Tangling the Knot

Chapter Fourteen

- Oaklyn -

"It looks like someone attracted a pack of vicious and wild cougars," I teased Boston. There was a quartet of Real Housewives worthy women all older than the age of our age combined. They sat three tables down, eyeing Boston like a piece of meat, wishing to deplete him clean to the bone.

Boston modeled with our beverages and took a seat, backfronting the party of sugar mamas.

"Tell me something I don't know," he starts by handing me my dangerously large iced black tea lemonade and a paper straw. "I could feel their eyes burning the back of my skull. But I can't get too weirded out by it. It's a family curse."

I jammed my straw against the wooden table and asked, "A curse? You can't be serious, right?"

"Deadass serious. My dad's side of the family has a. . . habit of dating and marrying older women or men," he replied, sipping on his freshly brewed French vanilla latte. "Even all my exes were older than me by a year or two."

After our short convo in the park, Boston stranded me alone for a good twenty-something minutes. What I learned while scouring the entire park for him is that when Boston is in a mood—he's in a mood. I'm talking about silent treatment, refusing to stand still, and ignoring everything and anyone around him. It's a fight just trying to get him to communicate. Alexa must have gone through hell and back when he was like this.

I don't know how she does it.

I can't expel his words from my memory: You're the only one who truly listened.

What does that mean? I thought Boston of all the people in the world would have a better support system than what he gives off, but you could never be too pundit and judge a book just by its cover. Even someone as handsome and lavish as him could experience the hardships of a newly engaged couple, and apparently, blackmail by his father-in-law. I've hadn't heard tea this riveting since the wedding I planned earlier last year.

A bride admitting to having an affair with the groom's father right before the wedding vowels was hard to top.

I feel bad for the guy; he's stuck doing the dirty work for his fiancee's dad all while juggling, trying to make himself happy in an engagement that somehow is this same man's idea. Conceivably it's just my undersupply of knowledge but everything makes sense, yet, all at the same time it doesn't. I told Boston to give me a walkthrough of the seasons, but I grope the implication that I'm still down one or two key seasons.

There's a notion in me to slowly bring up the topics again, but I don't want to trigger him in a way if that makes sense. He's slowly opening up to me. I'm not only a wedding planner to him but a therapist. My job is to be both—it's a packaged deal. I don't want to botch his trust and have this wedding tarnished.

Whatever he is going through I'm willing to help him through it.

I study the table of hot grandmas. One particular woman in the group keeps looking at me, scoping me up and down with a mean mug. It makes me uncomfortable. If she only knew that Boston and I were just on business-related terms. I find it hilarious how much of a competition this was to her.

"Sounds more like a fetish to me," I continue.

Boston wipes his mouth and gasps.

"It's not. If I could I'd try to avoid it. My friend back in New Jersey even finds it weird that every person I dated was older than me."

"So, I'm assuming your dad is younger than your mom, is that correct?" If this 'curse' thing is true, Boston must have inherited it and is bound to pass it on to his offspring.