Girls You Marry

by Tina Gallagher

  I nearly blurted out, “you would?” in an utterly breathless, totally besotted voice, but managed to stop myself at the last second.

  When I didn’t answer, he added, “I know my family would love to see you.”

  “I’m not sure what I’m doing. My mom is probably having a picnic and I should go.” I took in a deep breath and let it out on a sigh. “But I don’t think I’m up to dealing with everyone right now.”

  “Everything all right?”

  “Everything is fine.” I shrugged. “You know how families are. They just got on my nerves last time I was there. Not my mom and dad, but all the aunts and uncles, and of course, the neighbors.” I didn’t add that the reason they all annoyed me was because they kept asking about him.

  “You don’t have to explain it to me,” he said around a chuckle. “My family invited themselves here for the weekend. No ‘is it all right’ or ‘do you have plans’, just ‘we’re coming, like it or not’.” He sat up on the weight bench and wiped his face with a towel. “I don’t really mind though,” he admitted. “And Lexi is really excited. We’re going for fireworks tomorrow.”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Sabrina, I really would like it if you’d stay.”

  His eyes were pleading, his tone sincere.

  “I’ll let you know,” I said, fully intending to be anywhere but here for the holiday.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The McMullen family began to descend Thursday afternoon and by nightfall Dan’s house was bustling with activity. First to arrive was his older sister, Patti, her husband, Joe, and their three children.

  His younger sister, Megan, and her husband, Paul, were next. They didn’t have any children in tow, though Megan was carrying one in front.

  Dan’s mother, Maureen, soon followed with her new “friend”, Frank. Everyone seemed to be shocked by the man’s presence, but attempted to welcome him just the same. The girls and their husbands did anyway. I saw Dan glaring at the man a couple times and I snapped him out of it before anyone else noticed.

  Various aunts, uncles, and cousins arrived in dribs and drabs throughout the evening with the promise of more to follow the next morning. Dan’s father was absent and since there was no talk of him at all, I assumed he wouldn’t be coming.

  Mrs. Evans had been in her glory all day, cooking enough food to feed an army, which I suppose, wasn’t far from the amount of people at the house. The adults helped themselves to her home cooking, while the children ran wild through the house. Dan assured me they’d settle down once the novelty of seeing each other wore off, but I seriously doubt it. Not that they were bothering me. In fact, I was having a great time watching them, and Lexi looked so happy I got choked up.

  “So Sabrina,” Megan’s voice interrupted my thoughts. I looked at her and she patted the empty spot beside her on the sofa. “Come sit and fill me in on what you’ve been up to for the past ten years.”

  Megan and I had bonded the first time we met many years ago, but after I broke it off with Dan, it was just too painful to keep the friendship. We kept in touch for a few months afterward, but I found it too difficult and stopped returning her calls and letters. She must have understood—either that or she got really pissed off—because eventually she stopped contacting me altogether.

  I complied with her request and settled in next to her. “Not much,” I answered. “Working mostly.”

  “Are you married? Any kids?”

  “No and no.”

  Megan looked poignantly at her mother, who had settled into the chair directly across from us.

  “You know,” Maureen said, “Dan didn’t even tell us you were here. We had to hear the news from Lexi.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t think my presence is newsworthy,” I said, hoping to sound cheeky, not bitchy.

  “Of course he does, honey.” Maureen leaned forward and patted my hand. “Which is why he didn’t tell us.”

  I had no idea what she meant by that, but decided to let the whole subject drop. My gaze dropped to Megan’s distended abdomen. “I guess I don’t have to ask what you’ve been up to. When are you due?”

  “September fifth.” Megan sighed and patted her round belly. “But hopefully I’ll go early. If I get any bigger, I swear I’m gonna bust.”

  Megan looked like she was going to bust, but I thought it would be rude to say so. While Dan is big, broad, and blond like his father, Megan and Patti are dark haired and petite like their mother. At five foot seven inches, I tower over the three of them. I assume Megan’s belly looks so large because the rest of her is so small. And she is small. I don’t think she’s gained an ounce anywhere other than her stomach.

  “So are you seeing anyone special?” Dan’s mother asked.

  “No. No one special.” No one at all, but she doesn’t have to know that.

  Again, Megan and Maureen shared a look, which left no doubt in my mind as to where they wanted this conversation to go. Before I could excuse myself, Megan added, “Neither is Dan.”

  Okay, it’s definitely time to go.

  I scooted forward on the couch, but before I could stand, Megan placed her hand on my arm. “I’m sorry, Sabrina. I won’t do that again.” I must have looked doubtful, because she added. “I promise.”

  “You have my word, too,” Maureen said. “We’re just so happy to see you. We’ve all missed you.”

  “I tried to keep in touch,” Megan said. “But you didn’t seem interested.” Her sullen expression filled me with guilt.

  “I’m sorry about that, Meg. I know I promised we’d remain friends despite well…everything, but it was just too hard for me. You reminded me of him and I couldn’t handle that.” I paused for a moment while she digested my words. “Then a few years went by and I thought about looking you up, but I was too embarrassed.”

  “Oh, I wish you had,” Megan said, around her tears. “From now on, we’ll be sure to keep in touch. And if you don’t return my calls, I’ll just show up on your doorstep.”

  “Jeez Meg, every time I see you, you’re crying.” Dan’s deep timbre rolled over my senses, forcing goosebumps to rise on my skin.

  “I know.” A fresh gush of tears burst out of Megan’s eyes. “I can’t help it.” She wiped at her cheeks. “It must be the hormones.”

  Dan rested his hip on the arm of Maureen’s chair. “So how is my niece or nephew doing? Still cooking?”

  “Yes, and kicking like crazy.”

  “Yeah?” Dan’s eyes lit up. “Right now?” Megan nodded. He was off his perch and on his knees next to her in a flash. “Where?” he asked, his hands poised over her belly.

  “Right up here.” Megan took his big hands and placed them on her womb.

  Dan stared at his hands expectantly for just a moment before a wide smile split his face. “Holy hell,” he said, his tone full of awe.

  I couldn’t take my eyes of him. Dan turned and met my gaze. I felt poleaxed. The longing in his eyes nearly tore me apart. I had to fight back my own tears.

  “Dan…” The tone of Megan’s voice told me it wasn’t the first time she’d said his name.

  “Yeah,” he said, absently.

  “I can see you’re really enjoying yourself here, but I really have to pee.”

  “Oh.” Dan pushed himself up and held his hand out to help Megan out of her seat.

  “Thanks,” she said, then waddled out of the room.

  Dan took the seat his sister had vacated, right next to me. I glanced at him just in time to catch the tail end of his grimace of pain.

  “Are you okay?”

  He nodded and rubbed his leg. “I shouldn’t have knelt down like that.”

  “Probably not,” I said, dryly.

  He chuckled. “Then why didn’t you stop me? You’re supposed to be taking care of me, aren’t you?”

  “I’m off duty,” I joked, holding up my bottle of Coors Light to emphasize the point.

  Truth be told, I’d been so wrapped up in Dan’s reaction to the baby
kicking to think of anything else. He obviously got swept up in the moment and wasn’t thinking either. That fact made me realize how genuine his feelings were.

  “How is Dan doing?” Maureen asked, breaking into my thoughts.

  “He’s uh,” I cleared my throat and sat up straight. “He’s making remarkable progress.”

  “Do you think he’ll be ready for spring training?”

  “Definitely,” I answered confidently.

  Maureen shifted her eyes between Dan and me several times before she spoke again.

  “Well, that’s good.” She stood up. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to find Frank. Your uncle is probably talking the poor man’s ear off.” She directed the last comment to Dan, smiled at me, and walked away.

  Once she left, I noticed that Dan and I were alone. Sure, there are people milling around, but the person closest to us is standing a good fifteen feet away. As I made the observation, Lexi and her cousins ran through the room and out the kitchen door.

  “They should sleep well tonight,” I said.

  Dan nodded in agreement. “Lexi loves her cousins. They don’t stop the entire time they’re together.” His eyes crinkled in amusement. “Of course, I remember doing the same thing when I was kid.” He took a long pull on his beer. “Now, I get tired just watching them.”

  “It’s tough getting old,” I teased.

  “As long as I also get wise, I don’t mind.”

  I didn’t want to discuss the things he’s claimed to have gotten wiser about, so I said, “You really have a wonderful family.”

  “So do you,” he said, as he nodded his agreement.

  Our families are very similar, which is probably why we’d always fit in so well at various family functions. In high school, I dated a boy who nearly ran out of my house in tears when my Uncle Mark teased him about his spiked hair.

  My family is loud and boisterous, and likes to put people through their paces. Dan’s is much the same and he hadn’t batted an eye when Uncle Mark started on him, nor when the rest of the family joined in.

  “I wish my dad could be here.” Dan’s voice was so low, I barely heard him.

  “Did you invite him?”

  “If you remember, I didn’t invite anyone,” he pointed out. “But no, it’s too new to have him here with Mom. Maybe someday, though.”

  “I’m really sorry. I know how close you and your dad are.”

  “It’s just hard. I mean, on one hand, I want to kill the son of a bitch for what he did to my mom, but on the other…” he gestured vaguely. “My mom told me that everything he did, he did to her, not me or my sisters, but it’s still difficult to swallow.”

  “How do Megan and Patti feel?”

  “They don’t know the whole story.”

  “Why not?”

  “Mom didn’t think she should tell them. She figured it would ruin their relationship with Dad.”

  “Then why did she tell you?”

  “Because she wanted Dad’s ‘theory of relationships’ to stop with me.” He cleared his throat. “Once she found out about Dad, she put two and two together and figured out why we broke up. When she confronted me, I couldn’t deny it. Then she spilled her guts.”

  “So, she knows everything.”

  He nodded, looking embarrassed. At that moment, my armor cracked and I saw Dan’s pain. For the first time since I’d arrived, I saw him as a man trying to atone for the sins of his youth. No longer was he the evil creature I’d created in my mind in an attempt to soothe my battered soul. I saw him as a man who made mistakes and is now looking for forgiveness.

  The million-dollar question is…can I forgive him?

  Chapter Twenty-two

  One week later, I was still contemplating the answer to the million-dollar question.

  Maureen and I had a few words before she left and while she didn’t come right out and say it, she gently urged me to give Dan another chance. And I have to admit, the more time I spend with him, the more I’m leaning in that direction.

  “Twenty minutes on the bike,” I told him in-between my musings.

  “Twenty?”

  “I want you to add a few minutes each day. We need to increase the motion of that leg.”

  “You’re a slave driver,” he teased and started pedaling.

  Dan just finished with the bike when Lexi came bouncing into the gym. “Daddy, Tori asked if I could come over,” she pleaded. “Can I?”

  “I suppose so.” Dan looked at the clock. “I can take you in an hour or so.”

  “Jeff said he’d take me.”

  “I’m sure he did,” Dan said, under his breath. “Okay princess, I’ll see you later.” He leaned down and kissed her cheek.

  “Eeuww,” Lexi shrieked. “You’re all sweaty.” She gave him a quick peck. “But I love you anyway.”

  “I love you too. Behave.”

  “I will. Bye, Sabrina,” she said as she bestowed a kiss on my cheek.

  “Have fun,” I said.

  Lexi ran out of the gym and up the stairs with more energy than anyone should be allowed to have.

  “The girls still don’t know about Jeff and Nancy?”

  Dan informed me that Jeff and Tori’s mother, Nancy, had started dating about a month ago.

  “No.” Dan sat on the rowing machine. “How long?”

  “Fifteen,” I answered and set my timer.

  “They want to figure out if things are going anywhere before they tell Tori.”

  Tori’s father had passed away three years earlier, so I could understand Nancy’s caution.

  “I don’t know about Nancy, but Jeff looks like he’s walking on air.”

  “Yeah, love will do that to you,” Dan said, through gritted teeth.

  “Are you okay?” I watched his motion, looking for signs that he was straining himself. “Don’t overdo it.”

  “My leg is fine.”

  The tone of his voice stopped me from asking any more questions.

  ****

  Later that afternoon, Lexi called to see if she could sleep over Tori’s. Dan agreed and asked to speak to Jeff or Nancy.

  “You sleeping over too?” I heard him ask Jeff. Obviously, I didn’t hear Jeff’s reply, but it made Dan laugh. “Does she need clothes?” He paused, listening to whatever Jeff was saying. “Okay bud. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I couldn’t hide my shock. “He’s sleeping over?”

  “No, but he’s staying for the movie fest and popcorn, so he won’t be home ‘til later.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you think it would be wrong for him to stay over?”

  “No, I uh, I don’t know. I mean, parents do it all the time with the kids at home, so no, I guess I don’t.” Then, to save myself from sounding like a prude, I added, “They’d just be taking a big chance with the girls there. Considering they want the relationship kept secret.”

  “Hmmm.” I took that as agreement with what I had said and expected him to elaborate, so when he said, “Would you have dinner with me tonight?” I nearly gasped in surprise.

  “I…” Dan frowned. He was expecting me to make up some lame-ass excuse and turn him down. Not that the thought hadn’t crossed my mind, but like I reasoned last time I agreed to accompany him to dinner: I’d rather be alone with him in public than at the house. I shocked both Dan and myself by saying, “I’d love to.”

  “Great,” Dan replied in a casual tone, though the look on his face gave away his emotions. He was as excited and nervous as I was. “Italian?”

  “Sounds good.”

  We agreed to go to the hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant we never made it to a few weeks earlier, thanks to Kent and the rest of Dan’s friends. But I decided not to think about that.

  “Great,” Dan repeated. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen around six.”

  I checked the clock and decided that two hours was plenty of time to talk myself in and out of going a few hundred times. “Six it is.”

  That settled,
Dan made his way to the stairs. His foot on the first step, he spoke again. “Oh, and Sabrina?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We’re gonna get it right this time.”

  He left me wondering if he was talking about dinner or something more.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  As predicted, my inner battle raged the entire time I showered and dressed. In the end, I decided to go because (a) I really want to and (b) something told me that Dan wouldn’t let me back down, even if I tried.

  So, at six o’clock on the dot, I closed my bedroom door and made my way to the kitchen. Once again, I had agonized over what to wear, and decided on my all-purpose black dress. For more formal occasions, I dress it up with jewelry or a sequin jacket, but tonight strappy sandals and freshly shaved legs are my only consolations to the fact that this might be a date. I don’t want to think about why I slipped on a matching black lace bra and panty set.

  Dan was waiting in the kitchen when I arrived. His back was to me as he gazed out the window over the sink, so I had a moment to admire his backside. His well-tailored black pants cupped his behind before falling loosely over well-muscled thighs, giving only a hint to their shape. A white silk shirt stretched across his broad shoulders and my fingers itched to explore.

  He turned suddenly and I felt a blush creep up my neck and across my face. I was embarrassed at being caught in the act, though I didn’t miss the fact that his frontal view was as magnificent as the back had been.

  “Wow.” Admiration shone in Dan’s eyes as he walked toward me, using the sleek black cane his mother had given him. He stopped in front of me and let his gaze drift over my body, which definitely responded to his leisurely inspection. My blush intensified. “You look beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” I managed to croak. “You look pretty nice yourself. I like the cane.”

  Dan’s smile practically lit up the room. “It is pretty classy.” He pulled his jacket off a stool at the breakfast bar and shrugged into it. “Ready?” I nodded. “Great, I’m starving.”

  “Me too,” I replied, though my stomach was tied in so many knots, I have no idea if I’ll be able to keep anything down.