Page 92 of Own the Eights Gets Married
A large clock on the wall above the nurses’ station flashed the time. They had less than an hour before the Shakespeare Shuffle. Granted, he and Georgie had made sure the event would run like clockwork with or without them. But they needed to be there. CityBeat would be covering the event as well as the rest of the local media.
Thanks to the Denver Wedding Frau—a sentiment he never thought he’d feel—and her uncanny ability to take charge of every aspect of their wedding, besides going to his tux fitting, nobody had bothered him with anything wedding related while they were in their engagement purgatory.
But here’s the thing.
Everyone knew today was their wedding day—or, at least, that it was supposed to be their wedding day. There was a damn countdown clock on CityBeat’s homepage.
“Here’s Esther’s room, five-sixty-nine,” Georgie said, pointing to the placard.
Sixty-nine?
Was it a sign?
Sixty-nine was totally their thing—and not even in a dirty way. Okay, it absolutely was in a dirty way, but, when they’d first met and learned they’d be competing together back in the Battle of the Blogs, Bobby and Hector had told them they had a sixty-nine percent audience overlap between their blogs. At the time, it seemed ludicrous any of his now-debunked Marks Perfect Ten Mindset blog followers could find anything useful in Georgie’s Own the Eights posts.
She glanced over her shoulder at him, and he would have sworn he’d detected the hint of a grin pulling at the corners of her lips.
Was he imagining things now?
“Are you ready?” she asked, lowering her voice.
He nodded.
Georgie knocked gently, then opened the door. “It’s me. I mean, it’s us, Georgie and Jordan.”
He bristled. That didn’t bode well!
“Come in, come in,” came Esther’s raspy voice.
They entered the room to find her in bed.
“Thank you both for coming,” she said, then waved them over.
Georgie sat on the edge of the bed and hugged the woman. “How are you feeling?”
Esther adjusted the breathing tubes hooked around her ears. “Better. This unseasonably warm weather is playing havoc with my asthma, but I didn’t call you two here to talk about me.”
“Is Simon all right?” he asked, lowering himself to sit on the other side of the bed across from Georgie.
“Simon’s fine, but he doesn’t want to leave my side. I sent him out to get me some real coffee from the shop down the block. Even that was a struggle to persuade him to leave for fifteen minutes,” she replied.
“I can understand that. I’m sure he’s worried about you. We all are,” he answered, sharing a glance with Georgie, who nodded her agreement.
Esther took Georgie’s hand, then reached for his. “I’m going to be fine. I think Simon knows this, but he needs a nudge to feel okay about leaving me to compete in the Shakespeare Shuffle. As a retired high school English teacher, I’m sure you can understand this is very important to me. He’s worked so hard, and you both have helped him so much.”
Jordan squeezed the woman’s hand gently. “He’s a great kid, Esther.”
“He is. He’s stronger and more confident, and I have the two of you to thank for that. Since he started working out in your gym and hanging out in the bookshop, his real smile is back. You two have changed his life,” she said.
“I don’t know if you could say that. Simon was always a good kid,” he replied.
Esther released a shaky breath. “But he was headed down a dark path. He’d retreated into himself. I could tell him a million times that he was smart and funny, but I’m his grandmother. He needed to hear it from someone else, someone he admired. That’s where the two of you came in. You challenge him. You helped him see the person we all knew was inside of him.” The woman glanced between them. “You’ve also taught him about love.”
“Love?” Georgie repeated, surprise coating the word.
Esther nodded. “I’m not sure how much Simon’s told you, but his parents aren’t allowed to have contact with him.”
“He’s never mentioned them to me,” he replied.
