Page 7 of Caden

The reminder made him wonder. He flipped over to the screen with the messages from Olivia.

Caden: Any chance after the wedding you’d like to do something with me, way less formal? I’ve got a BBQ Sunday and I’d love to take you.

He hit send then shoved the phone onto the table and picked up the TV remote and pulled up a movie he’d seen at least ten times from one of the streaming platforms. Now, finally he could eat, he thought as he picked up his plate and sat back.

He finished his meal and set the plate aside to carry back to the kitchen when he got up and settled in to enjoy the movie while he relaxed after work.

It hadn’t been very long, maybe twenty minutes, when his phone chirped again. Checking the notifications, he found another message from Olivia.

Olivia: A BBQ sounds like fun. Tell me what to wear on Saturday. Can’t wait to see you again.

That reminded him.

Caden: How long have you supposedly been seeing me? How familiar do we need to be in front of your family. And do I need a tux? A suit, what’s the dress code?

He hit send again, thinking he probably should have asked about that before he agreed to. A suit he could do, but a tux, he’d have to find one for rent if he needed one.

Olivia: A few weeks, and a suit is fine or even just nice jeans and a dress shirt. It’s a dress nice but not a formal thing.

He let out a sigh of relief. One thing he wouldn’t have to do.

6

Olivia couldn’t seem to keep Caden off her mind, even if the days before the wedding seemed to fly by. Before she knew it, she was at the salon, getting her hair and makeup done with Lainey.

“Your new guy isn’t backing out, is he?” her sister asked for what seemed like the millionth time just that day.

“No. He’s going to pick me up at my place and we’ll be to the gardens in plenty of time.” Olivia didn’t look over at her sister because the stylist was working on her hair.

“Are you sure meeting our family won’t scare him off?” Jennifer asked from the other side of Kaley.

“If it does, then better to know that now than after I’m more invested in him.” Olivia wasn’t worried about it because Caden wasn’t really her boyfriend. She’d just met him. Would she like to date him? Maybe. She had liked what she’d seen when she met him for lunch, but that was an hour.

As she sat there with her sisters getting ready for Lainey’s big day, Olivia started to wonder if maybe inviting Caden hadn’t been her best idea. What would her mother think of him? She’d never made any bones about her opinion of tattoos or bikers. But even as she thought about it, she noticed the smile slowly curving her mouth as she thought of him and what her mother might say.

Olivia had been irritated by her mother the last few months, and as Lainey’s wedding got closer, the more that irritation grew. As her middle daughter’s wedding approached, Mom had been more and more pushy asking when Olivia would settle down. Until it had progressed to the point that Olivia dreaded seeing her mother for fear of what she would say this time.

It wasn’t that Olivia didn’t want to settle down and have a family, eventually, but she had yet to meet anyone that she could picture herself with a year from now, much less in ten or twenty years. And all the pestering in the world wouldn’t push her into something she wasn’t ready for.

That was one thing she had to give her parents credit for. They’d raised not just independent sons, but daughters as well. The downside of it was they didn’t put up with much shit from their parents either. It wasn’t that they were disrespectful about it, and Olivia was close to telling her mother just where she could shove her expectations that Olivia would settle down soon. But her sister’s wedding wasn’t the place to lose her cool.

No, bringing Caden might just be the perfect thing to get Mom to leave her alone for a while. Maybe she should keep him around for a while. Mom would never encourage her to settle down and get married as long as she thought the one Olivia might settle down with was a tattooed biker.

“What’s got you with that secretive smile?” Elizabeth asked, watching her in the line of mirrors they all sat in front of.

“I think she’s thinking about her new boyfriend. Tell us more about him, do we know him?” Lainey said.

“I don’t know what to tell you. He’s not from around here, so probably not.”

“If he’s not from here, where’s he from?” Elizabeth frowned. “Do you not get to see him often?”

“Well, he lives here now. He’s just not from here. He’s not really from anywhere, his dad was in the military, and they moved a lot.”

“He’s a military kid. Mom will like that,” Elizabeth put in.

Olivia didn’t say anything, even though she wasn’t so sure about how Mom would feel, especially after she saw him.

“But what does he look like? Is he cute?” Lainey wanted to know.