that hussy Megan.”
“Ma,” Gabe groans, his expression horrified as I mouth Megan? and Mr. Shaunessy grunts in agreement.
“Ma has Joss’s picture as her lockscreen,” Leah tattles as she breezes by her mom in her barista’s uniform, splattered in coffee, having already returned from her shift despite it being after ten. Meanwhile, Gabe and I are just now getting up for the day.
Okay, we woke up hours ago, the time zone wreaking havoc on us, but Gabe talked me into utilizing our quiet time skills from the Jug house in his childhood bedroom, and that was enough to put me back to sleep.
No one’s judging us openly about it, and Gabe has already assured me his parents are used to enough shenanigans already that a lazy morning isn’t going to get a reaction out of them. Leah grabs a big scoop of the breakfast casserole but adds a packet of toaster pastries, which she eats frozen. Since no one reacts to that either, I’m guessing Gabe is right about the level of shenanigans.
Gabe snatches his mom’s phone off the counter and scowls when he sees the photo there. “I’m not even in it.”
I take a peek and am pleasantly surprised to see it’s one of my professional headshots done last year, not anything from my pageant years. I wasn’t sure what they were going to expect of me since they knew my past.
Mrs. Shaunessy shrugs. “She looks prettier without you.”
I’m immediately in love with Gabe’s whole family.
His dad seems to be attempting the role of cliche TV surfer dad but straining at the seams to leap into the eternal fray. Half the time, he’s mumbling about the game being on — even when he’s watching reruns of X-Files — but the other half the time, he’s giving me advice on how to pull my hair back without a hair tie or settling arguments with obscure facts that negate the whole discussion. His mom clearly has ADHD but is in her fifties and rolling with it.
I’d love to see Phoebe get into an argument with Merrick, just to see who would win, and Gabe begs me to retract that because that’s Merrick’s foreplay, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Phoebe wouldn’t be seduced nearly as easily as other people.
Like Cora.
Leah, meanwhile, is reckless and brazen and grossly underestimated. I get why she’s underestimated, she’s the baby of the family and she’s a comparatively late bloomer, but she’s also a different generation than Gabe, Phoebe, and me, and she’s quietly biding her time. I’m not surprised to learn she was the one who figured out my past with nothing but my first name and my profession.
On Friday after breakfast, Hank takes Gabe ice fishing while Liza, Phoebe, and I work on food and decorations for the holiday party. Liza and Phoebe insist on make-up and frilly aprons. They put on one of the radio stations on the lower end of the dial and plot out which pies the men will prefer. I don’t get a chance to make an opinion of it and talk myself into deciding it’s quaint and not misogynist before Leah pitches a fit about that exact issue and takes off. It’s at that moment that Liza and Phoebe exchange a satisfied nod and crack open a bottle of whiskey.
“I thought she’d never leave,” Phoebe groans and takes a swig directly from the bottle and passes it to Liza.
Liza makes herself a whiskey ginger. “You want some, Joss? Or a margarita? I’ve got some wine stashed?”
I turn her down as politely as I can. “Not a big drinker these days, but I’d love one of those ginger beers.” It’s all nice and fizzy in my belly, which has mostly gotten over morning sickness but still has its moments. “I feel like I’m missing something, though.”
“Hank and Leah love to cook,” Liza says.
“Horribly,” Phoebe further explains. “They love to cook horribly, and the worst part is they like what they cook.”
“He made her like that,” Liza humphs. “Babied her. Turned her off from flavor. He saw how busy I was with you heathens and took advantage of it.”
Phoebe nods in agreement, no offense taken. “And Gabe hates ice fishing, but he knows Dad won’t miss an opportunity to take him, even though Dad also secretly hates ice fishing.”
My eyes go damp, my knees go wobbly.
“No, don’t do that. They’re my biological relatives. They’ve both absolutely wrecked the bathroom and then let me walk in without warning me. Do not go all googly-eyed over them. They’re gross.”
I bite down on my bottom lip and nod, but the way she rolls her eyes tells me I wasn’t convincing enough.
I’m bummed I don’t get to spend much time with Abigail, the middle sister, but she doesn’t arrive until the party’s already going, and there’s a houseful of friends and family buzzing around me. She shows up with two toddlers, an infant, and what I quickly figure out is a man-child of a husband. She’s tall and beautiful as her sisters, but she’s exhausted. The infant’s no more than six months old and colicky, so she has no choice but to hold them the entire time while Dwayne, her husband, acts like he’s doing the lion’s work watching the toddlers.
He cracks open a beer and plops down next to Hank to watch hockey. The toddlers terrorize the guests, who seem used to it but uninterested or ill-equipped to handle their energy for more than a couple minutes.
Liza drags me around to all of Gabe’s aunts, uncles, and cousins while he gets dragged into the same football conversation over and over again. “Have you met Gabriel’s fiancée?” Liza says to every single one of them even though she knows darn well they haven’t and we’re not engaged. “Isn’t she beautiful? She’s a quilter, just like Granny Grace!”
I’m not about to correct her on the fact that I’m not Gabe’s fiancée. Partly because it’s rude, but mostly because I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea — well, right idea, technically — about me when we make our announcement.
Gabe keeps making meaningful eye contact with me, as though asking if it’s time yet, but Abigail excuses herself early on to take care of the baby and doesn’t come back. The extended family, I’m not so worried about, but she’s his sister. I don’t think he realizes she’s not here, and I know he wanted to tell everyone together. That was why he pushed for me to come with him when I’d rather wait on announcements for the second trimester.
This is the night.
I end up getting dragged back to the master bedroom with Liza and her sister Sally so they can show me their grandmother’s quilts. They’re rustic, mostly handstitched, made from traditional prints.
I have a laugh when they show me the traditionally pieced Cathedral Window. “This is what I was making when I first met Gabe. I make it a different way than this, but plenty of quilters will say this is the only right way.” I look up to Liza and notice she and her sister are both holding their breath in anticipation. I’m not sure what for, though. “Have you shown these to Gabe recently? He’ll know some of these patterns now.”
“Tell us the whole story!” Sally coos.
Liza asks, “Was he romantic?”
“What? Oh.” I can’t hold back my giant grin. “He was, actually. The first thing he told me was that he thought I was a marry.”
They seem satisfied with this answer, albeit confused. By the time we head back to the party — Sally stopping in Leah’s room to rouse Abigail, who’s asleep with a very-much awake infant crawling on her — there’s no way I’d be able to convince them I’m anything less than a fiancée.
I scan the den when we return, lamenting that as an average height woman, I’m no match for Gabe’s family’s genetics, but he’s still been easy to spot all night. I frown, concerned he might have joined the men who went out earlier to smoke cigars. That smell is definitely going to turn my stomach after an evening of highly suspicious dishes brought in by the relatives. But no, everyone is accounted for other than Gabe.
Phoebe solves the mystery for me when she points at the monster eight-foot Christmas tree. I peek around everyone until I see that sitting criss-cross applesauce, Gabe is playing mountain for his niece and nephew. Oliver is attempting to scale him while Luna is pushing a toy train up his arm.
Gabe, bless him, looks pleased as anything keeping the little ones contained while the adults mingle around him.
He doesn’t even like kids, but he’s putting the effort in.
Something catches his attention, I’m not sure what, but his eyes are suddenly on me and looking concerned. Liza nudges my arm, discreetly passing me a paper napkin, and I realize I’m crying. I love you, I mouth to Gabe so he doesn’t think these are sad or angry or frustrated or I remembered a commercial with dogs in it or why won’t this peanut butter jar open tears.
He makes a roaring sound, getting everyone’s attention and making the kids squeal, but really, he’s just standing dramatically, the mountain coming to life as a dragon with a kid under each arm. It’s as good a way as any to start, I guess, and he yells, “We got an announcement!” as he makes his way through the crowd to me.
Dwayne grumbles, “They actually sign your ass again?” behind me.
I turn to glare because wow, this is not the time, and Gabe’s actually been really stressed about it even though I’ve assured him a million times that what we have saved between us is plenty if he’s not. Hank smacks Dwayne upside the head and winks at me.
Pretty sure Hank’s my new hero.
“I knew it, I knew it.”
“You didn’t know it,” Phoebe scoffs.
Liza swats her daughter with her towel, wielding it with expert precision. “I did, too. I knew it the moment I set eyes on her. She’s got that expectant mama glow.”
Phoebe rolls her eyes and dunks another of the endless stack of plates in the sink. There was a whole fight this morning about whether this was a fine china or paper plate event, Liza championing china while everyone else told her she’d be frustrated when it came to cleanup time.
I mentioned the risk of her nice plates breaking, and she said she had more plates in the set than she’d ever need, so I offered to help wash them if she wanted to use them. Now, though, she isn’t having any of that. Not with the next grandbaby in here. Phoebe isn’t putting up a fuss about taking over my task while Liza dries them, and I’ve been keeping myself helpful packing up stacks of tupperware, so it’s worked out.
“It’s not mama glow, it’s frostbite,” Phoebe argues. “She’s from Alabama. She’s probably never been this cold in her life.”
Alabama has its cold moments and Wilmington has a decent winter — nothing like this, but plenty of snow — but I’m not going to argue. It is cold.
“It’s mama glow. And then she confirmed it when she didn’t have a drink with us yesterday.”
“It was eleven in the morning, and we were doing shots of whiskey.”
Liza sniffs indignantly. “I was not drinking shots.”
“Pfft. We both saw the splash of soda you used.”
“I knew she was pregnant! Why do you think I told everyone they’re engaged?”
“Because you’re clearly a lunatic who needs to be tossed in an asylum.”
I seal up another container and add it to the stack, quietly smiling as they trade jabs. It was always mom and me growing up. No siblings, no dad in the picture. Supposedly he died before I was born, but the older I got, the more I suspected she was never in a relationship with him. I’ve spent a lot of time with Cora’s family, and Brian and I visited his family on holidays, but every family is different. Watching Liza and Phoebe bicker makes me happier than it should. There’s so much love.
I peek back into the den. Most of the guests have gone, but Abigail and her family are staying the night. She was shooed right out of the kitchen with that towel when she offered to help on clean-up, so she’s sitting in the rocker with the baby, chatting with Gabe while he lies on the floor performing calisthenics — which I know he hates — while the toddlers hold onto his limbs and go for rides.
“He’s gonna be such a good dad,” I whisper, blushing when I realize I’ve spoken loud enough Liza and Phoebe heard me.
Neither of them even glance my way, though. “Of course he will,” Phoebe says as Liza says, “Why wouldn’t he be?” at the same time.
“Oh, you know, because he didn’t want kids.” I shoot a nervous look his way, worried I’m betraying a secret he was keeping from his family.
Phoebe grips the edge of the sink to keep herself upright as she laughs. Liza’s whole body shakes. “Did he tell you that because of Suzie doll?”
I shake my head, not understanding.
Liza waves her towel at a photo collage on the wall. They’re all over the house, and I’ve looked at every one of them, mostly hunting Gabe down and then speculating what our baby will look like based on the pictures. He’s in most of the pics in this spread, not surprising since he’s the second of four, and since he’s the only boy, it didn’t stick out before that he’s holding a doll in a lot of them. They’re all holding dolls. It would make sense he’d end up with dolls as well.
Only now that it’s been said do I realize that from toddler up to the youngest pics with Leah, he’s holding the same doll, which seems to be getting progressively smaller but that’s how much he’s growing. That must be Suzie doll.
“Aww, that’s sweet that he had a baby doll growing up.”
“It wasn’t sweet,” Phoebe says. “It was creepy.”
That feels strong. Just because he was a boy, that doesn’t mean it was creepy for him to have a doll. He was probably copying his big sister. He was happy. It’s sweet.
But then Liza says, “We weren’t sure if we were going to have more kids after these two. But then Gabe got obsessed about having a little sibling. Would cry, throw tantrums about it. And then even after Abigail, he begged for another. The only reason we put him in peewee football was to get the other boys to bully him for being baby crazy.”
Phoebe nods like she agrees this was a sane and logical solution. “Baby crazy. His whole life.”
I’m telling myself it hasn’t been his whole life, it was a phase he eventually grew out of. There was a time in my life when I secretly wanted to be an anti-pageant activist, but looking back on my childhood now, I would never want to lose those experiences.
Gabe’s having the time of his life. He’s been playing with those kids for hours. Now that the crowd has thinned down, the party over, he could easily pop in a movie for them and join the adults again, but he’s shown no interest in that. It’s obvious he’s missed them, too.
“That ex-girlfriend of his, the one he had in college, was she anti-kid?”
“Totally!” Phoebe blurts out, putting me at ease. He got the vasectomy for her, then. Dumb, but I’m not surprised with Gabe.
Only, Liza then adds, “Not to his face, though.”
“She couldn’t be. He’d have dumped her.” Phoebe gives her mom a nudge. “I showed you his profile I found on that dating site, right? His whole ‘big family, ready to settle down and have kids with the right woman’ thing?”
“When did you see that?” I ask.
“A couple years ago.”
My final thread of hope is it might have been an old, long-forgotten profile.
And then Phoebe says, “He took it down right after he moved to Wilmington, though, since it was a local service.”