Breaking Tackles: A Taking Flight Novel (6 page)

Courtney

I never knew summer could be this boring.

Every other year of my life, I’ve had my brothers around to hang out with. But this year, Rob and Ryan both moved out after graduating college and getting jobs. They, along with Tony and Kent, always make it for Sunday night dinner—a staple for our family during the summer, when people’s schedules are more flexible and they’re able to get home more often—but that’s pretty much the only time I’ve spent with my brothers since Adam’s massive going away party.

Adam was around for most of June, which was amazing. We spent nearly every moment together, other than when he was in the gym or running drills with the high school football team—who were all in awe of the fact that they were working out with an NFL recruit.

But now not even he’s around. We do our best to talk on the phone every night, but that’s not always possible. There are times when he’s so exhausted from two-a-days that it’s all he can do to remember to change into pajamas before crawling into bed.

Both my parents work, so when I’m not at my boring part-time job at the local physical therapy clinic—lots of answering phones and making appointments and filing—I’m pretty much alone at home, watching dumb TV or laying out by the pool.

If I had more girlfriends it’d be different. But the friends I had in high school weren’t really the types of friends that I hung out with outside of school, and the transition between high school and college only reinforced that. Inevitably, I’ve run into lots of people from high school around town and they all seem happy to see me and want to catch up, but that always turns into a conversation about me and Adam and when our wedding might be. When I tell them we’re not sure, or that we’re waiting to start planning until after he officially makes the Saints, the conversation pretty much stops there.

I guess I’m not interesting enough on my own to make conversation with. It sucks.

In my infinite boredom, I even reached out to the two girls I felt closest to in high school, but one of them isn’t even here this summer—she’s studying abroad in France—and the other is apparently really busy with her internship. Or at least, too busy to make plans with me.

I regularly talk to Sophie, Willa, and Kate, who are all at home doing their own things this summer, but though we all talk and text and have Skype dates, it’s not the same. I can’t just call one of them up and have them meet me for coffee or come over to hang out and do nothing.

There’s no way around it. I’m bored and lonely.

Sighing, I turn off the TV, change into a swimsuit, and then head to the kitchen, rummaging around for a snack. I grab a bag of Cheetos and a can of Coke and make my way outside for yet another mindless afternoon of lonesome, boring tanning.

“Did you check the mail today?” my mom asks, one early August evening coming in from work and setting her purse down on the kitchen counter.

“Yep,” I say from my perch in one of the dining room chairs, where I’m eating a bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and braiding my hair.

“Anything for me?” she asks.

“A couple things,” I say.

She crosses over to the wall organizer we’ve put the mail in since I can remember, and picks out hers as well as Dad’s.

“Have you been getting the magazines I subscribed you to?” she asks.

I freeze. She’s talking about the endless number of bridal magazines she signed me up for. It seems that a new one arrives in the mail every other week. They’re currently in a pile in the back of my closet, better known as the place things go to die.

“Uh huh,” I say, before putting a huge spoonful of ice cream in my mouth.

“Oh, okay. I haven’t seen any of them.”

“They’re just up in my room.”

“Why don’t you grab a few?” my mom suggests. “We can look through them together.”

I deeply don’t want to do that. All the covers look exactly the same and the headlines for articles are predictably inane: “Dresses for Your Body Type,” “Workouts and Diets,” “The Hottest Trends in Color Schemes.” Otherwise known as all things that seem ridiculous to me.

“What’s the point?” I ask, and then when I realize how rude that sounded, I say, “Adam and I agreed to start planning a year from now. So looking at stuff now doesn’t really make sense, you know?”

“I know,” she says. “But it’s still fun to look. Let’s just page through and get some ideas. Besides, it actually takes quite a long time to plan a wedding. It never hurts to start sooner than you think you should.”

I know my mom well enough to know that she isn’t going to let this go. I’ve shrugged off all her other attempts to talk about the wedding or future plans beyond going back to Mizzou, so I figure I probably owe her at least one night looking at wedding stuff.

“Okay,” I say, getting up and taking my ice cream bowl to the sink.

My mom smiles triumphantly, which somehow makes me feel guilty.

I’ve never been girly, and even though my mom never pushed or pressured me to be once I was old enough to make my own decisions about my clothes, I know she wishes I was a little more feminine. Nearly all of my baby and toddler pictures feature frilly dresses and massive bows. While growing up she would sometimes offer to play with my hair or teach me how to do my makeup, but I was never interested, mostly because I wanted my brothers and the Kistlers to think of me as one of them, not as a
girl
. If I was considered a
girl
, it would translate into “unlike them” and leave me even more left out than I sometimes was, being both the youngest and of the opposite gender. So, ponytails and lip balm were good enough for me.

But ponytails and lip balm definitely aren’t good enough for a wedding. Which means that I’ll probably need my mom to teach me all the things about being a girl I never let her teach me before.

After going to my room and grabbing the stack of magazines, I head downstairs to the couch to set up shop and my mom joins me a few minutes later.

“Your dad is stuck at work with a client, so I ordered us a pizza.”

“Nice,” I say.

My mom picks up one of the magazines and starts leafing through it, every now and then stopping to look closer at something or dog-earing a page.

“See anything you like?” she asks, looking over at me as I absentmindedly flip through a magazine. I just shrug.

She opens up to one of the dog-eared pages and shows me a lace, body-hugging dress.

“This style would be gorgeous on you,” she says.

“No way,” I say. “I’ve never worn anything that tight in my life.”

“Exactly,” she says. “Don’t you want to show off a little on your wedding day?”

“I haven’t really thought about it.”

“I know it can be hard to envision,” she says. “We should take a Saturday and just go try on dresses at the store downtown so you have a better idea of how these types of dresses fit you.”

I find that idea horrifying, but instead of flat-out refusing I give a noncommittal, “Maybe.”

She tosses the first magazine aside and reaches for another. This one promises to take us inside real weddings, which I’m sure means weddings of celebrities. But I’m surprised that that’s not the case. As my mom flips through, I look over her shoulder and actually see some things that do catch my eye, especially a casual ceremony that took place in front of a giant, gorgeous tree. It’s not over the top or ridiculous. Just a really pretty, natural setting.

As she keeps going, I’m shocked to see how many of these weddings seem to be not formal at all. One bridal party even had a few of the bridesmaids in pants.

I had no idea weddings could be like that.

Once the pizza arrives, we abandon the magazines. While I’m still nowhere near ready to actually begin planning a wedding and—God forbid—trying on dresses, I tuck the stuff I saw and liked in the magazines into the back of my brain.

“So,” my mom says. “I know that you don’t want to start planning yet, and I do understand that, but have you thought about bridal showers?”

It takes everything I have not to audibly sigh. Why can’t it be just a wedding?

“No,” I say, leaving it at that.

“A bridal shower could be really fun. I could host it, or Vicki and I could co-host, unless you’d rather have your bridesmaids do it. Or you could always have more than one—maybe a more traditional shower with family, and a more fun one with your friends. I’ve heard a couple of the younger teachers at school talk about lingerie showers they’ve been to.”

“What?” I ask, horrified.

“A lingerie shower. It’s where everyone buys the bride pretty lingerie to wear while on her honeymoon.”

I nearly drop my pizza.

“Why would anyone be okay with that?” I ask, mortified just by the idea of opening lacy, slinky numbers in front of other people. I don’t want other people knowing what Adam and I do, let along what we wear when we do it.

My mom’s eyes soften a little and she says, “Well, you’ll need some nice things for the honeymoon since the entire point of the honeymoon is for the newlyweds to get away and, you know, start being husband and wife.”

“You mean have sex,” I say bluntly, annoyed by her subtly. I know she’s an elementary school teacher, but I’m not a kid anymore.

“Yes, Courtney,” she says. “Speaking of, have you been going to the gynecologist regularly? Are you on birth control?”

“Mom, what the hell?” I exclaim, loathing the turn this conversation has taken.

“Sexual health is very important,” she says. “I’m not around when you’re at college, and the two of us are hardly ever alone to chat about this kind of thing.”

“Oh my God,” I say. “Well, for your information, I have gone to my annual checkup, and as for birth control, no, because there’s no reason for me to be taking it.”

“I see,” she says quietly. “So you’re waiting until the wedding night?”

I bury my face in my hands. Why is this so hard for me to talk about? She’s my
mom
. This should be easy to talk to her about and she’s willing to talk to me about it. But it’s not easy. At all. It’s awful.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I really don’t want to talk about this.”

“Courtney, it’s okay to talk about this stuff. I promise.”

“Well, I don’t want to talk about it. Any of it. Not my love life, not the wedding, not showers. Nothing.”

“But—”

“No,” I say firmly. “I’m not talking about it until after Adam makes the team and gets through his first season.”

“Courtney, be reasonable.”

“I am being reasonable,” I say, my volume so loud that it echoes in the room. “A long engagement is what Adam and I agreed on. We have other things we need to focus on right now that are way more important than a stupid wedding.”