Page 16 of The Sweet Spot

“Have you and Jeremy set a firm date? Made any plans?”

Instead of pivoting to something else, Jill surprised me with an answer.

“I know neither of you want to hear this, especially his family, but we were thinking of something small and a destination wedding. And before you complain about that, hear me out. I don’t want my mother there. So if Jeremy and I get married in Italy, France, Tokyo, Siberia, or Timbuktu, she won’t come. She’ll whine about not being able to afford it, and when she hints that I should pay for it, I’ll say to her what she said to me for all those years: 'Honey, it’s just not in the budget to bring you along.'”

“You are savage,” Tangi said as she giggled.

Jill nonchalantly shrugged. “I don’t owe her anything. I made peace with my relationship with her. She’s toxic, and I don’t want her toxicity in my life or ruining my wedding day.”

“You’re sure you don’t want to try to fix things?” I asked. “She’s your mom.”

Jill shot me a glare I probably deserved. Jill’s mom was a piece of work. Probably one of the worst mothers ever. I shouldn’t even have suggested it, but the part of me that wanted everyone to be happy and get along wouldn’t shut up.

“She gave birth to me. That’s about it.”

Her statement struck me hard. I should have known betterand not walked into that. My friends and I rarely discussed that me and my brother were adopted. My parents were all I’d ever known. I was barely two years old, and Craig had just turned four. Mom and Dad had been amazing, giving us love and everything we ever needed. I’d told Jill and Tangi I was adopted when I’d met them in middle school, but other than once or twice, we’d never discussed it because it wasn’t important to me. Yes, I was curious about my birth parents, but they’d never sought us out, and we’d never looked for them. The only thing I knew about them was that my mother was from Minnesota, and my father was from Canada. Mom and Dad had been smart, seeing a future opportunity, and made sure that Craig and I maintained our Canadian citizenship just in case. They’d also started college funds for us; they put us in every sport imaginable even though I was a total disaster at all of them; they sent us to fun camps in the summer; we went to plays and operas—Mom and Dad did everything at least once, and if we liked it, we kept on doing it. And that’s how I became a chef. Mom had us take kids’ cooking classes, and I was hooked.

“Fair enough,” Tangi said. “Have you guys thought about when?”

“Next summer, probably early August. We haven’t even picked a place.”

“And babies?” Tangi asked.

Jill arched a brow. “We are still negotiating that. I think he’s got me up to one. But that’s it. If he had his way, it would be a dozen, but then again, he doesn’t have to birth them.”

With the lightened conversation, we finished our wine, and Jill and I shared an Uber back to our places downtown.

“I was an ass about the Ryan thing, wasn’t I?” Jill said.

“A bit.”

“I’m working on that. Thank you for shutting me up before I went down a very horrible path.”

I smiled. “You’re welcome. Isn’t that what friends are for?”

“I get that he’s probably going through things. I should have cared about that, and in retrospect, I do. I hope Ryan gets what he needs.”

The Jill I liked to see had finally gotten it. That’s why I loved her so much. She wasn’t perfect and didn’t try to be. And I couldn’t express enough how happy I was to have my two best friends around.

Chapter Ten

Brandon

Like every new season, the first week of training camp was kicking my ass, but I knew it was kicking everyone’s ass, so I didn’t feel quite as bad. We were all trying to get back into game shape, and no matter how hard we worked in the offseason, getting into the daily grind of a long hockey season was never easy. But at least I went home to amazing meals. I had never eaten so good, and though the food seemed decadent, she told me in great detail what all the ingredients were. I assured Wolseley that she didn’t need to do that every time.

My agent insisted I have Wolseley sign an NDA, which I thought was ridiculous, but whatever. Was she going to share my eating habits with the world? Who cared? But he liked to protect clients, and somehow, this arrangement made him think I needed safety from five-foot-three Wolseley. What if she told the world I hated salmon? Would I have to post an apology to the salmon lobby on Instagram? I’d use a rotary phone to type it out on my flip phone.

Why was I still thinking about rotary phones?Wolseley had infected my brain with nonsense, but I kind of liked her nonsense.

I gave her a key to my place so she could prep whatever and whenever she needed. And like a mom, she sent me to training camp each morning with a good breakfast, lunch—even though the team provided them, but honestly, most of the time they were crap—and tons of snacks that were appropriate for camp. I even shared some with my teammates.

I got home to dinner that was perfectly timed. She knew my schedule and that I needed to eat within ten minutes of getting home. She’d written it all down in the notebook she had with her everywhere she went. One morning while I was eating breakfast, and she was tidying up, she told me all about the eco-friendly paper she used and the reusable pen. Something about the materials being made out of wheat straw, a by-product she said would have been otherwise discarded into our already overflowing landfills. Her words.

Come to think of it, she always put my snacks in reusable bags that she said were coated in beeswax or something. They were self-cleaning, or so she said. She made me promise to bring them home every day for reuse. I obediently returned with them each day.

Right now, I was more interested in keeping my body fed, and she had a huge plate of pasta in her delicious marinara sauce with turkey meatballs that I couldn’t believe were turkey because I hated ground turkey. Before Wolseley, I had yet to eat ground turkey that hadn’t smelled like stinky socks and tasted like what I thought stinky socks would taste like.

She made a broccoli dish that looked simple but tasted out of this world. She mentioned something about a balsamic reduction, but I was too busy eating to notice. I finished off my meal with a salad filled with nuts and fruit and her flaxoil vinaigrette. For a later snack, she had prepared for me, a quinoa bowl with assorted vegetables and sweet potatoes.

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