30. WAG Pants #2
Do I need to learn hockey things—like, more than the puck goes in the net? Probably. The idea gets me a little excited. I could do what I did with sailing just with hockey. A total deep-dive immersion. I wonder if hockey has terms as ridiculous as baggywrinkle .
But perhaps the most important question of all: Do I need new clothes? Are there specific items I’ll have to buy—like WAG pants? Is there some kind of hockey girlfriend supply store, or can I just use Amazon? Or maybe hockey WAGs don’t wear pants. Maybe they wear short skirts and dresses.
Will this require me to consistently shave above the knee? Am I going to—
“You look like you’re constipated,” Wyatt says, and it shocks a laugh out of me.
The ugly kind you wish you could suck back in. I’m embarrassed until I look at Wyatt and see the warm amusement in his eyes.
“Not that I would know,” he adds quickly.
I almost say, But maybe if we stay together, you will. Then I remember we’re talking about constipation, so I snap my mouth closed.
“What were you thinking about?” he asks.
“Pants.”
“Pants?”
I give him a tight nod. “Pants.”
He looks like he’s about to add a follow-up question or ten, but then he pulls his buzzing phone out of his pocket. I see Jacob’s name across the screen and suppress a groan.
“I’ve got to take this,” Wyatt says in the kind of serious voice that makes me immediately think something terrible is happening. Like Wyatt is being traded to a team in Europe.
Could that happen? I add it to my mental list of things to research.
Wyatt stops walking but keeps holding my hand as he answers. “Hello?”
I can hear the familiar tones of my brother’s voice but not what he’s saying. I resist the urge—barely—to snatch the phone and put it on speaker. It’s hard to remain calm when Wyatt’s frown deepens and he doesn’t give me any clues as to what my brother is prattling on about.
From what I can hear, Jacob sounds excited. Which, when it involves his clients, usually means money and deals.
The dread simmering in my stomach dials up to a full boil.
Is Wyatt signing a longer contract in Boston? How long is his current contract?
Do I want to live in Boston someday? Is that where Wyatt wants to be long term? Does he want to be with me long term?
Wyatt must notice my mounting panic because his frown deepens when he glances at me. Letting go of my hand, he tugs me to his chest. Gladly, I wrap my arms around him. Breathing with my nose pressed to his T-shirt is much better than breathing into a paper bag.
“Thanks,” he says finally, slipping the phone into his pocket and then resting his other hand between my shoulder blades.
“What is it?” he asks. “You’re shaking.”
“Oh, you know. Just a little bit of panic. What was that phone call about?”
“Work stuff,” he says, and I’d like to take Wyatt’s phone and throw it into the ocean.
Maybe along with Wyatt. And my brother. Definitely my brother.
“Come on.” Wyatt turns me so I’m tucked against him with his arm curled around my shoulders.
I let him lead me down the beach to a more secluded area. We’re at the tip of the island, I think, with a channel of water barely wide enough for a few ships to pass separating us from another point of land. There are signs about dangerous currents, warning against swimming.
Wyatt walks us toward the water until the waves are lapping at our feet. Stopping, he pulls a plastic bag out of his pocket.
“Is that...Uncle Tom?”
“It is.”
“I’m not sure if this is an upgrade or downgrade from the Cool Whip container,” I say, and Wyatt smiles.
His smile fades as he stares down at the bag. “This is it,” he says. “The last stop he requested.”
The mood shifts instantly, all my worries and questions shoved out of the way in favor of compassion. I hook my arm around Wyatt’s waist. “How do you feel?” I ask.
Wyatt doesn’t move for a moment. “Sad. But also...okay.” He looks at me as he says this, a soft but genuine smile on his face. “Now, I’m okay.”
Because of me? I am seriously not used to feeling this needy or desperate for validation. And I’m not about to demand Wyatt tell me what his intentions are when he’s holding his uncle in a plastic bag.
It’s windy, so Wyatt kneels and I drop down with him as he gently opens the bag and empties it into the next wave.
There’s something oddly anticlimactic about the moment, which should feel huge, but it only takes a second for the last bits of Tom’s ashes to disappear.
A few tiny fish streak through the shallow water and vanish from sight.
Wyatt stands and pulls me to my feet. “Now we can head home,” he says, tucking the plastic bag into his pocket again.
My chest grows so tight I can hardly draw in a breath. “Wyatt?” I whisper. “What happens when we get home? Where even is home?”
He turns and blinks in surprise at me. I’m sure my face is broadcasting every fear and worry I have about whatever comes next.
Two big hands cup my cheeks, and I’m horribly embarrassed when a tear runs onto his finger.
Leaning forward, he presses his lips to my forehead in a gentle kiss.
He lingers there, thumbs stroking my face as his lips brush my hair.
“I wasn’t trying not to talk about it,” he says. “I wanted to go slow and let you set the pace for everything. Including talking about the future. I didn’t want to scare you.”
“I’m already scared. Why would you talking about this scare me?”
He’s quiet for a moment. “Because what I want—what I’ve always wanted with you—is everything.”
The words settle lightly on my shoulders, a soft shawl of reassurance. Everything. Wyatt wants everything. The idea thrills me. It also terrifies me, but it thrills me more.
“You didn’t think I was ready for everything?” I pull back until our eyes meet.
Wyatt drops his hands from my face to my shoulders, lightly kneading muscles I didn’t know were sore. “Are you?” he asks. “Ready for everything with me, Rookie?”
I’m set to say yes, but there’s a mild catch in my throat. “I think I’m ready for everything...slowly. But I need some reassurance. I need some concrete ideas of what this will look like. How to be a girlfriend—your girlfriend—and what long distance looks like and—”
“I don’t want you to be my girlfriend for long,” he says.
“Oh.” My stomach drops. “Well, I guess that answers that.”
His eyes widen and his fingers squeeze my shoulders. “No! Foot-in-mouth disease again. What I mean is, I don’t want you to be my girlfriend for long because I want more. I want you to be my fiancée, then my wife.” At the look on my face, he laughs softly. “See? I’m scaring you with my everything.”
“You already know you want that with me?”
“I’ve been wanting that for years. I’m just waiting for you to catch up. And if that’s slowly, it’s slowly. If it’s next month, it’s next month.”
“Next month?” I practically shriek the words.
“Just as a hypothetical,” he assures me, but I get the impression he also means it. “And as for the distance, it may not be that long if your brother works his magic. That’s why he called.”
“What’s why he called?”
And then my eyes glaze over just a little as Wyatt talks animatedly about a trade deadline and contracts and throws out names of other players who made big moves like Eichel and Tkachuk.
Feeling almost dizzy from all the information, I ask, “Are they friends with Liz Frank?”
He grins. “Probably not. The point, though, is that I might not be in Boston next season. If your brother is as good as he says he is, I’ll be in DC.”
Wyatt will be in DC. For a moment, a bubble of happiness eases the tightness in my chest. An hour away—or four, depending on the nightmare Northern Virginia traffic.
Then I groan and drop my forehead to Wyatt’s chest. “You mean the fate of whether or not we’ll be hundreds of miles from each other depends on my brother?”
“Yep.”
“Please tell me he’s as good at his job as he always says he is.”
“We’ll see. But it might take a few days.”
Once again, I lean back to meet Wyatt’s gaze. “You’re really thinking about moving cities and teams? For me?” I suddenly feel totally embarrassed. “Oh—right. It’s closer to your mom.”
“I’m moving for you. With the added bonus of being closer to my family. Especially if I want to repair things with Peter.”
Wyatt doesn’t mention his dad, and I wonder if it’s too late there, or if maybe that’s a longer-term plan.
I’m not about to push now. Especially when I’d rather think about Wyatt being closer to me .
Having Wyatt just up the road from Fredericksburg is better than all the way in Boston.
I could even catch a train. I’ve done it before to see Jacob.
“Wait—so did you already have this plan in place?” I ask.
“It’s something I’ve considered for a long time, but there wasn’t any urgency.” He pauses. “Not until now.”
Wyatt’s eyes darken, revealing a different kind of urgency.
One echoed in the searing kiss he gives me while waves still lap at our feet.
And then they cascade over our ankles and calves as the tide rolls in.
When we finally pull back, breathless, we’re the only ones on the beach, and the sky has darkened to a soft, velvety purple.
“I don’t want to overwhelm you,” Wyatt says, trailing a finger along my jaw. “And I think I very easily could.”
“Maybe I want to be overwhelmed,” I whisper.
His eyes meet mine. “Then know that I love you, Josie. And I don’t expect you to say—”
“I can’t promise to overwhelm you back. I don’t think I’m the overwhelming type.” He frowns and starts to argue. I shake my head and smooth my thumb over the furrow in his brow. “But I think I can shake you up. Make you smile every so often.”
I drop my thumb to tug at the corner of his mouth, which lifts and then drops into a playful frown.
“I’m happy to be shaken up. And to sometimes smile. For you.”
This all feels so right. And maybe this is what love is.
Not trying to be everything for someone or to complete them, like a person could somehow be incomplete without another person.
But perhaps love is being the exact right size of drill bit to tighten the other person’s very specific loose screws.
Okay, this analogy may not fully work since I don’t use tools and it sounds unnecessarily dirty. What I mean is that maybe love is giving the other person the something they may not have on their own.
It doesn’t sound scary to me. It sounds wonderfully terrifying. Like the floor is opening beneath me, but it’s not the real floor; it’s a ride. And I’m dropping, but with a safety harness that allows me to enjoy the fall.
“I love you, too, Wyatt Jacobs.”
His smile is a thing of beauty. There’s more kissing, and I think we might have gone on until we were waist-deep in high tide if an alarm didn’t go off on Wyatt’s phone. He pulls it out despite my grumble of protest and glances at the screen.
“The doggy day care is closing soon. Time to get the rest of our family,” Wyatt says, and it makes me unreasonably happy to think about him and about Jib as family .
But these thoughts screech to a halt when we stop to pick up Jib and an employee who looks no older than seventeen mentions that our dog is pregnant.
“Oh, she’s not...” I start to say, then trail off, remembering a certain incident our very first night on the boat.
“The bulldog,” Wyatt and I say, looking at each other wide-eyed.
Is it even possible? Would they be able to tell so fast? How long is a dog’s gestation period? Could Jib already have been pregnant when I found her? And if she wasn’t spayed like the vet thought, what was the scarring on her belly from?
A million new questions flood my mind, and I find myself laughing as we walk out, carrying Jib. Who, apparently, is not fixed.
Wyatt takes Jib from me, and she stretches up in his arms to lick his chin. I want to take a picture, but I just commit the image to memory instead.
“The look on your face is scaring me,” Wyatt says with a frown. “What are you thinking about?”
I give him my very best smile, and though he’s still frowning, I don’t miss the tiny twitch of his lips.
“I’m just wondering if they make maternity clothes for dogs.”