Page 130 of Her Goal
Later that afternoon, we go to Valentina’s house across town. I learn that her husband, Grant, is expected home from the military around Christmastime, so right now she has the space to host what the Smith-Torres family calls Wedding Eve, abbreviated toWE. Makes sense.
This tradition hardly does.
What ensues is a veritable minefield of marriage challenges. First, we play a game of, “How well do you know each other?”
Leah and I both lose, but it’s a tie loss. Note to self: she’s savage when it comes to competing.
There’s a team scavenger hunt. I get Abuela on Team Groom, so we win. Shh. Don’t tell anyone. She cheated.
Then we’re blindfolded while only wearing shorts and T-shirts. The task is to dress each other. Leah gets the prize that time. When our outfits are revealed, she’s wearing a pair of my exercise shorts with a hockey T-shirt and a button-down dress shirt along with my goalie helmet … as if I were a drunk two-year-old trying to dress myself. Yeah, I’ll have to work on that. Hopefully, this won’t ever be a real-life scenario. However, I get the meaning of the importance of thinking of each other and not just ourselves.
Lastly, we have to cook a meal together consisting of outrageous ingredients, including barbecue sauce, broccoli rabe, condensed milk, popcorn, kumquats, chicken thighs, puff pastry, goat cheese, pine nuts, and sauerkraut. Everyone else gets pizza.
Leah has seemed nervous tonight, whether because of our conversation from earlier, the kiss, the wedding, or something else, she won’t say so I’m glad when we’re finally alone in the kitchen.
While sniffing the kumquat, I say, “I sort of get the point of the other tasks.”
“Trust me, there’s no point.”
“I thought this one is so we don’t poison each other the night before we’re supposed to get married?”
She grips a frying pan in her hand. “Or have any other unfortunate accidents.”
Setting the cast iron pan on the burner, we sort out what we’re going to make that’s edible, and I wonder if all of this is really to see how well we work together as a team while under pressure.
It requires all of our focus.
At last, we present grilled barbecue sauce marinated chicken with a side of sautéed broccoli on a bed of sauerkraut and topped with goat cheese and pine nuts. There are also puff pastry tarts with condensed milk and thinly sliced kumquat coins. We make the popcorn as an afterthought and Leah starts throwing it at her family, who proceed to make a game out of it by seeing who can catch the most in their mouth.
Gotta say, it’s fun until Valentina declares that the bride and groom are on cleanup duty.
The cheese-covered dough smells so delicious as everyone gets their pizza, but this meal is the first we made together and that’s pretty special. Abuela offers a prayer, thanking God for my buns … er, at least that’s what it sounded like, and we dig in.
As loud conversation carries on around us, Leah leans so close, I feel her soft breath on my neck. “There’s something you should know.”
I drop my fork. “Is there poison in my food?”
“What? No!”
“Like definitely not or maybe.”
She rolls her eyes. “I didn’t poison your food.”
“Did you pay off one of your cousins to do it?”
“No. As far as I know, no one in my family has gone that far. However, my third cousin Felipe did get terribly sick on his wedding night. It was blamed on the shellfish appetizers.”
A shiver runs through me.
“Tonight is more like an opportunity for us to air our grievances.”
“I thought we did earlier.”
Leah’s throat bobs on a swallow. “There’s something else … related.”
I rub my hands together like I’m gearing up for another challenge. “It’s Wedding Day Eve, let’s have our first almost-married couple fight.”
“Are you nuts?” she asks.
