Double Major (Portland Storm)

by Catherine Gayle

  She gave me a radiant, watery smile.

  “Don’t you two go crying again now,” Laura said. “You’ll mess up your makeup.” Laura was another of our closest friends.

  In fact, all our girlfriends were here with us right now as our bridesmaids—Laura, Katie, Sara, and Noelle. They were in the dressing room with us because they were going to be our bridesmaids. Dana’s mom and my two kids were here, too. All of them were wearing a lot more sea-foam green than the pair of us, each in a dress that suited her personal style.

  Well, Tuck wasn’t in a dress. He was in a miniature version of the same tux that Brenden would be wearing, with accents of the green in his pocket square and cummerbund. He clung to the green pillow that the rings were tied onto. I’d never seen him looking so handsome and grown-up, and it was almost enough to make me start crying again. Which was exactly what we were supposed to be trying not to do.

  “Right,” Dana said, smoothing her hands over the perfection that was her dress. “No more crying. I just can’t believe it’s happening.”

  “Well, believe it,” Sara said. Her grin was miles wide. “You guys have all been disgustingly sweet for too long to not get married sooner rather than later. Makes me want to gag.”

  I wasn’t sure how the six months or so that Brenden and I had been together could be considered too long, but whatever. She’d been disgustingly sweet with her boyfriend, Cam Johnson, for a little while now, too, but this didn’t seem like the best time to point that out to her. I had too many other things on my mind to tease her.

  “Come on,” Mrs. Campbell—no, she’d asked me dozens of times to call her Abby if I couldn’t bring myself to call her Mom—said. “They’re all waiting for you.”

  All of our bridesmaids filed out of the dressing room to get into position. I bent down so I could be eye level with my kids. Maddie had her basket of soft pink rose petals in one hand, and Tuck was still awkwardly holding onto the pillow.

  “Now don’t be nervous,” I reminded them. I was nervous enough for all of us. “Just walk down the aisle, and Maddie, you can scatter your flower petals—”

  “And stand next to Katie.” Maddie patted my cheek after interrupting me, just like I would sometimes do to reassure her. “We know, Mommy. We won’t mess up.”

  “And I’ll stand where Mr. Soupy and Mr. Zee tell me to when we get to the front,” Tuck added. “You told us a bajillion gazillion times already.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh because otherwise, I might burst into tears. “I know I have. I just want to be sure you remember.”

  “Can I help with the flowers, though?” Tuck asked.

  Abby took Tuck’s hand and started to guide him gently toward the door, winking at Maddie so she’d come along with them, as well. “I don’t think you’ll have a hand free for that,” she said kindly. “Maybe if Maddie has some left over after the ceremony. I bet she’d let you help her then.”

  She was already becoming an amazing grandmother to my children. It was going to be the real deal soon, too. Not just because of the wedding. Brenden wasn’t going to be their stepdad. He’d asked if he could officially adopt my children. Then his parents would be their real grandparents, Dana would be their real aunt… They were going to have all the family I didn’t think I’d ever be able to give them.

  If I wasn’t careful, I was going to lose it before we even got to the aisle.

  Once everyone went out into the hall, it was just Dana and me in the dressing room.

  “You ready for this?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, but I shook my head as though to say no. It was like I couldn’t make up my mind. And really, she ought to be far more nervous than I was. This was her first wedding, her first marriage. I’d at least done it all before, even though it hadn’t been anywhere close to this scale.

  “My sentiments exactly,” she said, mimicking the crazy way my head was moving. Then she took my hand and squeezed. “We’ll get through this. It’ll be fine.”

  “It’ll be better than fine.”

  “Right. Because we’re going to be sisters.”

  She steeled her spine and started tugging me toward the door. Her father, Mark, was going to walk her down the aisle. At first, he’d suggested the idea of giving me away. He could walk between me and Dana, one of us on either side of him. But seeing as he would be giving me to his own son, that seemed a little awkward to me.

  But there really wasn’t anyone else to do it, and so he’d made the offer. My own father—a minister—had disowned me when I had come home as a pregnant teenager. I hadn’t seen or heard from him in almost a decade now. My initial thought was to have my boss, Jim, do the honors. He was willing, too, but the timing hadn’t worked out. Today was the first day of the NHL Entry Draft, and as the general manager of the Storm, he was probably making his way to the draft floor now, actually. I was still amazed that he hadn’t gotten upset about me asking for this time off for the wedding and honeymoon, because almost as soon as the draft was completed, the free agency period was set to begin. Since I was his assistant, there were all sorts of things I ought to be helping him with. Instead, I was here, wishing he were, too.

  I’d promised to return to Portland in time for free agency. Brenden and I were taking the kids to Disney World, and a week there was probably going to be more than enough to do us all in for a while. I expected I’d be glad to get back to work by the time we got home.

  Anyway, that still left me without someone to walk me down the aisle—until Jamie Babcock had suggested I let Tuck take over that responsibility. That was, of course, the perfect solution. Yes, Tuck was already going to be our ring bearer. But he was also going to walk me down the aisle toward the man who would soon be his father.

  I couldn’t imagine anything more perfect.

  Mark reached for Dana’s hand once we were out in the hall with everyone else. He had tears in his eyes, which only made hers start up again. We were all going to be a blubbery, sobbing messes before this was done.

  I took Tuck’s hand from Abby, and she kissed him on the cheek. Then she went around and kissed Maddie, and Dana, and me, before finally going through the door into the chapel so she could take her seat. It had been set up with two aisles, with seats on each side and down the center. Dana was going to walk down the right, and I would go down the left, and then she and Brenden could be standing next to one another during the ceremony, brother and sister.

  The music started, and our bridesmaids headed in—two on each side, all walking in at once, arm in arm. The videographer had an assistant, and they were shooting both aisles and showing it live on a split screen above the altar. Once the bridesmaids were halfway to the front, the wedding coordinator gave Maddie a little nudge, and she went down the aisle on my side, dropping her rose petals as she went. The big screen went fully onto her since there wasn’t a flower girl on the opposite aisle. She was blushing so hard from all the attention being on her that her face was redder than her hair. As soon as she got to the front, she bustled up next to Katie and reached for her hand. Those two had a special bond lately. It was good to see.

  The music changed to Pachelbel’s “Canon in D,” and the coordinator gave us a nod. Dana and I looked at each other and both took deep breaths. The pair of us must’ve taken too long sorting ourselves out because Tuck pulled on my hand until I looked down at him.

  “Come on,” he said. “Mr. Soupy said I gotta be sure you get there on time. He said I’m not just the Ginger Ninja, but I’m his big man and I got a job to do. Let’s go.” With that, he started marching toward the chapel’s double doors whether I was ready or not.

  Mark burst out laughing as he and Dana headed for their set of doors, causing almost every head inside to turn and look at us—all but those watching the screen up front.

  This was it. It was really happening.

  I was finally going to get my happily ever after.

  WHILE EVERYONE WAS staring at the two brides coming down the aisle and laughing al
ong with Mr. Campbell despite not knowing what had tickled him, Burnzie cuffed Babs on the back of the head.

  “Maybe we should start calling you Animal, going around with hair like that,” he said. “Like the drummer dude from The Muppets.”

  “Fuck off,” Babs muttered beneath his breath so no one else would hear.

  “Buy a fucking comb.”

  “Leave him alone,” Webs muttered.

  There was no doubt that Babs’s hair was an absolute wreck, but that was an everyday occurrence. There was no good reason for Burnzie to whack him like that now, but I didn’t get the impression he needed any reason at all. That was just how he was with Babs. He meant it good-naturedly, but I wasn’t sure Babs always took it that way. God knew I wouldn’t if I were in Babs’s shoes. Then again, I wasn’t one to ever let myself get into a position like that.

  Zee shot all three of them a glare, which shut them up pretty fast.

  I let my gaze wander over to the bridesmaids—or really, to Sara. She was standing at the end of the row, as far away from me as she could be without sitting in one of the seats with all the guests.

  Maddie was standing beside her, holding onto Katie’s hand and beaming. It was good to see her smiling like that. In the time I’d known Rachel and her kids, Maddie hadn’t ever smiled much. She was a guarded little girl, in a way that made me think of my sister Corinne. But today? Today, she was happy.

  Sara, however, was not. Even with all the distance between us, I could sense Sara’s discomfort. She was grinding her jaw, and her grip on her bouquet was of the white-knuckled variety. The problem was, I had no clue what was bothering her. Two of her best friends were about to get married. They were coming down the aisle right now. She ought to be ecstatic about this, like Maddie was, but she looked ready to rip someone’s head off.

  And for once, it wasn’t mine.

  I wished Scotty had come with us to the wedding. He’d know better than I did what to say to her to get her to talk once we got her alone. I was learning more about her every day, but there was still a long way for me to go in that regard. He had a twenty-three-year leg up on me. Instead, he’d gone to New York with the rest of the Storm executives for the draft. He had a new role in the organization as the director of amateur scouting, and helping out at the draft was essential to that new position. That meant it was up to me to figure out what to do about Sara and whatever was bothering her so much.

  She wasn’t even watching Rachel and Dana coming down the aisle, so I tried to follow the path of her gaze—not an easy task, since we were at completely different angles. She was staring into the center section, which was filled to bursting with Soupy and Dana’s friends and family.

  I couldn’t tell how far back she was looking, but her eyes weren’t moving at all. They were fixed in one spot, on one person, it seemed. I’d only ever seen her looking so livid when I’d done something wrong, however unintentional it may have been. It was times like this when she reminded me of her father. Who the hell could be here who would upset her so much? To my knowledge, she’d never been to Providence before, at least not until a few days ago when we had arrived together.

  Something had happened that made the audience laugh and ooh and aah, and for a moment, I let myself remove my gaze from Sara. Dana and her father had come down their aisle and were almost to us, but Rachel and Tuck were still nearly at the back of the chapel, barely beyond the doors. It took me a minute to figure out why, but then I saw that Tuck had handed his pillow to his mother, and she had placed it under her arm, bouquet still in hand, while he was bending over and picking up all of the flower petals that his sister had scattered on her way to the front. When he had too many in his hands, he shoved them into a pocket and went back for more. Instead of getting upset with him, Rachel was just going along with it and laughing, charming everyone here.

  Eventually, they arrived at the end of their aisle, and Tuck let go of his mother’s hand for long enough to run up the steps and dump his flower petals into his sister’s basket as he emptied his pockets. That only caused Maddie’s face to turn bright red with embarrassment. Tuck spun around, leaped down the two steps he’d climbed, and took his spot next to his mother again with a big grin.

  The officiant cleared his throat. “And just think. In twenty years, we’ll all be back here trying to wrangle this one into matrimony, as well.”

  The audience laughed some more before he moved on to asking who was giving Dana away. Her father kissed her cheek before passing her hand over to Zee. When the minister asked who was giving Rachel away, Tuck wasn’t quite as cooperative.

  “No one’s taking my mommy!” He planted his hands on his hips, and the look on his face was ridiculously comical and heartbreakingly serious all at the same time.

  It took a minute to convince him he could keep his mother and still give her to Soupy in marriage, but once that was settled, Tuck bounded away from her and headed straight for Babs, completely bypassing Soupy and leaving the ring pillow behind.

  Burnzie quickly crossed over to take the rings from Rachel, and Soupy took her hand. It felt as though the crowd may not ever stop laughing.

  But not everyone was laughing. Sara still hadn’t stopped staring past us, out into the crowd. I decided to do the same. Maybe that way I could figure out what was going on before the reception. I’d rather head off any potential disasters if it was at all possible.

  I made my way through each row in the center section, scanning face by face, to see if I recognized anyone who might upset her. I started at the front. By the time the two couples were exchanging rings, I still hadn’t discovered a face that seemed like a likely culprit.

  The officiant was just saying, “You may now kiss your brides,” when I found her—a woman who was the spitting image of Sara only with a few more wrinkles. She was sitting with three kids—two boys and a girl, one of them almost a teenager—on one side, and a man I recognized but had never met on the other: Jeremy Connor, a retired NHL defenseman. These days he was scouting for some team in the league or another. I wasn’t sure which one he was with currently. The kids looked so much like both Sara and this woman that there could be no doubt: this was Sara’s mother and the man she left Scotty for, and those kids were Sara’s half siblings.

  And that explained in one fell swoop why Sara was shooting daggers with her eyes. Her mother hadn’t just abandoned Scotty; she’d completely left Sara behind, as well. There hadn’t been any contact since she’d run off with Jeremy Connor. Sara didn’t know her siblings. She’d never met them. The only way she knew their names was through the hockey grapevine, the same way my sisters and mother had learned about my relationship with Sara a few months ago.

  What I had no clue about was why they were here. Were they friends of the Campbell family? It was possible. Mark Campbell had been a star in the league for nearly two decades. Jeremy Connor might have been one of his teammates somewhere along the way. Half the chapel was filled with current and former NHL players, so that wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.

  The Campbells must not have known, or maybe they didn’t remember, that there were family issues at play. In the hockey world, there might be a huge scandal one day but then something else comes along and pushes it from memory the next day—unless you were one of the people involved, of course, like Sara was.

  There was no chance she would forget, then or now.

  Before I could make up my mind what I should do, if anything, the two new couples were making their way back down the aisles. The bridesmaids and the groomsmen came together, pairing up to follow them. Webs and Laura went first, and then Noelle and Burnzie—a pairing that didn’t make much sense in my head, since Noelle was almost never separated from Kally. Granted, Kally wasn’t one of the groomsmen, so… Babs and Katie followed them, with Maddie and Tuck holding hands right in front of them. That left Sara and me.

  Instead of taking her hand like all of the other couples had done, I put my arm around her waist and drew her in to my sid
e. Just that small amount of contact was enough for me to feel her vibrating—with anger, maybe with fear. I wanted to get her away for a minute, to see if I could help her calm down. This was a wedding, not a brawl. I had every intention of keeping things that way.

  As soon as we got out of the chapel and into the hall, I steered her away from everyone else, finding an empty dressing room and pulling the door closed behind us.

  “We’re supposed to go to the reception and help—”

  “I know,” I interrupted. “We will. But not until I’m sure you aren’t going to start World War III.”

  She pouted up at me, her full lips looking so damn kissable and her eyes as perfectly sulky as they’d ever been. “If I was going to make a scene, I would have already done that.”

  “That’s your mother?” I prodded.

  Sara nodded. “I haven’t even seen her in over a decade. I don’t know if she would even recognize me.”

  There was way too much family resemblance for that woman to not recognize her own daughter, but I didn’t think that was necessary to point out. “You gonna be okay if they come over to talk to you?”

  “No.” Her hair was swept up in an elaborate updo with flowers interspersed here and there. A tendril dropped free, falling along the side of her face.

  I eased it back into place, using one of the pins already there to fasten it where it belonged. “Can you get through the reception?”

  “Yes.” She scowled up at me. “How the hell did you do that? I’ve been trying to get it to stay put for two hours.”

  “Three younger sisters,” I reminded her. “Stick close to me through the reception.” It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her to avoid going postal on her mother; I just didn’t have any idea what her mother might do, and I’d rather be there if anything happened.

  “I don’t have a fucking thing to say to that woman, Cam. You don’t have to babysit me all afternoon.”

  Sara might not have anything to say to her, but I sure as hell did. Maybe I wanted to keep her close so she could be the one to prevent me from losing my shit.