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STACKING POOP SAYS I’M SORRY
And then he appeared and my heart tried to escape my chest, pounding to get near him again. He was walking down the path I’d followed, a puck in one hand and a red rose in the other. And he was singing!
I’d never heard Sly sing before, though he’d mentioned that the team sometimes sang karaoke after practices.
His voice was low and clear, and it pulled at something inside me. Maybe it was the words—about moving a step closer, about time bringing one heart to another... Maybe it was the way his dark eyes found mine and held them as he sang these words to me.
I felt the tears escape, and Katie leaned toward me. “It’s okay, Mommy. It’s just Sylvesterrrr.”
I nodded, a nervous laugh escaping me.
The whole wedding crowd was around us now, Zara and Beck, Violet and Sam all grinning widely as Sly got to the end of the song, and every single voice joined his for the final chorus, raising a gorgeous kind of noise up through the trees along the lakeside, and ending in fading strains of violin when they were done.
Sly was standing right in front of me now, and he put the puck he held on the top of what had become a very tall and somewhat precarious tower.
“Clara,” he said, in a voice so low I wasn’t sure the gathered crowd could hear. “I knew just saying I was sorry wasn’t enough. I knew that in order to apologize to you, to tell you how much you really mean to me...” he paused, squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, and took a deep breath as if gathering his strength. “I knew that to tell you that I love you, that I think I’ve always loved you, I needed a gesture.”
I barely heard the last part as the word love carved itself through my chest, finding my heart and landing there, making a permanent mark.
“I...” I shook my head, finding his eyes and never wanting to drop his gaze. “I don’t...I can’t...” The teenaged girl inside me was keeping me from forming any actual words.
I loved Sly Remington with an impossible abundance. I’d known it since I was a girl, and it had only deepened over time. First, he’d been a hero to my teenaged idealist. Then, he’d been an unknown icon, a wistful juxtaposition to the life I’d chosen by mistake, an easy place to look to consider what I might have had instead. And now? He was before me telling me he loved me.
I stood slowly, unsure if my legs could still work in this alternate universe I was in now. “I’m having a hard time making words work,” I told him quietly.
A hopeful smile lifted one side of his mouth. “Maybe you could just nod? I’m kind of dying here...Do you think you might maybe dance with me? At the reception?”
I nodded.
A little ripple of tangible relief moved through the crowd as the same relief washed across Sly’s face.
“Am I pushing my luck if I ask if maybe I could hold you for just a second right now?”
I shook my head.
Sly stepped closer and slipped his arms around me. I couldn’t speak, but my body hadn’t forgotten what to do. I moved into him, relief flooding me as if my entire being had been waiting for exactly this kind of rescue.
The crowd around us broke into hoots and applause, and I popped one eye open around Sly’s shoulder to see them starting to wander away, back to the reception. I was relieved—this was not what they’d come for and they needed to go back to celebrating Zara and Beck.
Sly’s teammates remained though, and after a second, I cleared my throat and we stepped apart.
“Are you going to kiss him, Mommy?” Katie was bouncing on her toes at our side.
I smiled at her, and then tilted my chin up. “I think I should,” I told her, looking into Sly’s handsome face. “That okay with you?”
He nodded.
The kiss was quick, but it cemented something between us, and my heart felt like it was slowly mending, like all the hopeful broken parts were finding their way back together.
“I love you, Clara,” Sly whispered in my ear.
I nodded again, but I knew that wasn’t enough now. “I love you too,” I told him quietly. “I think I always have.”
Katie clapped and bounced some more. “Will I get to be a flower girl again?” she asked. I tried not to let myself picture it, still unsure of this thing between us, of what it meant for our future. But the idea of the three of us forming a real family? It was all I wanted.
The team had stepped closer now, and I broke out of Sly’s embrace, feeling a little silly standing next to the tower of pucks with all these burly men around watching me kiss their teammate. “Hi guys,” I said.
“Clara,” Freddy Elks replied. “Welcome to the Wombats.”
