Oops, I Accidentally Married the Rival Hockey Captain

LORELEI "Girl, you look so f*****g fine!" Juno's voice bounced off my bedroom walls as she spun me toward the mirror for the fourth time, and I had to admit that she was right. The dress I wore was deep emerald, backless and fitted, hugging every curve I'd spent the last month working out for, and it made my green eyes look brighter than they had any right to. I looked like the kind of girl someone might finally notice. "If I didn't love you, I'd hate you," Juno said, adjusting the strap on my shoulder. "You're disgustingly gorgeous." "Coming from someone who has purple hair and cheekbones that could stab someone." I laughed and she rolled her eyes. "And yet you're the one who looks like a birthday goddess." She stepped back with her arms crossed, admiring her work. "Zachary is going to swallow his tongue." My stomach flipped. "I never said anything about Zachary." "You didn't have to. You changed outfits three times, you rejected two hairstyles, and you spent ten minutes sniffing perfumes like a bloodhound before settling on the one you know he likes." "I like this perfume." "You like it because he complimented it once, at a party that he probably doesn't even remember." Juno's voice softened, though it still had teeth. "Lorelai, it's your twenty-first birthday. You're supposed to be celebrating yourself, not auditioning to be Zachary Montgomery's girlfriend." "I'm not auditioning." "You're wearing his favourite colour." I looked down at the emerald dress and winced. "It's just a dress." "It's a strategy." She flopped onto my bed, her chunky bracelets clinking. "Look, you know I love you, but I've watched you spend a lot of time waiting for a man who brings other women home like he's collecting Pokémon cards, and he is not going to change." I did know that. I had known it for years, and yet— "Tonight might be different," I said quietly. Juno stared at me for a long moment, then sighed with great drama and threw her hands in the air. "Fine, wear the dress and hope for the best, but when he inevitably disappoints you, I'm going to say 'I told you so' loudly enough for the entire campus to hear." I laughed despite myself. "Deal." "Then come on, birthday goddess." She grabbed my hand and dragged me toward the door. "Your brother rented out the whole Theta house, and I refuse to miss the ice sculpture of your face before somebody melts your nose." _________ Rhett had gone full Gatsby on the old off-campus house, with fairy lights wrapped around every tree, a gold banner across the porch that read HAPPY 21ST, LORELEI!, and bass thumping so hard through the walls that I felt it in my teeth. "There she is!" Rhett crushed me in a hug, wearing a glitter party hat that said BIRTHDAY PRINCESS. "You look good, maybe too good. Who are you trying to impress?" "No one." "Liar." He winked and turned to Juno. "Bellamy, please keep my sister from doing anything embarrassing tonight." "No promises," Juno said, already eyeing the drinks table. The next hour disappeared into birthday wishes, tequila shots, and Juno narrating every guest like a nature documentary, but no matter how loudly I laughed, my eyes kept drifting to the door. "Stop doing that," Juno said, pressing a champagne flute into my hand. "You look for him every five seconds, and you're about as subtle as a fire alarm." "Where is he?" I finally asked, giving up. "Rhett said he went upstairs to find a bathroom." Juno frowned. "That was forty minutes ago." My heart did its stupid flip. "I'll just say hello." "Lorelai, wait—" But I was already halfway to the stairs, rehearsing something casual and breezy like Oh, hey, there you are, and telling myself that maybe tonight was the night everything changed. _______ The upstairs hallway was quiet, with the music reduced to a dull throb beneath my feet. I passed the guest bathroom and a study and both were empty, until I reached the last door at the end of the hall, which stood open a few inches. A woman's voice slipped through the gap, breathy and high, and then I heard his. "Zachary—oh, God, right there—" My hand froze on the knob, because I knew that sound. I had been listening to it through the wall of his apartment for months, a different girl every few weeks and the same sound every time. Walk away, Lorelai. I pushed the door open anyway. Zachary was on the bed with his shirt gone and a brunette beneath him, and it was she who saw me first. She didn't gasp or reach for a sheet, and instead she smiled, slow and pleased, as if she'd been waiting for an audience. "Lorelai?" Zachary twisted around. "Lorelai, wait—" "Sorry, I'm so sorry—" I stumbled backward and slammed the door. ____ I ran away from there and shut myself in the bathroom two doors down without thinking to lock it. It wasn't even the first time, since I lived in his apartment and had heard girl after girl through that wall, but hearing it was one thing, and seeing it with my own eyes, on my birthday, was something else entirely. He's single, he's allowed, and he owes you nothing, I told myself, but that didn't explain why it felt like I'd been gutted. There was a knock at the door. "Occupied," I said, my voice cracking on the word but the door opened anyway. The brunette from the bed leaned against the frame in one of Zachary's shirts, buttoned wrong, and shut the door behind her with a soft click. "Aw, are you crying?" she asked, tilting her head. "Over what, exactly? Walking in on us? You should be used to it by now, considering how often I'm over at his place." "Get out." "Oh, I'm not going anywhere. I want to see this." She smirked her gaze running over my shivering frame. "Look at you, standing in a bathroom in that little dress, crying over a guy who is never going to be yours. It's honestly the saddest thing I've seen all week." "You don't know anything about me." "I don't have to." She laughed, light and cruel. "Zachary likes experienced women, sweetheart, women who know what they're doing, not little girls who hover around him like lost puppies waiting for a pat on the head." "Stop talking." "Why? does the truth hurt?" She stepped closer, close enough that I could smell her perfume. "Because I'd cry too if I looked like you and still couldn't compete with someone like me. You've got the dress, the hair, the big sad eyes, and he still walked right past all of it and picked me." My throat burned, and I could feel the tears building no matter how hard I tried to hold them back. "And now here you are, hiding in a bathroom and crying over a guy who doesn't want you, while the man himself is down the hall without a single thought in his head about how you're feeling," she said with a sympathetic little pout that was somehow worse than her laughter. "Honestly, it's embarrassing to watch." "I said stop talking." "You're not good enough for him, and you never will be," she whispered, and then she smiled. "He'll finish with you the same way he finishes with everyone, and then he'll come back to me." My hand moved before my brain did. The slap cracked through the bathroom like a gunshot, and Serena's head snapped to the side. For one second, there was only silence and the sting in my palm. Then the door banged open. ____ "What's going on?" Zachary stood in the doorway with his shirt half-buttoned and his hair wrecked, his eyes darting between us. "Oh my God, what happened?" Serena pressed a hand to her reddening cheek and let her eyes fill with tears so fast that it was almost impressive. "She hit me!" she cried. "This b***h is angry because I was having s*x with you!" Zachary blinked. "What? Why would she be angry about that?" "Exactly, ask her!" He didn't ask her. He turned to me, and his whole face softened when he saw the state I was in, with the smeared makeup and the shaking hands and the tears I could no longer stop. "Lorelai, hey." His voice dropped to the gentle tone he'd used on me since I was fourteen. "Why are you crying?" I couldn't answer, and I watched him search my face until something clicked behind his eyes. "Oh. Are you crying because I forgot to wish you a happy birthday this morning?" He took a step closer and wiped a smear of mascara from under my eye with his thumb. "I'm so sorry, I swear I wasn't ignoring you. I was hoping you'd come tonight so I could wish you properly." Serena scoffed behind him. "Seriously?" "Serena." He didn't look away from me. "Give us a minute, please." She shot me a look sharp enough to cut glass and stormed out, and the door swung shut behind her. I laughed, and it came out wet and broken. "You think this is about the birthday?" "Isn't it?" "I don't care about the birthday, Zachary." The words shook as they left me, and the tears I'd been holding back finally spilled over. "Yes, you forgot to wish me this morning, and it hurt, but that's not why I'm standing in a bathroom crying. I'm crying because I live in your apartment, and I've spent months listening to you with girl after girl through that wall, and tonight I had to see it, and I don't understand why you can't look at me and see more than your best friend's little sister, just once." His hand fell away from my face, and for a moment he only stared at me, his lips parted as if the words had knocked the breath out of him. "Lorelai, I—" He shook his head slowly. "I'm sorry. You're my best friend's sister, and I never thought you liked me like that." "Well, I did." My voice cracked in half, and I didn't bother to wipe my face. "I switched schools for you, Zachary. I moved into your apartment so I could be near you, and I've done everything for you, and I've liked you for years." "Why didn't you ever say anything?" "Because what would you have said?" A broken laugh escaped me. "And besides, every single day you bring home somebody new, and I stand in your kitchen the next morning smiling and asking whether she wants coffee, like it doesn't kill me." "I didn't know," he said quietly. "Lorelai, I swear to you that I didn't know." "I know you didn't, because you never looked." I pressed my trembling fingers against my mouth, trying to hold the sobs in, and failing. "Six years, and you never once looked." "That's not fair," he said, but there was no anger in it, only a helpless, stricken kind of guilt. "I never wanted to hurt you. You know I'd never—" "But you did." I stepped back before he could reach for me again, because if he touched me now I would fall apart completely. "You hurt me every night, and you didn't even know it, and maybe that's the worst part." "Lore, please, let's just talk about this, let's sit down and—" "There's nothing to talk about." I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand and lifted my chin, even though it was the hardest thing I had ever done. "I can't do this anymore, Zachary. I can't keep listening to you through that wall and pretending I'm fine, so I'm not living in your apartment anymore." His face went white. "What? Wait, where are you going to go?" I didn't answer, because I didn't know. I only knew that if I stayed in that bathroom for one more second, I would break in front of him, so I pushed past him and ran. I ran down the hallway and down the stairs, through the crowd and the music and the lights and the ice sculpture of my own smiling face, while my heels wobbled and my vision blurred and the whole party seemed to blur into one long, bright smear. "Lorelai!" His voice cut through the noise behind me, raw and desperate in a way I had never heard it before in six years. "Lorelai, wait! Please!" Every stubborn, hopeful part of me wanted to stop and turn around, the same way I had every single time before. But not tonight. I kept running, and for the first time in years old, I did not look back.