In a Rush (Friendship, Rhode Island #2)

by Kate Canterbary

He wanted me to start eating a little lighter. My scratch-made popovers and scalloped potatoes were out of this world, but I didn’t need that kind of fat and carbs.

Fuck right off

I liked that I was more Renaissance cherub than anything else.

We shared a mother tongue spoken in lands where everything was fucked up beyond reason and you just had to survive, to get through it, and that was why we fit together so well.

“What was high school Emme into? Did you have a subversive Tumblr? Did you fall down the Star Wars fandom hole? I bet you could write some top-shelf Reylo filth. Or were you a Paramore girlie who couldn’t pull back on the eyeliner to save your life?”

“You can.” “What?” I turned the water glass, letting the condensation slick my palms. “What do you mean?” “Stop looking. Marry me.”

“How many concussions did you get last season?” “Just one.”

“Don’t you need to eat like every forty-five minutes to maintain the whole two hundred and thirty pounds of hurricane-force muscle thing?” The corner of his mouth twitched. “Two twenty-five.” “Well, then, you’re wasting away.”

“I think marrying my best friend—the girl from back home, the one the media called my high school sweetheart in all of the Heisman packages because there are so damn many photos of us together after my games, the one who waited all this time for me to find my way back to her—will do the fucking trick.”

Sometimes I forgot that this was his life. That, to the rest of the world, he was a football phenomenon. To me, he’d always be Ryan, the moody kid who secretly loved math and kept me tangerine rich.

The last time anyone tried to pick me up, I was half dead from anaphylactic shock and Teddy had made it seem like a lot of work.

Get fucked Teddy

“You know I hate to pry into your situation with all of this,” I started. “Shut up. You love to pry,” he said.

“I guess it’s nice to know I’m not at the bottom of your list or something depressing like that.” He met my eyes. “You’re the list, Em. You’re it.”

“I’ve always admired your vindictive side.” “The basis of all good marriages.”

Then again, every day was barely contained barmaid day when you were a 36F.

He stared into my eyes like he was trying to find something in there. Better judgment and common sense, perhaps. “There’s nothing to explain. They’ll get it.”

😭😍

“Make sure your lawyer writes a good prenup,” I said. “Otherwise, I’ll take the plane when this is all over.” “I’d give it to you.”

Nothing should’ve surprised me at this point but… “Leave it to you?” “Yeah. I’ll take care of it for you.” A small smile broke across his face. “Wife.”

He cleared his throat. “Then you told her everything.”

What is "everything" exactly...

I glanced over my shoulder but didn’t meet Jakobi’s eyes. “Not quite.”

Sus...

“First of all, I will not be mean or growl at them,” I growled.

😅

My girl. Liquid heat spread through my chest. It felt good for a minute, but then the truth of it seared straight through my skin and all the way down to my bones. It fucking hurt. Just like it always had.

😭

“Ryan Ralston has a heart,” he said. “I haven’t seen it until now because you left it with her.”

Omg 😭

I pressed my shoulders into the wall. These two were human lie detectors. “We are making this into more than it is.” “Or we saw the way Daddy Football was looking at you and know we could’ve been hula-hooping topless and he wouldn’t have noticed,” Jamie said. “He wanted to put you in his pocket and carry you around all day.”

😂😂😂

“You signed it, ‘Love forever, Your (probably) future wife,’” Jamie said, zooming in on the screen. “You also wrote that it was a binding contract and even if he tossed his yearbook off a pier, you’d always have proof.”

I reached for my phone and swiped to the next photo, the one Ryan had texted to me all those years ago as his proof. It simply read, I’ll hold you to it. Your husband.

“How do you know her again?” Stella asked. I watched Emme help the karate-kicker tuck a disaster of papers in his desk. When she was finished, she gave me a nod. I felt my lips turning up into a smile. The obvious answer was from back home, from high school, from ninth-grade biology, from listening to music in her car during lunch all of senior year so I didn’t have to talk to anyone. But I heard myself say, “She’s my favorite thing in the world.”

AHHHH 😭😍

Emme smiled right back at me and all the nerves died down. It was like we were connected in a way that science and logic hadn’t figured out how to define, but I knew without a doubt was true.

I'm giggling 😍

My ability to be close to her and continue to function had been cut in half. I didn’t know when it’d happened, but there was no denying it had happened. Whatever resistance I’d had in the past was gone now.

All I had to do was turn my head a few degrees and the scent of Emme’s hair filled my lungs. It was subtle but warm. Something like vanilla. I’d been chasing that scent all day.

THE YEARNING

I couldn’t believe she hadn’t pulled away yet. I couldn’t believe I was standing here with her pressed up against no less than twenty percent of my body while I drowned myself in the scent of her hair. This was all I needed. All I’d ever ask. I could survive on this and I could be happy.

I'm going to have to physically restrain myself so that I don't highlight every single moment of yearning 💀

“Am I allowed to touch you?” “Of course,” she said. “Like you’re my wife?”

So, when I found myself staring into the eyes of the only woman I’d ever loved, I knew it wouldn’t feel like work at all.

With a shrug, she added, “It wasn’t worth moping around over that rat-faced man-pig, anyway.”

I studied the matching marigold satin with its delicate bursts of sparkling color, and tried to imagine Ines trudging through Kendall Square with this cape flung over her backpack.

😂

I honestly didn’t know what would happen when we went out in public. Swooning, fainting, underwear thrown at his feet. All possible. Likely, even. Hell, I might get in on it too.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, running a hand over his mouth. “You look⁠—”

😭😭😭😍😍😍

He cleared his throat. “Bowen’s downstairs,” he said, extending a hand but keeping his gaze low. “We should go.” Okay, so not a fan of the yellow. Got it.

Girl BFFR🙄

He released my hair and let his fingers trail down my bare arm to circle my wrist. “Buy all the books you want, wife.”

“She spends most Saturday nights in bed, eating cheese and yelling at movies,” Ines added. “She needs to get out of the house.”

“You look like the first day of spring after the coldest, most brutal winter,” he said. “No one is going to be able to take their eyes off you.”

At first it was a slow, firm press but then a quiet, strangled noise vibrated between us and I understood what he’d meant about coming out of a long, cold winter because I felt like the world was new again and I was too.

“Trenton Hersberler, though my friends call me Trent.” “Your friends call you Pumpkin Dick,” Wilcox said.

McKerry said through halting giggles, “My boy here accidentally jerked off with a bottle of self-tanner.”

💀💀💀

Hersberler groaned as he rubbed his eyes. “You fucking tools told Charles Ahlborg’s daughter that my dick is orange and sparkly.”

More than a hundred years later, the family still owned that team. My father and his sons—my half brothers—ran the organization today.

Oh shit...

“Want to watch a movie or something?” he asked. “I’m told that’s what you do on Saturday nights.”

“I texted Bowen an hour ago to order everything on the dessert menu and have it ready to pick up,” Ryan said. “I never forget my promises to you.”

I wanted her to say something about last night, about sleeping together, about this whole fucking thing. To give me any small sign that she’d felt the earth move when we kissed.

😭😭😭

Gramma CeCe: It’s been 84 years…

Ok Gramma with the Titanic reference 😂

But I was thinking we could spare everyone and just keep this ruse going for the next fifty, sixty years.