Free Quarterback Bait by Celia Loren Page B

head, sculpted into this fountain shape. She was
beautiful.
    “It's too bad your Dad can't swing the Hyatt for his wedding
ceremony,” she was saying now, apparently satisfied with the picture I took.
(Or not: she reached a manicured hand up and smoothed a lock of hair back from
my scalp, not a second later.)
    “His whole thing is pretty anti-flash, remember?” This
change in conversation made me even grouchier. I would rather have talked about
the long road to finding the perfect florist for Betsy's deb ball than spend a
second admitting that Pop seemed about to go through with his hare-brained
matrimony, despite my very logical protests.
    “I know you think he's being crazy,” Z said, eyes roving the
lobby. Periodically, she'd raise her hand and wave at some other couple or
group. “But IMHO, it's romantic. He's a man of the cloth, he's getting up
there...why shouldn't he have someone to spend the rest of his life with? I
mean, when you get drafted next year it's not like you'll have a bunch of extra
time to spend at home.”
    I bit my tongue. Even during our best times, I'd never
exactly felt the need to confide in Z about the real quality of my relationship
with Pop. From the outside, I knew it looked like something out of a sad fairy
tale or bad movie: Wounded Veteran Raises Only Son, Finds God On The Way ...but
the truth was, we were more complicated than that. Of course I wanted Pop to
find someone to take care of him. Of course I did. But I'd never have gone so
far as to call his storefront operation “of the cloth,” nor would I ever deign
to call his shacking up with Anya “romantic.” I'd also never entertained any
plans of coming back to live with the old coot, draft or no. Sticking around
Pop for my last college summer was turning out to be a huge ordeal. If not for
all the oddly scheduled football training, I would have been able to at least
fly the coop every so often to a job—but alas. No dice.
    And as much as I hated to admit it, there'd been a grain or
two of truth in Ash's bitchy rant at our first dinner. I didn't think Pop was
scamming Anya, exactly. Nor did I think she was scamming him. But I'd decided that
there was something unseemly about their union, and could only hope it was
mutually beneficial. After all, Pop had never exactly been a good husband to my
Mom. I worried a little about his ability to be...decent. Or perhaps it was
just that I didn't like to bandy the word 'love' around so lightly. My idea of
love looked a whole lot different than what had become our tri-weekly pizza
parties, those evenings spent in mostly silence.
    But this wasn't the kind of thing you could say to
girlfriends. Especially not family-oriented, marriage-crazy Christian ones,
like Z.
    “I want him to be happy,” I said curtly, hoping this would
seal the matter. And Zora did seem temporarily satisfied. She leaned over and
kissed me on the cheek. I grinned at her impulsiveness, but in another second
registered the camera waving in our face. Aha.
    “I'm sorry you're getting a little twat of a stepsister in
the deal, though,” Z murmured, as the camera-lady sauntered away. “That girl
has the most sour face I've ever seen, except for maybe that Twilight chick.
Like, what's her deal? And does she go outside? I haven't seen anyone that pale
in Texas, ever. ”
    I didn't have the energy to rebut most of this, and luckily,
I didn't need to. For there was Betsy, appearing at the top of the lobby
staircase like Scarlet friggin O'Hara. Everyone in the vicinity clapped. Zora's
little sister was first in a short line of trembling sixteen and seventeen year
old girls, their faces spanning the spectrum of from giddy to nonplussed. But
Betsy, in her short and comparably boring white dress, was definitely not
feeling her big day.
    “I am going to murder that girl,” Z said in the
direction of the staircase, though she clapped and smiled as she whispered the
threat. “She's going to regret that face in her pictures.