Chapter 12 #2
I nodded and Myles repeated it and also mentioned that he was happy to see his old teammate in Woodsmen orange.
I thought it was pretty big of him to say all that, since he’d also wanted it so much for himself.
Victoria joined us and they discussed their plans for where to go next before they said goodbye and took off.
I was glad to see Kiya with Myles again and as I walked back to the stadium, I remembered a secret dream I’d had as a kid that I would be a bridesmaid someday.
That was in a period in which I knew not one other girl so it had seemed impossible, but if Kiya or my other lunch friends decided to get married…
I waited in the family lounge for Ronan and he took a little longer tonight to join me. “Hey,” he said as he finally came out of the locker room. “I was talking to Herb and Buzz, the actual guys.”
“What did they ask you?”
“They were interested in my journey here from the Junior Woodsmen so I gave that team a big plug. People really should be watching them play. Maybe if the bleachers were covered,” he suggested, and I thought that was a great idea. A pricey one, though.
I introduced him to Calla, the woman I’d been talking with as we’d waited, and Ronan nodded at me approvingly as we moved toward the door. “Told you that you could make friends,” he said.
“We just talked for a minute because she’s nice,” I answered. Then he had to stop outside and sign a lot of autographs, which was gratifying, before we continued to the parking lot.
“You coming over? I want to talk to you about something,” he said, which sounded ominous enough except…what could it have been?
Bad news, according to him. He explained when I arrived at his house and we were sitting at his kitchen table. “They set the date. My brother and his fiancée set a wedding date,” he clarified. “And he did it on a Woodsmen bye week, so that I’d be free.”
“He really wants you to be there.”
“I guess so,” he agreed. “It’s not going to be a very formal thing, but he also wants me to stand up with him.”
I thought again of my dream of being a bridesmaid. Ronan was living it. “Are you worried about what you’re going to wear?”
He put a plate in front of me, and one piled higher in front of himself.
“No, I wasn’t until you said that. I have a suit somewhere and it should still fit me.
” He complained about ties for a moment before he continued to describe the plans.
“My parents will be there, too. My brother lives in Chicago and they’re already on the way in their RV from Montana.
They like to take their time,” he explained.
“Cormac told them that they’re not allowed to bring any other guests with them, if they pick up people along the way. ”
“Would they have done that?” I wondered.
“Absolutely. One Christmas, we had sixteen extra people and there was no way to stretch the food for so many.”
So, they were foolishly generous and also unable to calculate portion sizes. It was a good thing that I wouldn’t be meeting them, because I had a strong sense that we wouldn’t get along.
“Do you have something to wear?”
“What?” I looked down at my Wilder jersey, not understanding.
“Will you come with me?”
“You want me to come to your brother’s wedding?” I asked, and he explained more details about it. We’d be able to fly in, on a regular-sized plane, and attend the ceremony and dinner on Saturday before returning home later that night.
“Would you mind? My family is weird but not that bad. I promise the food will be good, because Cormac likes to think of himself as a gourmet. Or do I mean gourmand?”
I shrugged. I was already considering my wardrobe and worrying a little about the flight. The trip coming back from Salt Lake City had been easier than the way out there, but it was still not something I’d enjoyed.
“Let’s call him a foodie,” Ronan said. “You’d have a good dinner and meet everyone. You’ll like my parents.”
I would not, but I didn’t say that. “I’ll definitely go,” I told him instead.
“Good.” He looked relieved. “I’m still not happy about all of this. He has time to change his mind, though.”
“If he leaves his pregnant fiancée—”
“No, that won’t happen.” He sounded almost sad about it. “Cormac wouldn’t do that and I wouldn’t want him to. But there’s still time.”
That was lucky, because I had to find something to wear.
There were also two more games and they were both away, so Ed and I watched together at my house.
Ronan did get to play, not as much as I would have liked and not as much as what was good for the team—but each time he was out there, he only seemed to improve.
It was like he was getting into the rhythm or something, and it fit him.
We yelled so loud that I thought the neighbors would get mad, before I remembered that they were all Woodsmen fans, too.
Soon enough, it was the bye week. Victoria had said she was busy, but Kiya and Taylor went with me after work to pick an outfit for the wedding. That had been hard because Ronan had given out different signals about the dress code.
“He said ‘semi-formal,’” I told them as we glanced through a rack. “But then he said, ‘What you have on is fine,’ and I was wearing his sweatshirt and leggings.” It was already colder up here.
“But he’s wearing a suit,” Taylor confirmed. She’held up a dress that looked like it would be a little tight. And short, and bright.
“Oh my God, Tay! She can’t wear that when she’s meeting his parents,” Kiya scolded her.
“It’s not like I’m ‘meeting his parents.’ I am meeting his parents, but it’s not what you’re thinking it is,” I reminded them both.
“Right, he wants his ‘friend’ to go to a family wedding.” Kiya rolled her eyes.
“I’ve been to a family wedding with a friend. He didn’t want to go alone because his relatives gave him crap about being single,” Taylor informed her.
Kiya muttered something.
“What? What did you just say?”
“She said, ‘Friend zone,’” I told Taylor and then both of them got mad, Taylor at Kiya and Kiya at me. They’d been having some issues—not with hearing, as you might have thought, but about Tay and her friendships.
“You know you want that guy for more than just sex!” Kiya stated. “No, Cate! That color is not right. Remember the analysis we did?”
I liked orange because it reminded me of the Woodsmen, but that color stuff had said I was a summer so she’d been correct.
However, Taylor was insistent that Kiya was absolutely wrong about the other issue of her relationship, and they continued to argue as we shopped.
I finally picked a dress (slate blue) and they calmed down as we went to the shoe department.
They wore the same size and found a great pair on sale that they planned to share, which would work since they lived together.
“I’m sorry. I just worry about you,” Kiya told her as we left to get dinner.
“I know.” Taylor put her arm around her roommate’s shoulders. “But I’m good. We’re all happy with our choices.”
“I am,” I assured them. Things in my life were going very well. I’d just received approval for interior paint at the practice facility, and no one in the Office of Stadium Affairs had seemed to notice that I meant we would paint the entire interior, and not just the Woodsmen side.
“I am, too. Totally happy,” Kiya announced.
She and Myles were taking things slow, she promised, and she hadn’t said anything about her former Cado in a while.
I had seen her reading some old texts, though, when she had promised Taylor that she’d deleted everything and that she’d (finally) blocked him. I hadn’t brought that up.
“I’m happy. I definitely am,” Taylor reiterated. Over our meal, she also told us some details about the night before, which she’d spent with her friend, and Kiya’s mouth gaped open.
“Shit, Tay! You did that?”
“I know. I wasn’t sure I wanted to at first, but I thought about it and decided to give it a try. I would ten-out-of-ten recommend it,” she said. “Have you done it, Cate?”
I shook my head. “I’m not interested.”
“Are you going to sleep with Ronan when you guys are away?” she asked. “Regular style?”
They were disappointed that we wouldn’t be spending a romantic night in Chicago. “The place doesn’t matter,” Taylor told me, and she was right. We could have done it anywhere, but we weren’t going to do it at all.
“He suggested that but I said no. Well, I didn’t really say no, but I freaked out and he took it back,” I explained.
Kiya nodded sagely, but she was staring at our other friend. “Because you know that you feel more for him than friendship so you’re aware that getting physical—“
“Kiya, I swear to Christ, give it up!” Taylor ordered. And they started squabbling again and Taylor texted Victoria for backup, but she didn’t answer. It turned out that she’d been napping and not too busy to come out with us after all.
I wasn’t nervous about meeting Ronan’s family.
I was only curious about them, but I was absolutely nervous about the flight.
“We’ll be fine,” he said as we went through the airport early that Saturday morning.
He had already taken my hand, right after we went through the security part.
It wasn’t a long walk to the gate because this was small compared to what I’d seen of the airport in Salt Lake City.
No, it was better not to think about all of that.
“Cate.”
I looked up. “Yes?”
“I can feel your hand shaking,” he said.
“I’m trying not to be afraid. I really don’t like to feel that way.” I tried to be the duck that I used to be. What had happened to the duck?
“Everybody’s scared of stuff. You know how I am about rats.”
We both shivered. “That’s natural, because they host fleas that carry the plague,” I reasoned. “The Black Death wiped out fifty million people.”