Same Time Next Year

by Tessa Bailey

Ladies and gentlemen, our local, beloved hockey team: the Bridgeport Bandits. They might be amateur players, but they’re professional partiers.

Is Bryce—and the whole team—suggesting I marry Sumner? My stomach lurches, panic firing through my bloodstream. Marriage? Commitment? Family? I’d rather walk into the lion enclosure at the zoo draped in bacon.

Did they actually think I was going to say yes? To marrying someone tonight? Or ever? I am vehemently opposed to the institution of marriage—and I have been since I was twelve years old. When I sat at the kitchen table and listened to my truck-driver father confess to my mother that he had a whole other family in another state. And he was choosing them. Over us.

Britta uses a key to open an office door, flips on a light, and stands aside to let me pass. “Let’s fucking go, Sumner” comes a guttural shout from the dining room. “Lock her down, bro. Do it for the team. Do it for America.” Out of sight, I flip them my middle finger and follow Britta into the office, ducking just in time to keep my forehead from smacking off the doorjamb. “Sorry about that,” I mutter.

He’s wearing a sweat-soaked T-shirt underneath, but my God, it rides up all the way to his collarbone, and my ears begin to ring, my ovaries performing a complicated tango. My husband is ripped to shreds. And thick with it. Uhh. Daddy? questions my brain.