I'll Be Right Beside You

“Hey! Good to see you girlie!” Becka chirped, scaring the shit out of me. I hadn’t expected her to be waiting in my apartment for me, let alone with Rosa and Vero. Opening the door to find them there had sent me a good foot in the air, and to be honest I’d nearly screamed before realizing who it was.

“Hey! How are you?” I asked, pulling her in for a hug before giving my other friends the same treatment. Rosa handed me a beer, which I gladly took; our road trip of away games didn’t go quite as well as we’d planned. We’d only won half of the games, which wasn’t really all that bad, but if we kept this up we’d be struggling to squeak into a playoff spot when last year we’d been a game away from winning the Stanley Cup.

“Good! Better if we’d got another win or two, but good. How’ve things in the ‘Burgh been?” I asked, and Vero let out an excited sound before I was ushered into the living room and had a scrapbook thrust at me.

“Last minute wedding plans! And I need you girls to come shopping wit’ me so we can find your dresses!” she told me, and soon I was immersed in the scrapbook of pictures and notes and ideas, getting a sneak-peak of what my two friend’s ceremony would look like. Everything looked absolutely gorgeous, but the last two pages were blank.

“T’at one is for my wedding dress,” she explained. “And t’at one is for t’e bridesmaids dresses.”

I nodded before returning to the beginning to pour over it again. “Makes sense. Oh my God Vero where did you come up with all these ideas? Even the save-the-dates were ridiculously cute!” I gushed, making my friend beam proudly.

“Lots of it I ‘ad ideas from when I was a girl and stuff I t’ought up, and t’e rest is ideas I found on Pinterest,” she answered. I nodded, running a finger over the piece of fabric that was going to be the tablecloths. Everything was planned perfectly, and it was going to be a beautiful wedding.

“This is so exciting! Oh my God, I can just picture it,” I grinned, unable to contain my excitement. I loved weddings.

“I can’t wait!” Rosa seconded, and Becka sunk into her chair with a sigh.

“You’re so lucky! I’ve been dreaming of weddings since I was like four,”

“I know, you always made me dress up and play along,” I rolled my eyes, making everybody laugh to cover up the knowing looks the three of us shared. Becka would get to organize her wedding sooner than she thought.

“Shut up! You enjoyed it, don’t even lie,” she huffed, and then I had to laugh.

“But as our parents would say, I probably enjoyed wearing the suit jacket more than the wedding dress,” I began to laugh, remembering the fit I’d thrown once when Becka had tried to force me into a costume wedding dress and I really didn’t want to – I’d got into my tomboy phase by the age of five.

“Oh my God I remember that! You were already over the whole dresses thing by then and I was so determined it was your turn to be the bride and you threw a fit!” Becka was soon rolling in laughter as well at the memory while our other two friends shook their heads.

“Sounds like you,” Rosa allowed, and finally they calmed down and we continued talking about Vero’s wedding, trying to find out what she wanted us to wear for bridesmaid dresses. Her sister was coming down in a few weeks to go dress shopping so she wanted to have a few ideas to cut down on the time it would take.

We talked late, and then finally the question I knew would come up did.

“So… did you see Jordan when you were in Raleigh?” Becka quietly asked.

“Yeah, he uh, he came to watch the game,” I nodded, and upon seeing a fairly normal reaction the girls all relaxed.

“That’s good, so did you get to talk to him or just kind of a say hi thing?” Rosa asked.

“We talked for a little bit, yeah. Nothing too serious; he’s really liking coaching Parker’s hockey team,” I told them, and saw a few smiles.

“I can see ‘im loving t’at,” Vero agreed, and I nodded.

“Yeah, I know,”