The Bears won with a one goal difference against the Eagles, but you'd think this town became the recipient of the Stanley Cup. As the local team made a victory lap on the ice, their faithful audience tore their throat in ovations in case the players weren't sure they'd played well.
By the time we finally made it out of the building, I was sure my hearing capacity had been drastically reduced.
It was precisely for that reason I didn't catch what Shane said. I rubbed my ear closest to him and eloquently asked, "Huh?"
Thankfully, he got the hint and shouted back, "A few of us are going to the bar for a drink, wanna join?"
Despite the fact I'd almost choked him, the invitation did appear genuine. Puzzling, considering that if I were in his shoes I wouldn't want to have anything to do with me. The others also looked on with encouraging expressions on their faces, though no more than Luke who tugged at his dad's hand.
"If Cora goes, can I come too?"
I was seriously starting to love the big mouth on that kid.
The Sheriff shook his head. "No, son. Bars are for when you're a grown-up."
"And for when you don't have to put your son in bed," Lena Lee added, putting a hand on her husband's shoulder as if to say tag, you're it.
It made everybody laugh and I joined in too, seeing how the Sheriff's face wrinkled as though he could cry.
"But-" he started, but Lena Lee had to say nothing at all for him to change his mind by himself. With a sigh, he grabbed Luke's hand and said, "C'mon, champ. The queen has spoken."
Said queen gave him a sweet little kiss that had the other three guys hooting and howling. Under the light of a lamp post, I could see the Sheriff's face turn as red as a tomato. Luke's pout lessened as his mom also gave him a kiss atop his head, although it didn't quite disappear. He was clearly upset at having to abide by his bed time, but he did like it when his mom coddled him.
I put a hand over my heart. Ugh, demasiado cuchi.
After waving them away, Lena Lee hooked her arm with mine. "So this means you'll join us, right?"
Now that the spotlight was back on me, I flapped my mouth open and closed.
She waved a hand at the three other guys, saying, "Go on ahead, get us a table."
"You got it," Shane said, clapping the other two so they'd tag along. The firefighter glanced at us over his shoulder once, but moved along with his buddies.
"They make you uncomfortable, huh?" Lena Lee shocked me by asking. "You don't need to look so surprised, it's pretty obvious that men make you uncomfortable."
I breathed out a, "How..."
"I mean," she said with a shrug. "Aside from the fact that you almost seriously injured Shane because you thought he was being inappropriate-"
The cringe that took over me could have shrunk me into a raisin.
Lena Lee continued, "I've noticed that you close off even more when there's anyone from the male sex around you. Heck, even Pace seems to make you uncomfortable. And I don't know anyone nicer."
I could cry. I certainly wanted to. But that would confirm everything she was saying and-
Ah, fuck it. What else was there to hide? I knew it the moment I realized what I'd almost done to Shane. Something like that spoke volumes about me. And everyone in this town knew everybody's business. Lena Lee wasn't saying some ground-breaking insight only someone with high observation skills could deduce. I'd made it all plain and clear—and somehow none of these people had ran away from me.
"I'm sorry."
"You don't have to apologize." She tugged me along just enough to get me walking again. "You also don't have to tell us why, if you don't want to. But I do want you to know that whether you like it or not, you're one of us now. For as long as you want to be. Which also means that if any of them hurt you—and I doubt it, because they're all teddy bears—I will personally castrate them myself."
That was so unexpected it tore a laugh out of me.
"You'd really do that?"
"Absolutely," she said with one hundred percent conviction. "Us girls have to stick together, especially in this dumb town that has so few of us."
Warmth spread all over my chest. Maybe one day she'd come to regret giving me her friendship, but for now I'd cling to it.
"What's up with that?" I asked, glancing at her. "I've never seen a place with so many dudes."
She grunted. "We joke that it's something in the water, but for some reason we keep giving birth to boys. Even me! When I got pregnant I prayed it'd be a girl. I was even planning a huge gender reveal party, you know, the kind that usually ends up in the news. But then it turned out to be a boy and I just cancelled it."
Chuckling, I asked, "What, you weren't happy anymore?"
"Oh, I was." Everything about her expression showed annoyance, though. "It's just I'd got a bit ahead of myself and bought everything in pink already. For the first year of his life, Luke was surrounded by pink and frilly things."
My whole body vibrated with a silent laugh.
Lena Lee sighed. "I kept everything, in case I manage to get pregnant with a girl next time, but with my luck I'll end up with quintuplet boys—there we go, Louie's bar. The one and only in town."
I figured, considering that the place was teeming with half of the grown up portion of town. Although that might be a misnomer for all the tipsy adults who, in their full Bears regalia, appeared to have returned to their childhood after the team's victory. A bit ironic, considering that the players were probably celebrating all the way to bed.
Turned out Lena Lee was a very popular person. I'd thought that the Sheriff called her the queen because she must be the ruler of the Perry household, but seeing how many people stopped her for a chat, or to shake her hand, or hug her, made me think she was actually the queen of the whole damn place.
By the time she finally deposited us in the table the guys had procured, all the friendly strangers who weren't strangers to her had bought us two rounds of beer already.
"Are you some sort of celebrity?" I asked her once she sat beside me, flanking Shane and Brian.
Lena Lee gave out the exact kind of laughter celebrities had when they were trying to be modest.
Shane leaned forward with a grin. "Lena Lee here is the town belle. The whole St. Andrews school was in love with her when we were teens."
My eyebrows shot up.
That was when Pace joined us, expertly balancing beer bottles for everybody. I noted that all of them were still sealed closed and I couldn't help but look at him in a better light.
"Oh, thanks," Lena Lee said not just to the cold beer, but also to the bottle opener he offered. She popped her bottle open and was about to hand the opener to me, except that I was busy positioning the lid of my bottle against the edge of the table. I gave it a good hit that popped the lid open without spilling a single drop of beer.
After wiping the rim of the bottle and taking a good chug, I returned the conversation back on track. "So you guys were all in love with Lena Lee, too?"
Four pairs of very wide eyes stared at me.
"What?"
"That was so cool," Shane said.
"I've actually never managed to do that," Brian admitted, giving my way of opening beer bottles a try and failing.
Meanwhile, Pace retrieved the opened from Lena Lee and opened his like a civilized person.
I grinned. "Let's just say, only ladies of a certain quality have this skill."
"The best quality." Lena Lee nodded. "The kind of quality that don't need no man's help, right?"
"Wow," I said, taking another swig. "I've never heard anything more awkward."
She laughed but smacked my arm with a lot more strength than I'd have given her credit for.
"To answer your question," Pace said from my left, finally taking a seat on a stool. "No, not all of us were in love with Lena Lee."
"Yeah, it was just a handful of you guys who weren't," she said with a laugh.
"But no one was more in love with her than Hunter," Shane said, shaking his head. "He could be real annoying about it sometimes."
"I just ignored him. It was better for my health," Brian said, leaning his chin on the heel of his hand. "Actually, I still do."
I grinned at the foreman. "I bet you were his best man."
That made him laugh. "Almost, I was one of the groomsmen. Pace here was Hunter's best man and mine."
"And he's gonna be mine, when my girlfriend finally agrees to marry me and move from Pembroke to Silver Grove," Shane said, softly clinking his bottle with Pace.
Meanwhile, the best man winced. "I don't know why I have to be everybody's best man."
"Because you're the only sane one in this bunch," Lena Lee said, to the vehement agreement of the other two guys.
"Long live Elder Pace," Shane said and they offered a toast to it.
"Are you also going to be Dean's best man?" Lena Lee asked.
The name rang a bell and it took me a moment to pinpoint it as Margaret's son, the one the whole town was proud of. Guessed he was getting married, too.
Pace's expression was deadpanned for a few seconds, until he caved into the pressure of his friends' stares. "Yeah, yeah. I already said yes."
I shook my head as the table burst into laughter.
"Okay, but," I interrupted while some of the laughs ebbed away. Jerking my thumb toward Pace, I asked, "What happens when he wants to get married?"
"Oh, shit." Shane's face darkened. "I've never thought about that. I can volunteer, though."
Brian sat up straighter. "No, I volunteer. He already was my best man, it's only fair I return the favor."
"I'm gonna casually throw Hunter's hat into the ring too," Lena Lee said with a smile. "And Dean's. I bet he'd want to play a one on one to decide the victor."
The other two groaned. Through all of that Pace had stayed mum until he said, "Yeah, well. We'll figure that out if I find the right girl to marry."
Buena suerte, I thought as I tossed the rest of my beer back. It wasn't like the perfect woman would swoop into town and scoop him up.
Now, if he were interested in men it'd be a different story. Plenty of options to go around in Silver Grove.
The glint in Lena Lee's eyes was almost predatory as she said, "I have faith that she will come to you."
The wording was odd but next thing she veered her attention away, zeroing in on a nearby table. "Wait, are those-"
She didn't finish the question because as soon as the guys turned to where she was looking, one of the people in the table caught sight of us and headed over.
"Mr. B!" Shane jumped to his feet to shake the man's hand.
"Hey, guys. How's everybody doing?" the newcomer said. He was maybe in his early fifties and had a bit of an accent I couldn't quite pinpoint.
"Doing well, sir," Brian said.
"It's been a while since we last saw you," Lena Lee acknowledged.
"Yeah, things have been a little busy," Mr. B or whoever said, and I felt a pang of awareness in the back of my mind. That was when he spotted me. "Oh, I'm sorry I didn't introduce myself. I'm Gabriel Bernal and you are?"
He extended his hand to shake mine and I hesitated, for the first time not because of the obvious fact of his gender, but because his accent was familiar and it'd be embarrassing if I was wrong.
Taking this long to introduce myself was already awkward, so I decided to just go for it and as I shook his hand I asked, "I'm Cora Diaz and... eres venezolano?"
He gasped. "Tú también?"
I jumped to my feet. His smile was as wide as it could be.
"De dónde eres?" he asked.
"De Maracaibo y tú tienes que ser de Caracas," I said. Everybody's eyes volleyed between us and when I realized it I cleared my throat, "Ah, sorry. Turns out we're from the same home country."
In unison, the locals asked, "Are you Venezuelan too?"
That was when I realized I really had moved into this place without telling anyone shit about me. Heat travelled up my neck.
"Ah, yes," I said, sitting back down.
"Wow," Lena Lee exclaimed. "It's such a small world."
That, or that now there were Venezuelan people in every corner of it.
Mr. B turned slightly to the side, waving at someone else. That was how the crowd parted slightly to reveal Margaret. Her mouth turned into an O shape upon seeing all of us. I put two and two together as my eyes shifted between her and Mr. B.
So this was her just-a-friend non-date, huh? Her shy little smile confirmed it.
Lena Lee smacked her hand on the table. "No way!"
Shane and Brian grabbed onto each other as though requiring mutual support from the shock. Even Pace was frozen in the middle bringing the bottle to his lips.
"Well," Mr. B said with a shrug. "I guess people were bound to find out at some point."
Margaret cringed. "Please, don't tell our kids."
I had never seen people laugh as hard as the four around me did.
Wheezing, Lena Lee assured them that their secret would be safe as long as nobody else in town saw them. Which, considering we were surrounded by like a hundred people, meant they were busted.
The couple lingered for a few more minutes, chatting about this and that until they relocated back to their table. Margaret had looked pretty embarrassed to me. I'd get the full story out of her later. For now, I'd spare her and get scraps of it out of these stooges instead.
"What just happened?" I asked.
"You know about Dean, right?" Shane asked me and I nodded. "Well, he's engaged to Charlie."
That name rung a bell. It was Brian who confirmed, "Charlie is Mr. Bernal's daughter."
"Oh, shit." My reaction made them chuckle. I turned to the girl on my right. "Wait, isn't Charlie the one you mentioned who was in the Bears? But she's a girl?"
"It's a long story," she said.
I raised my hand up. "Enough. Everyone keeps saying that everything is a long story. I'm tired of being confused all the time so give it to me."
A fire lit up in her eyes.
"Uh-oh," Pace murmured next to me. "I don't think you know what you just did."
He was right. It was a long story. By the end of the night not only had I laughed like I never had before, but I knew exactly who was who. And all of these people?
Quality.