Page 52 of Rebel Bride
“With a crash course in Yankee. Figured out how to dress and talk and act like someone who wasn’t from the backwoods of nowhere. I toned myself down. Not immediately, of course. Those first couple of years, I lived on the streets in Jacksonville—that was as far as I could get before I ran out of money. I did odd jobs, gardening, dishwashing, all under the table stuff. Once I turned eighteen, I was able to get better jobs with longer hours, and once I had a place to live and some money set aside, I started on the road to me.”
A lightbulb went off. “Shelby Mae is your real name.”
“My legal name. I wanted to change it, but you’ve got to do it in the county where the records are and there was no way I was goin’ back there.”
There was more to that, but I wouldn’t push. Yet. Summer—or Shelby Mae—was running away from more than a mismatched fiancé.
“Were you always a hockey fan?”
“That came later. At night I’d work in this sports bar where the owner was obsessed with hockey. No one in that bar wanted to watch it but he insisted, and I became completely invested. Soon I was giving anyone who would listen my opinion on the games, the tactics, the players, the trades. My boss called me ‘Shelby Slap Shot.’
“Then his son made a pass at me, and wouldn’t take no for an answer, so that was the end of that. I figured I needed to make my way in a bigger sports town anyway. I had this idea I could work concessions at Wrigley Field or sell beers at the Rebels Arena, and that would be a way to connect to that world. Silly dreams, right?”
“We all have to start somewhere.” Every word out of her mouth had me on the edge of my seat. I had a million questions, but I figured it was best to let her say her piece in her own time.
“During the day in Jacksonville, I’d hide away in the conference rooms at the public library and listen to tapes to try to fix my accent.”
Ack-zennt. I was picking up on it more.
“Just trying to smooth out my vowels, go more neutral. Not because I was ashamed, but I thought it might make me sound more cultured. Make it easier for me to get a job in Chicago. I thought everyone in the Midwest hates all us Southerners, that I’d be labeled a hick before I’d even gotten a greeting off. I’d saved enough to move to Chicago. I worked as a barista for a while, in a cupcake shop, even a stationery store. In every place, I learned something. Fancy coffee, fancy pastries, fancy paper. The people who could afford those things, who came in every day, I’d watch them, how they acted, how they behaved. And I filed it all away as part of Project Summer.”
Project Summer. What she must have overcome to get here.
“And how did you get onto the Rebels front office?”
“I started temping with an agency. I had to fake some credentials. My GED, a college diploma. I still had Shelby Mae Landry as my legal name but every new job I’d start, I introduced myself as Summer. That’s who I wanted to be, and no one questioned it, because I think we’re all reinventing ourselves in every new situation. I listened to how people spoke, mirrored them during conversations, and soon enough I felt like I was fitting in. Then I saw an ad for the Rebels, a junior administration position for one of the executives in Hockey Operations. I just knew that job was going to be mine!”
Her eyes sparkled, showing me the Summer she had been hiding for as long as I knew her. Or maybe this was the version I’d refused to see because I was too butthurt to pay attention. Something panged in my chest, sorrow for time wasted and opportunities lost.
“When I interviewed, they asked me all the usual questions and one of the execs ended with the classic: ‘give me an example of a problem you’ve overcome and how you handled it.’ I made sure to keep it short and impactful, but I also slipped in some hockey knowledge, like how Dex O’Malley’s plus-minus was looking particularly stellar this season, and good thing that’s not a problem we need to overcome.”
“Sneaky.”
“It was! But I had them grinning away. They were going to remember me when they looked back through the candidates because no one else in an admin position would have sprinkled her answers with hockey stats. I thought it was so clever. And I got the job! Two years later, Ryder’s assistant went on maternity leave, then said she wanted to stay home, and I asked if I could move into that position. A lateral move, but I felt that was where the action was.”
“By that time, you were dating Carter.”
Her blonde brows dipped together. “Yeah, I was. But it was casual. On again, off again. I told Ryder up front in case it was a conflict, and he said he didn’t see a problem.”
Now conflicts abounded. “Carter said you had no family living.”
“That’s what I told him.” Two spots of color appeared high on her cheekbones. She was embarrassed to have lied, but especially to have lied to the man she had planned to spend her life with. “I know that makes me some sort of snob, but I haven’t spoken to my mother or anyone back in Thunder Creek for ten years. I never felt safe there. She—” She broke off, her eyes welled.
“Sunshine, it’s okay.” I couldn’t help myself. I scooped her up into my lap and wrapped her in my arms. She sank into me willingly. “I’m guessing you had a pretty toxic home life.” Why else would she be running away at fifteen?
“You could say that.”
“No reason why you wouldn’t want to separate from all that. Leave it behind.”
She rested her head against my forehead, composing herself. “It seems like another lifetime. In a way it was. Shelby Mae, wild-spirited, but caged. Then I come here, reinvent myself and become Summer. Toned down my wild, only to put myself in another kind of cage. Thinking I had made it when I was merely running in place.”
“So you reinvent yourself again. Take what you’ve learned and figure out what comes next.”
She peered at me through the veil of her fair lashes. “Not exactly what you expected when you asked me where I came from, was it?”
“No, but nothing about you has been expected. I like that you told me the truth. That you felt comfortable enough for that.”
“You make it easy. It’s so strange because … well, you’re not going to believe this.”
