A Groom of One’s Own: A Sweet Hockey RomCom
Chapter 13

Eli

I replace Parker in the hallway the next morning, humming, with her face locked on her tablet screen. Per the usual. Before she looks up, I curl my hands around her shoulders. She lets out a squeak, but I am undeterred.

I steer her inside her office, closing the door. Down the hall, I hear a couple of the guys laughing—laughing at me, I’m sure—the sound now muffled. I ignore it.

“I need your help, Boss.”

Parker must miss the desperation clawing at the edges of my voice because she laughs and plops into the pink chair Logan gave her. “Again? Already? The proposal was perfect. And it’s viral, so if you needed social proof for the whole”—her voice drops to a whisper—“visa thing, you got it. Everyone loves that she said yes without looking at the ring.”

It’s true. Both the video on the Appies’s main account and the one on mine blew up overnight. People couldn’t get enough. My mom told me there was a mention on SportsCenter. I’m not sure when she started watching that, but okay.

I get it. I was there, and yet I watched no less than twelve times, replaceing some fan videos so I could see different angles. Reliving the moment.

The surprise of it. The taste of Bailey on my lips, like the desserts I sometimes sneak even after the trainers tell us to make every calorie a good one. Food is fuel, they like to say. But food is also fun. Kissing Bailey somehow felt like the very best of both.

Watching the video also made me want to kick myself for the whole stupid idea because it made Bailey so uncomfortable. I won’t make that mistake again.

Parker sighs, a happy little exhale, heart-eye emojis practically hovering around her in a pink cloud.

I shake my head. “The problem,” I say, “is that I like her. I like Bailey. Like, really like her like her.”

“That’s too many likes in one sentence, Hop.” Parker tilts her head. “And I fail to see the problem.”

I rap my knuckles on her desk. “I’m not supposed to like her. The plan was to get married and then …” I trail off because I have no idea how to finish this sentence. I shrug instead, feeling helpless.

“So, you have feelings for the woman you just proposed to—and this is a problem because?”

“It’s a problem because feelings weren’t involved when we agreed to do this. Now they are. And we’re getting married. It’s like …” I fumble for an explanation, an analogy to straighten out my tangled thoughts. “It’s like a Trojan horse. Bailey let me in the city because I said it was about me getting a visa and her getting money. But inside the horse⁠—”

“But inside the horse you’ve got a whole feelings army you’re about to let loose,” Parker finishes.

“Um, yes?”

Parker taps a pen on her desk, which is covered in an array of multi-colored sticky notes. The tiniest of smiles lifts one corner of her mouth. I bet she’s probably already thinking about whether or not she could trademark feelings army.

“I can see how that’s complicated,” she says. “Things shifted, and now you’re doing things out of order. Do you think Bailey might have feelings too?”

When I do a mental inventory of our interactions, Bailey has seemed, at the least, happy in all of them. Smiling, blushing. Her teasing could maybe even be labeled as flirting. Her shyness or maybe just her personality makes her a more difficult study. Usually, I’m better at picking up on vibes.

Then I think of the kiss—the one she initiated and seemed just as into as I was. I remember how she blinked slowly afterward, like she was waking up from a happy dream, the way she clutched my jersey in her tight fist.

“Maybe? I think she could, but I don’t know. It’s all jumbled up.” I stand, wiping my palms on my jeans. “I’m just going to ask her. Right now. I’m going to drive over to her work, maybe replace out what flowers she likes first, and then⁠—”

“Whoa! Sit down, Hop.” When I hesitate, Parker narrows her eyes. “Now.”

There’s a reason we call her Boss. Despite her cheerful disposition, when Parker means business, she means business. I sit.

“Let’s think this through,” Parker says. “I know you’re a big feelings guy. Which I appreciate, being a big feelings person too. Sometimes big feelings can … overwhelm a person.”

“I don’t⁠—”

I stop myself from saying I don’t overwhelm people because … oh, yeah. My last serious girlfriend—years ago—said something about me being too much. She wasn’t the first. It’s a common refrain I’ve heard from girlfriends and dates. The word overwhelmed might have been used once. Twice. Whatever.

I slump down in my chair with a sigh and wave a hand. “Go on.”

“From the little time I spent around Bailey, she seems to be someone who might get overwhelmed. Who might need to ease into things. Who might be surprised that last week, you talked about this as an arrangement, and this week, you’re making declarations and demanding to know how she feels. Do you see how this might be a little fast?”

In a conversation in which the underlying assumption is that I’ve gone from single to marrying someone in a few weeks, I’m not sure how to gauge speed. “Yes?”

“Have you talked to Bailey about expectations?”

“What does that mean?”

“You know when Logan and I started dating, it was pretend, right?” When I nod, she continues. “So, we sat down right here in my office and talked about expectations. How long would this go on? What were we comfortable or not comfortable with? Would we be kissing? That kind of thing. That was just for dating. You and Bailey have a whole lot more questions to figure out. Like, for example, how long will this marriage last? You kissed during the proposal—is kissing totally on the table at all times now? What are the sleeping arrangements going to be at your house?”

I slide down in the chair, feeling the weight of these questions pressing in on me. “Yeah. I can see how we need to talk about some stuff. But what does this have to do with feelings? If we both have feelings, it doesn’t matter. It won’t end. Kissing and the sleeping arrangements and all that will be a moot point.”

“And what if Bailey doesn’t know how she feels? What if it takes her a minute? Or if—and I can’t see how this would possibly be true because you’re amazing—she doesn’t feel the same way? Would she still want to go through with the marriage knowing you have feelings and there’s all this pressure?”

My head is starting to spin at dizzying speeds. Parker must sense she’s overwhelmed me because her voice gets soft.

“Hey, listen,” she says. “Let’s start with one thing at a time. You and Bailey talk about expectations for the marriage and how this will look. I can help you outline some things to discuss. How does that sound?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“You could tell her how you feel and ask if she feels the same, or”—Parker’s eyes spark with fresh fire as she leans forward—“Or don’t tell her. Yet.”

“You want me to lie?”

I’ve already got enough lying in my life right now. Starting with the one I’m spinning for not one but two governments. Not to mention my Mom. I rub a hand over my sternum, like I can smooth away the sting of that one. I keep telling myself it would hurt more to see Mom ripped away from her life here. But it’s not easy. Especially seeing how excited she was about Bailey.

When I told Mom I was going to propose, I’m pretty sure they heard her scream in Canada. I thought maybe I’d have to do a lot of explaining—why we were moving so fast, why I didn’t mention my plans sooner. But Mom was all-in, no questions asked. Well, a lot of questions, but more the excited, clarifying kind, not the doubtful kind.

Either Mom was way more desperate than I realized to see me married off or she really loves Bailey. Maybe both.

Her excitement only made my stomach drop with an anchor of guilt. And she told Annie before I had a chance to call my sister myself, so now I’m dealing with Angry Annie texts. These come in the form of a barrage of GIFs or long audio messages featuring her singing off-key or reciting what sound like limericks. I’ve been gearing up to call her, but so far, the guilt has stopped me.

That and my fear of the force that is Annie coming down hard against me for keeping this huge secret. We don’t talk often, but we’re lazily close. The kind of siblings who may accidentally slip into a few weeks without talking, but then dive right into any topic with barely a hello.

I should absolutely have talked to her instead of letting Mom do it. I’m surprised I haven’t been feeling the rumbles of Annie’s resentment rolling down from the north like a winter storm.

“I don’t want to lie any more than I have to,” I tell Parker. “Or pretend I don’t have feelings when I do.”

Her fingers begin to dance along the edge of her desk, her whole face bright and open, the same look I’ve seen when she’s gotten an idea for a new way to spin a TikTok trend on the ice.

She leans forward. Any farther, and she’ll do a belly flop on the desk. “Don’t think of it as lying. More like … you’re giving her part of the truth. While easing her into the other truth.”

“Still sounds like lying,” I say.

“Think of it this way—if you spend more time with her and realize this isn’t what you want or what she wants, you haven’t committed to more than the arrangement. You’ve lost nothing. But if you do still want more …” Parker’s smile is slow. “You’ve already jumped the line, so to speak. And you both live happily ever after.”

This makes sense. Or a sort of sense. But only if you squint real hard.

“You’re going to woo your wife.” Parker clasps her hands under her chin, staring dreamily somewhere above my head. Probably daydreaming about Logan, marriage, and having a whole brood of hockey-playing babies.

I tip over a small container of pink paper clips on Parker’s desk and start to arrange them, nudging them into a perfectly straight line. “I don’t think I know how to do that.”

Parker is still for a few more seconds, clearly deep in thought. I’m about to walk out and tell her to forget it and I’ll figure something out when she grabs a fresh pad of sticky notes and gets to her feet.

“Pen,” she says, and I hand her one with a pink puffball on top.

She pulls a whole section of sticky notes with her neat handwriting on them down from one wall, setting the stack in a messy pile on her desk. Probably some new plan to take over the world, one TikTok video at a time. Pulling off one pink sticky note from a new pad, Parker slaps it on the wall and turns to me with a grin, pen poised over the paper square. “Let’s hash this out and come up with a plan.”

And this is why I came to Parker.

Half an hour, twenty-seven pink sticky notes, and three square feet of wall space later, Parker and I have talked our way through a semblance of a plan. We’re leaning into the whole Trojan horse feelings army thing—I totally knew Parker wouldn’t let that go—which essentially means me doing my best to win over Bailey like I would any other woman.

Only she’ll already be married to me.

“Feel better?” Parker asks, turning to me with a smile.

Yes? I mean, sort of. Maybe. I don’t know that I ever fully recovered after the meeting in Mr. Pebbles’s office when I found out about the visa issue. I’ve been off kilter ever since. So, trying to suss out my feelings is more like doing some kind of blind taste test.

Parker chews her lip. “Because we could always⁠—”

The door flies hard enough to bang into the wall, sending a few sticky notes fluttering to the floor. A pen rolls off Parker’s desk and lands by her shoe.

Logan stands there, dark eyes intense as he glares around the room. His gaze stops on my face, and his frown deepens. He slams the door and then looms over me. “Someone said Eli bodily dragged you into your office. With his hands on you.”

He’s speaking to Parker while burning holes through my shirt with laser beam eyes. I sometimes forget about Logan’s intensity because Parker has smoothed out so many of his sharp edges. But other than Nathan, Logan is probably the one guy I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of. Especially not when it comes to Parker.

I hold up both hands. “Reports have been greatly exaggerated.”

“Easy, killer,” Parker says with a laugh, looping her arm through Logan’s and tugging him away from me. He allows it but doesn’t stop glaring, even when she stretches up, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“Then what are you two doing in here?” Logan asks. “And why does Eli have a sticky note on his face?”

Do I?

I reach up, fingertips brushing against paper. I have a vague memory of Parker giving me a quick smack to the forehead. More of a pat, really. I guess it came with a sticky note, which is pink and reads Woo. Guess that’s my new word of the month.

“Oh, I’m just helping solve all Eli’s problems,” Parker says loftily, running her hands through Logan’s hair.

Finally, he stops looking like he wants to murder me. But now he’s looking at Parker like he wants to do things I should definitely not be present for.

I stand. “Thanks, Boss. I owe you one.”

“And I can’t wait to collect,” Parker says with a laugh that turns into a sigh as Logan leans forward and kisses her neck.

I escape into the hallway not a moment too soon, with a tiny bubble of hope rising in my chest. Right alongside the dread for whatever Parker’s going to make me do.

“Aw, my baby boy’s all grown up.”

“Mom!” I gently swat her hand away as she tries to wipe what I’m sure is a smudge of nothing from my cheek. “Stop. I’ve been on dates before.”

She grins. “Yes, but never with a fiancée. I still can’t believe my baby’s engaged.”

“Call me baby one more time. See what happens.”

Mom only laughs. I duck into the tiny half-bath tucked under the stairs, the one where the top of my hair brushes the ceiling. I give myself a last look in the mirror, smoothing a hand down the front of my blue button-down shirt, one Mom said brings out my eyes.

And yes—I asked my mom what to wear on this date with Bailey. She has good taste.

“What is it?” she asks, locking eyes with me in the mirror.

There’s a crease between her brows—partly worry but also partly pain. When I got home from The Summit this afternoon, Mom was still in pajamas, a heating pad and a bottle of pain relievers on the coffee table. I should carry her back to the couch, tuck her in, stay home, and let her pick a cheesy romance movie. That’s become our thing on days she’s feeling low, whether from joint pain or the exhaustion stemming from fibromyalgia.

But I know she wouldn’t let me skip a date. And I really don’t want to. Even if I’m feeling unsteady after my conversation with Parker.

“Eliander,” she says, propping her hands on her hips. “What is it?”

“I’m nervous,” I admit, not realizing just how nervous until I say it out loud. I turn away from my reflection.

Mom cups my cheek in one hand. “She already said yes, sweetheart. I don’t think there’s any reason to be nervous.” She grins. “But it’s adorable that you are.”

“Doesn’t feel adorable,” I mutter, tilting my head so I don’t have to meet her gaze.

But Mom takes my face in both of her hands now, basically corralling me into an intense staring contest. I blink first.

“You are someone who emotes with every fiber of your being. Always have. Most little boys buried their feelings—especially their tears. Not you.” Her smile is gentle. “You were a tempest of emotions and didn’t start to hide them until you were a teenager. Even then, you still cared deeply and left more out on the surface than most.”

It’s true. And as I realized while talking to Parker, my big feelings have been an issue in my relationships. “I don’t want to be … too much.”

Mom gives my cheeks a rough pat. Not quite, but almost a slap like you’d give someone you’re trying to wake from a drunken stupor.

“Be in your feels, son. If you’re nervous, well, that just shows how much you care about Bailey.”

That—and it’s also related to the fact that I’m going on a date with a woman I legitimately like who is also my fiancée and who also doesn’t know I really like her. Also, I’m still getting to know her. I’ve done a whole lot of unintended recon while hanging out with her and the dogs over the past few months, but that’s barely scratching the surface of who Bailey is.

File this under: it’s complicated.

I’m about to walk out the door when Mom calls my name. My actual name. I turn, and she gives me a wide, warm smile. “One more thing—you will never be too much for the right woman. You’ll be exactly enough.”