Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
The Ex Factor
I know I should be watching the game, but I can’t take my eyes off the jumbotron. I’m sure Ryan is doing the same. I wonder if he’s nervous about what he’s about to do. If he is, he hides it well.
My arm bumps Oliver’s as I reach for my drink.
I look at him, but he’s not looking at me.
His eyes seem to be on the jumbotron, too.
His arm takes up the whole armrest between us.
I want to push it off so that I can use it for myself.
Just when I’m thinking about doing it, he sucks in a breath, his eyes still glued to the screen.
I look up. This is it. This is the moment.
I read the screen: Will you marry me, Bailey?
My first thought is that they got Ryan’s message wrong. How the hell did they get Bailey from Tina? But then the message switches to a live recording of a man in the middle of the crowded stadium, down on one knee in front of a woman. They certainly aren’t Tina and Ryan.
“Uh, Ryan?” Oliver says. “Are you seeing this?”
I look at Oliver, curious about why he’s drawing attention to this, and then I follow his gaze to Ryan. Ryan’s eyes are glued to the screen. He nods, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he does so.
“Bailey?” Tina says to Ryan. “Wait. Isn’t that your ex-girlfriend?”
“That’s her,” he confirms.
I look back at the happy couple on the screen. Bailey has clearly said yes, and her brand-new fiancé is slipping a ring onto her finger. The crowd around us cheers, while Bailey cries happy tears in front of everyone.
“That’s so tacky,” Tina says. She grabs onto Ryan’s hand and leans against his arm.
I bite my lip. I know that Tina is only saying this because it’s Ryan’s ex getting engaged on the jumbotron.
If it had happened to her first, she would have been ecstatic.
Instead, she’s misread Ryan’s reaction to Bailey’s engagement as some sort of weird resentment, and she’s coming to his defense by pretending she thinks a jumbotron proposal is in bad taste.
This is kind of perfect for me. But for Ryan? Not so much. I don’t know how he’s going to follow his ex’s engagement with his own proposal after Tina just said that it was tacky.
I look past her at him. His face has fallen, and for the first time today, he looks nervous. He pulls his eyes away from the jumbotron to look at Oliver. There’s an unspoken exchange between the two of them, and then Ryan nods.
“Come with me,” Oliver says.
I turn to him, then look back over my shoulder in case he was talking to someone else. When it’s clear that neither Tina nor Ryan heard him, I ask, “Who, me?”
“Yes, you.” Oliver stands up. I hesitate a moment, and then I follow him. We make our way up the stairs toward the concessions.
“Where are we going?”
“To cancel the jumbotron message,” he says.
“Are you sure? He didn’t say anything. How do you know that’s what he wants?”
“Because his college girlfriend just got engaged on the jumbotron, and his current girlfriend called it tacky. He didn’t need to say anything. He can’t propose after that.”
I know that he’s right. I was thinking the same thing. “Where do you go to cancel that sort of thing?”
“I have no idea,” he says with a sigh. He looks around us. “Maybe someone at concessions knows.”
I follow him to the place where we bought our beers earlier. He grabs the attention of one of the attendants, and asks, “Do you know who I could talk to about canceling a message on the jumbotron?”
“Sorry, man,” the attendant says. “I have no idea.”
One of his coworkers elbows him, then looks at Oliver. “Talk to guest services. The office is that way.” She gestures with a towel she’s holding in a direction to our left.
Oliver and I exchange a glance, and then we take off in a brisk walk toward the guest services office.
“I feel really shitty about taking the ring, by the way,” I admit on our way there.
“I should hope so,” he says, looking ahead. “It was a pretty shitty thing to do.”
“I guess it’s pretty selfish of me to get in the way of him proposing to Tina.”
“Selfish and pointless,” he says. “All you needed to do was wait a bit and let Bailey’s engagement sabotage his proposal for you.”
“How long was he with her?” I ask.
“Bailey?” He shrugs. “They dated for a few months. It was never that serious.”
“He turned white when she popped up on the screen. Are there still some feelings there?”
I watch Oliver, trying to gauge his reaction to my question.
“If he turned white, it’s only because he knew it would seem unoriginal if he got engaged on the jumbotron right after his ex-girlfriend.
I think that even if Tina hadn’t called it tacky, he would be reconsidering his decision to do this.
I mean, how do you follow something like that and have it not be weird? ”
“True.”
“I guess you can rest easy knowing that Tina’s plan lives to see another day.”
“It’s too bad they can’t both get what they want,” I say.
We reach the door to the guest services office. Oliver stops. “Why can’t they?”
I frown at him. “Because their proposals are mutually exclusive. What would be the point in one proposing to the other when they’re already engaged after the first proposal?”
“Unless—”
“The only other way,” I say at the same time, “is if we could somehow get them to propose to each other at the exact same time.”
“How would that work?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “It probably wouldn’t.”
“We would have to know what both of them are planning and then convince them both to do it on the same day,” he says.
“I mean, I know exactly what Tina is planning and when,” I remind him. “But that’s only half of the equation.”
“Ryan’s always busy with work. Maybe he would take me up on it if I offered to help out.”
I’m surprised that Oliver is even entertaining my ridiculous idea, but since he is, I decide to keep pushing. “Tell him that you’ll take care of the logistical stuff. Then we can coordinate everything together, and they’ll never know that we’re in cahoots.”
“Cahoots?” he repeats. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use that word in real life.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re right. It’s a stupid idea and it would never work.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“It’s what you’re thinking.”
“It is a little out there, but…” He leaves that thought hanging in the air between us for what feels like a long time but is probably only a few seconds.
“But?” I prod.
“We need to call a truce,” he says.
“A truce?” I repeat. “Why do we need a truce?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know,” he says. “This thing with you stealing the ring isn’t the first time you and I have butted heads. If we’re going to work together, we need to play nice. Both of us.”
I want to argue with him. I want to blame him for all of the fights we’ve gotten into over the last year, but then I’d just be proving his point. I cross my arms over my chest. “Fine. A truce.”
He reaches his hand out. I look at it, then up at him, before I take his hand and shake it.
“None of this is going to matter if we don’t cancel this jumbotron message in time,” I remind him.
“Right. We better get in there.”
We push through the door at the same time, bumping into each other as we clumsily cross through the doorway. I elbow him out of my way. So much for that truce we just called. A man and a woman, both well-dressed, stand in the office next to a desk. They stop mid-conversation to stare at us.
“Can I help you?” the woman asks. She seems annoyed that we’re here.
“We need to cancel a message on the jumbotron,” Oliver says.
“All deposits are final,” she says.
“I don’t care about the money. I just need the message to not appear.”
She frowns. “What’s the issue?”
“Someone was going to propose, but it can’t happen anymore.”
“Someone?” she asks. “Only the person who reserved the message can cancel it.”
He hesitates. “It was me,” he says. “I’m Ryan Hannaway.”
Her eyes dart over to me, then back to him. “And you want to cancel your proposal?” she asks skeptically. She bends down in front of her computer and types something. She looks back up at me. “Are you Tina?”
Before I can answer, Oliver grabs my hand and interlocks his fingers with mine. I resist the urge to snatch my hand out of his. “Yes, she is,” he says. “We got engaged yesterday. That’s why I don’t need to propose on the jumbotron anymore.”
I force a smile. I squeeze his hand, trying to crush his fingers. He picks my hand up and kisses my knuckles. I turn to stare at him, shocked that he would do such a thing.
“If you’re already engaged, then what’s the big deal if you propose again on the big screen?” she asks. “How many times do you get to say you proposed on the jumbotron? You’re already here. Enjoy the experience.”
I don’t know how we’re supposed to continue arguing with that. I look at Oliver. He notices that he’s still holding my hand and lets go. It’s clear that he’s done playing the part. “I guess you have a point,” he says to the woman. “What time is that scheduled for again?”
She looks back at her monitor, then checks her watch. “It’s going up in about three minutes. You better hurry back.”
We leave the office the same way we came in—fighting our way through the doorway at the same time, shoulder to shoulder. I elbow him one more time once we’re through just for good measure.
“What now?” I ask.
“We need to get Tina out of the stadium,” he says. “But I don’t know how.”
“We’ll think of something on the way there. But we need to get there fast.” I take off, running back to our seats. Oliver catches up and runs along next to me.
By the time we make it back to our seats, I’m panting and out of breath. I don’t have time to rest, though. Ryan’s proposal is going to appear at any second, and I need to get Tina out of here.
“What’s the matter with you?” Tina says when she sees me. “Are you okay?”
I shake my head. I point behind us where Oliver and I just came from. “You need to come with me.”
She frowns. “Why? And why are you all out of breath?”
I rack my brain for a reason to get her out of here. “Taylor Swift,” I bark out. I point behind myself again. “Over there. In the concessions line. Quick!”
Her eyes widen. “Seriously?”
She stands up. I take her hand, pulling her with me. We push past Oliver and run up the steps.
“Slow down,” she complains. “I’m not wearing the right shoes for this!”
We make it to the concourse. “This way,” I say, leading her as far as I reasonably can from the view of the arena. My heart is pounding. I hope that I can keep her away long enough that she won’t catch a glimpse of Ryan’s proposal.
“Are you sure it was her?” Tina asks.
“It was definitely her,” I say. “She was in line over here. Just a little bit farther.”
We come around the bend to the next vendor. I point to the first woman I see with blond hair. “There! It’s her!”
Tina stops in her tracks. She looks at the woman, then at me, eyebrow raised. “That is not Taylor Swift.”
“Are you sure?” I ask. “I could have sworn I saw her over here. Maybe she left. We should keep going this way just to be sure.”
Tina laughs, grabbing my arm to stop me from continuing on. “If you wanted to talk to me alone, you could have just said so.”
“What? I didn’t?—”
“Come on, Priss. You and Oliver disappeared without a word and you came back all out of breath.” She turns us around, keeping her arm hooked with mine like I might run off.
“I was running,” I insist. “I really thought I saw Taylor Swift.”
I try to slow down, but Tina’s legs are longer than mine, and she brings us back to the stadium in no time.
“You are never going to convince me that—” She stops in her tracks when she reaches our row. Her eyes are on the jumbotron.
Oh, God. She’s never going to forgive me if she realizes that Ryan was planning to propose and thinks that I screwed it up. Ironic, I realize, since I came here with every intention of doing exactly that. I follow her gaze to the big screen.
My jaw drops when I see Ryan and Oliver up there. Their arms are wrapped around each other, and Oliver is planting a kiss on Ryan’s cheek while the crowd around them goes wild. The proposal message is gone, so now it’s just the two of them up there putting on a show for the whole stadium.
“I can’t believe Ryan did the kiss cam without me!” Tina complains.
Both of us burst out laughing. I double over. “You better go kick his ass,” I tell her.