Hitched(24)

She links arms with both of us and leads us into the one-story building. My shoes squeak on the vinyl tile, but the noise is quickly drowned out by the gasps, and then the clapping.

Sorry, Blake mouths to me over his mom’s head, not looking the least bit sorry.

The bird woman with the cupcakes from yesterday is sliding a sheet cake out of a box on a side table, muttering to herself, and there’s a line of senior citizens waiting to buy paper bingo cards and dabbers.

“I need to go—” I start, but before I can finish with check in for volunteer duty, Ruthie May and her granddaughter Emma June tackle us too.

“Hope! Blake! You came! Here. We saved you a spot at our table.”

“We’re not playing, we’re working,” I say.

Ruthie May clucks her tongue. “You’re not volunteering on your wedding week! The luck is with you. Come. Sit. We already bought you cards.”

“We got it covered, Hope,” Ryan calls. Blake’s oldest brother is a fireman by day, but tonight he’s in a bingo apron with dabbers tucked into one pocket and a sample of the evening’s prizes tucked into another. “You sit and play.” He pulls out a giant purple dildo. “If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll take this puppy home. Since I know what else you’re sleeping with.”

He winks, and Blake tosses a dabber at him. “Very funny, old man.”

Three of the regular elderlies in sun visors, Palm Springs shirts, and matching pastel pants descend on us. “It’s your turn to play,” Greta says.

“I have a lucky feeling about you tonight,” Eunice adds.

“That’s just gas,” Phoebe tells Eunice. “But Olivia did my star chart today, and she said I’d lose to newlyweds, so I’ll let you pretend your gas is a lucky feeling. But if you win that vibrator, you have to promise to give it to me.”

There’s a groan from the cake table, and the pixie woman kicks one of the legs. I still haven’t met her, and I need to fix that, but she doesn’t look like she’s having the best day, and Olivia’s gliding over to help.

“Just had to crack, didn’t you?” the bakery lady says to the cake.

“That’s a hell of a break.” Dean slides next to her and aims his camera down at it. “Bad omen for those newlyweds, you ask me. I’m Dean. You know those two?”

She turns and throws her hands up in Cassie’s direction. “I tried, I really did. I’m so sorry. But it should still taste great, and I’ll refund your money as soon as I get back to my computer. Cracked cakes are on the house!”

Without answering Dean, she slips out of the room.

“You know these two?” Dean turns the question to Cassie, who’s wearing a sling that matches Olivia’s, though hers is filled with hedgehogs, not baby. Olivia must have decided Princess and Duchess deserved a night out.

Both the hedgehogs squeak indignantly at Dean’s question and Cassie shoots him a get lost look.

Princess and Duchess are possibly the most adorable hedgehogs I’ve ever seen, and they won the owner lottery when they got Olivia. They’re hugely popular at bingo night—all the senior citizens love cooing over them almost as much as they love fussing over Clover Dawn, now that she’s here. Poor Olivia seemed to be pregnant forever.

Not that she complained.

She seemed to love every minute of it, but then, Olivia would find something to love about having to live in an igloo outside an extra stinky paper factory.

Greta glares at Dean and shoves me into a chair. “Nosy old badger.”

“Trying to take over my role,” Ruthie May adds with a sniff.

“Grandma.” Emma June smothers her in a hug. “You know that’s never going to happen.”

Blake sucks in a deep breath as he plops into the chair next to me and swings an arm around my shoulders. “Nothing like bingo night in Happy Cat. You smell that? That’s the smell of determination, rivalry, markers, and Ben-Gay.”

I shift a look at him, and I can’t help myself.

I crack up laughing.

He grins.

And this is what acting like a happily married couple must look like.

Odd.

It feels so normal.

And happy.

“Did you see?” Eunice asks. “We got you all a wedding cake. We didn’t know if you’d be here, or if you’d be home doing the horizontal mamba, but we would’ve eaten the cake with or without you. Who doesn’t love cake?”

“I love cake,” Blake says. Dean angles closer to us, and my fake hubby adds, “Almost as much as I love Hope and all her animals.”

“People! Places! Numbers are about to start!” Cassie calls.

There’s a mad rush for seats. An old guy tackles Ryan to get to the last dabber, and someone calls someone else a shithead who’s going down.

“See this?” Blake leans closer, giving me a whiff of his clean scent and another opportunity to ogle his sexy hand as he sets it over my bingo cards. “This is our future, baby. I can’t wait.”

“Take your time, young whippersnapper,” Phoebe tells him. “Have a few dozen babies first.”

“We already have baby goats,” I tell her.

“Hmm. Good start, but there’s nothing like projectile baby poo at three AM to solidify a marriage.”