CHAPTER 15 KAYLEE
I’ve done the research since I have a wedding of my own coming up rather soon.
There are a million places to hold a wedding near Great Falls, and since we’re having a quickie surprise wedding a week from today, we decided to just hold it on Ben’s land.
I’ve got a wedding planner working overtime on all the details, and she texts me daily, sometimes hourly, with questions.
But never once when I was considering places to get married did I think of a bar. And yet…that’s where Darlene and Jerry are getting married.
It’s the bar where they met, so it’s supposed to be meaningful and romantic. Maybe because I haven’t exactly been welcomed with open arms and they don’t treat Ben the way he deserves, I’m feeling overly judgmental.
I don’t care what they do or where they do it. It’s their prerogative, and it doesn’t affect my life either way.
But Jerry has a seventeen-year-old son, and since we walked into this place twelve minutes ago, he has already asked me to buy him alcohol.
Twice.
He has a poof of hair that settles sloppily onto his forehead and over his eye just a little. He flicks his head to get his hair to move out of his eyes, but it keeps falling back into place. It’s such a seventeen-year-old boy move.
We haven’t even gotten to the actual rehearsal yet.
When we first walked in, we watched as Darlene set Reserved signs on the booths against the wall. Now she’s moving bar tables and stools in a dress meant for someone a quarter her age and heels that are about three inches too high.
Jerry hangs back and watches.
I don’t get it. I don’t understand why she’s marrying him.
Darlene runs the entire event. There’s no wedding planner here, just her along with Tatum, who apparently works here, and the head bartender, who’s getting busier and busier by the minute.
It’s filling up in here on a Friday night, but Darlene doesn’t seem to care, and she cares even less once she has a glass of rum and Coke in her hand.
She orders everyone around, tells us where we’ll sit and what we’ll do tomorrow, and then she tells us where to sit once she’s done with the rehearsal portion.
Now, I suppose, it’s the party portion of the evening, and it seems like she’s more interested in partying than she is in actually getting married.
“How’s everybody at the kids’ table?” she slurs, stopping by our booth once she’s done ordering everybody around. I’m on the inside of the booth, and Ben is next to me. Nobody sits across from us…yet.
Jerry sidles up beside her, acting the part of loving fiancé even though it’s the first time I’ve actually seen them interact.
“Oh, is this the kids’ table?” he asks. “Thorne!” he yells across the bar, and the kid ignores him in favor of his phone.
“Thorne!” he yells a little louder, and he finally looks up at his dad.
“What?” he yells back, annoyance very clear in his tone in that certain way only teenagers have, and Jerry flicks his head over.
Thorne walks over toward us.
“This is the kids’ booth,” Jerry says. “Have a seat. Get to know your future brother.”
“Ahem. Step-brother,” Ben corrects. “Should I call you Dad?”
I suppress a giggle as Thorne slides into the booth. He flicks his neck so his little hair poof falls into place exactly where it was before, covering one of his eyes.
This is going to be a long night.
Jerry and Darlene walk away to their own table, leaving poor Thorne with two virtual strangers. Or maybe it’s poor Ben, who’s suddenly babysitting his new step-brother. Or maybe it’s poor me for having to act like I want to be here when I’d rather be pretty much anywhere else.
The only thing that would make this worse is—
Yep. Before I can even finish that thought, Tatum slides into the booth beside Thorne.
“How’s everybody doing?” she asks.
Ben and I glance at each other, and he smirks. He tosses an arm around my shoulders. “Great. I was just getting to know my new little brother.”
I giggle, and two waitresses start walking around taking orders, so Tatum is forced back to her seat at the head table with Ben’s mom.
Once we’ve placed our orders, Thorne looks over at Ben. “How’d you get into the NFL?”
Ben’s brows rise. “You play?” He gives the kid a once over and looks a little doubtful.
Thorne nods. “I’m a tight end just like you.”
Just like you.
I almost laugh out loud at the absurdity of those words.
“Oh,” Ben says. “Uh…that’s not really an easy question to answer. Is that something you want out of your future?”
“To play football for a living? Yeah, man. Who wouldn’t want to?”
“Lots of people.” Ben shrugs. “It’s a great career, but it’s incredibly competitive.
Only about six percent of high school kids go on to play in college, and from there, only about one percent are drafted.
The average career is only about three years, and most guys don’t make enough money in that time to really be able to make a living off it. ”
“Right,” he says, seeming a little bored with the statistics. “But you got in. You’re making the big bucks.” He glances at me. “You get to have a fun time with the cheerleaders. Being brothers with somebody in the league has to help, right?”
Well if that isn’t a red flag…or, excuse me, a penalty flag—I’m not sure what is.
“It’s not quite that simple,” Ben says. “Have you talked to any scouts? Registered with the NCAA?”
Thorne shakes his head. “I figured you could help me out with that.”
Ben gives him a look that clearly says now why the fuck would I do that. “That’s not really my department, man. Sorry.”
Thorne looks disappointed for a beat, and some awkward silence follows.
Then, much to our complete delight, Darlene starts yelling something about how it’s time to do shots. Thorne lights up at that, but Ben just shakes his head. “If you’re serious about getting into the league, stop that shit right now.”
Thorne’s brows dip. “Why?” he challenges.
“Because nobody’s going to take a drunk seventeen-year-old seriously, for one thing, but also because over time, it fucks with your body’s coordination, not to mention your decision-making skills—two things you need to play football.”
“But you’re, like, drunk all the time,” Thorne protests.
Ben squints at him. “That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but even if it wasn’t, I’m thirty-two. I’ve got fifteen years on you. Alcohol does different things to teenaged brains because they’re not fully developed yet.”
“So what’s it like to play pro?” he asks.
Ben laughs. “Well, on Sundays at game time, I always get this giddy feeling like I’m a kid again getting to play the game I love.
But it’s also war. And the rest of the week…
it’s hard. In a typical week, on Wednesday you get a brand-new playbook you have to memorize by Sunday.
You spend time in classrooms learning and studying.
You work out. You practice. You take hits and you make hits.
Your goal is to be the best goddamn player on that field every week.
You want to be the guy the opposing team fears the most, and you think about that while you’re lifting weights and working through endurance training and eating a clean diet. ”
I sigh as I rest my chin in my palm and stare at him as he gives this passionate speech about life as a pro football player. I could listen to Ben talk with this sort of passion forever.
“What about in the off-season?” Thorne asks. He leans in a little closer, like he’s about to ask a personal question. And boy is it a doozy. “Is that when you get all the pussy?”
I can’t help a little gasp at his question.
“Wow, kid,” Ben says, clearly appalled at the question. “That’s out of line.”
“What?” he asks. “It’s a fair question.”
“I’m not going to comment on that. I’m engaged.”
“Whatever,” the kid says. “What’s the off-season like? One big party?”
“No,” Ben says, shaking his head. “It’s rehabbing.
It’s studying. It’s taking a break to allow your body some recovery after getting your ass beat once a week for six or seven months.
It’s filming endorsements and meeting with your agent and your publicist and your lawyer and whoever else you need to meet with since you don’t have time for that shit in season. ”
Thorne narrows his eyes at Ben, and it’s like he only picked up on one part of his explanation. “You don’t get your ass beat every week though, right?”
Ben’s brows shoot up. “You don’t think so?
You try getting hit by a three-hundred-pound linebacker coming at you then sliding across turf versus real grass in the hundred-degree plus Vegas sun then tell me I don’t get my ass beat every week.
The bigger and stronger you are, the easier it is to take those hits, or better, to hit them first. You need to bulk up first. You need to take it seriously.
Those are my top two tips. Take the summer to work on that, and then let your coaches guide you and help you. That’s why they’re there.”
Thorne looks annoyed, like he wants this handed to him, and I can’t help but wonder what his life’s like. According to Jerry, his mom passed away a few years ago, and he only had his dad until his dad met Ben’s mother. And now he’s getting a new mom and a stepbrother who plays pro football.
With the way Thorne’s questions immediately turned to Ben’s profession, I can’t help but feel a little suspicious of Jerry’s intentions with Ben’s mom.
Thorne didn’t ask him a single question about himself—he doesn’t seem to care about Ben Olson the person…
just how he got into the league and how many women he gets into his bed.
And something feels very off about that.
I want to get to the bottom of it. After all, Darlene will be my mother-in-law by next Saturday.
I’ll do whatever it takes to protect Ben.