Chapter 5
“Wedding!” Scott blurted the same time as Tanya. But he added. “Are you really that crazy?”
Jenna was relieved Alan was already out-of-hearing range at that moment. When she confirmed that her boss was out-of-sight, she knew it was time to face the music. At first, she didn’t know who to address first, the somewhat stranger or her daughter.
After just a moment of consideration, she chose to face the one she thought would suffer most from this ordeal. “Taney, do you remember how Mommy had been drawing wedding dresses and sceneries for work?” When Tanya nodded, she continued. “Well, Uncle Alan was referring to that project.”
“Oh,” Tanya answered dejectedly and made a frown. But when she saw her mother smiling at Scott in a smitten way, she was still hopeful. “Oh well. Maybe my wish will still come true one day.” After that, she and Timothy went to their lane to put down the ball they had each chosen.
Jenna looked up and saw the relief on Scott’s face when he heard what she said to Tanya about the wedding shoot being a work project. However, she felt she still owed him an explanation. “It’s bad enough telling my boss we were dating, I wouldn’t go that far to tell him we were getting married.”
“Well, you had gone far enough to pick up a total stranger to be your boyfriend on Valentine’s Day.” Scott was simply stating the truth, but he wanted to rub it in as well. “I thought he was going to ask me where the Honeymoon was!”
Timothy returned to drag the adults to start the game when he heard his dad’s last couple of words. “Daddy, can I go with you to the Honeymoon?”
Jenna chuckled and stooped to his son’s height and tapped his nose. “You can go with your dad to his Honeymoon when you find an ugly girlfriend for him!”
For some reason, out of the seventeen spoken words, Scott only heard two. “Hey, who are you to call my girlfriend ugly? That’s very rude after I just rescued you from your exceptional looking boyfriend!”
Jenna attempted to look apologetic, but she knew she wasn’t in anyway sorry for what she said. However, she was curious to find out more about his girlfriend. To do that, she figured she had to clear things up with Scott first. “By the way, thank you for that. Glad your girlfriend didn’t come with you or my escape plan would have failed!”
Scott gave her a stern look and decided to let the matter go. “Come on! The kids are waiting for us to start the game.”
As Jenna followed him, her curiosity led her to bring up Timothy’s Valentine’s wish. “I guess your son’s wish came true already!”
“Of course! His wishes always come true. He is a good boy!” To make his point across, he turned to look at her and flashed a big smile. “He only wishes for what he is told.”
Jenna furrowed her brows and wondered if she had heard right. After all, it was very noisy in the bowling alley. “You told him to wish for that?”
“For what?” Scott had no idea she was referring to his son’s Valentine’s wish. He also didn’t know what Timothy wished for. Jenna looked at his clueless eyes and was even more curious as to what his girlfriend looked like. But she didn’t want to come across as a busybody or one who was nosey.
“Never mind,” she told him. She turned around and began to select the bowling ball of her choice.
Scott did a double take when he saw Jenna selected a 15-pound ball and hugged it against her abdomen. He picked up a 14-pound ball and said to Jenna. “Okay, let’s get the ball rolling!”
Jenna’s name happened to come up first but before she went up to take her stance, she warned all of three of her team members. “No laughing! I mean it! No laughing at all!”
“Yes, Mom. I know!” Tanya was used to this. It was another one of her mother’s rules. “Just go and throw the ball up!”
Scott and Timothy looked at each other and then turned their focus on Jenna who was getting ready to throw her first ball. Scott was wondering if Tanya meant to say throw the ball ‘out’. But when Jenna took her stance, Scott had a feeling something funny was going to happen. She held the ball with her two arms at hip level. It was obvious the ball was too heavy for her to handle the ball with one hand. Scott reasoned that was why she was holding it with two arms like someone was about to give a free throw in basketball.
Jenna lowered her head for about 5 seconds as if she was saying a prayer. Immediately after that, she took three steps forward, stopped and stood with her feet paralleled to each other. She threw the ball upwards and it went flying in the air and landed almost half way down the lane.
Scott finally understood what Tanya meant by throwing the ball ‘up’ and why Jenna warned them not to laugh. As soon as she threw the ball, Tanya covered her mouth to contain her laughter. His son didn’t heed Jenna’s earlier warning and so he burst out in bouts of laughter, not giggles. Scott tried to cover up his son’s mouth with his hands, but he wasn’t able to shield the laughter coming from the spectators who were standing nearby.
When Jenna did a quick turn of her head to see who was laughing, Scott tried to keep his own straight face. He soon noticed the laughter being replaced by sound of anticipation as the ball rolled towards the middle pin. And then the sound of clashing pins was heard with cheers and applauds from the scoring panel. When the nearby people cheered and clapped, Jenna jumped for joy and did a quirk curtsy. Then her daughter and Timothy gave her a high five and she returned to the sitting area.
Scott gave her two thumbs up and pointed to the scoring panel above her. She looked and saw the word ‘STRIKE’ flashing across the screen. He gave her a high-five when she sat down next to him. He smiled at her and said proudly. “Wow, I got myself a Striking Valentine!”
Jenna liked the sound of that and smiled proudly at him. From that moment they were the portrait of the perfect family in the bowling center.
When it was Tanya’s turn, Scott noticed she threw the bowling ball the way it was meant to be thrown, with one arm, two fingers and a thumb. He asked Jenna. “Why is it that your daughter knows how to hold a bowling ball and execute a throw but you don’t?”
“She’s been taking bowling lessons since last year. If by the time she turns seven and she still cannot beat my score, I might consider teaching her my own method instead!” Jenna said with a cheesy smile. Her method obviously worked because she continued to get strikes and spares. Scott told her he finally met a woman who could give him a challenge on the lanes.
And so their hour and a half of bowling turned out to be full of laughter and fun. When it was the children’s turn to bowl, Jenna and Scott sat next to each other and exchanged words. She took the opportunity to sincerely thank him for bailing her out from a dinner with Alan which she was not looking forward to. He also thanked her for allowing him and his son to join in on the game and for sparing his son the disappointment. She wanted to pay her share for the game but he refused saying it was the least he could do. He also admitted to her how he felt like a failure and loser of a father before she showed up.
After that they made small talk about the game and about their children. Though he was curious about Tanya’s Valentine’s wish, he didn’t want to pry into her personal life. After all, they had just met.
Scott thought of asking Jenna the status of Tanya’s father, but decided it would be lame since there was a mutual understanding that she was available to be courted. He reminded himself how steamy things were when they first encountered each other, and it was in a bad way too. So he thought it smart to just stay clear of this subject matter. When he couldn’t understand what intrigued his interest in her personal affairs, he blamed it on the Valentine’s card. He also put part of the blame on Jenna for using him as a scapegoat for an unwanted date, but he would never admit he was quite attracted to her in the physical sense. And when his mind started to imagine beyond the coverings on her perfectly shaped body parts while watching her execute her throws, he made excuses that there was nothing wrong with admiring God’s creation.
As for Jenna, whenever they were sitting together, thoughts about Timothy’s strange Valentine’s wish would linger in the back of her mind, but she tried to submerge them as soon as they surfaced. She knew she had absolutely no business prying into his relationships. In her mind, he was an unavailable man and she hoped this little ordeal tonight wouldn’t cause any problems for him and his so-called ‘ugly’ girlfriend. Then she thought herself silly because why would this matter when there was nothing in it. When she found herself indulged in her curiosity about him, she blamed it on the Valentine’s card too. She admitted to herself that she found him attractive from the start, even when she first saw him at the parking lot. Now that she knew he was involved in a relationship with someone, she felt comfortable to be herself around him and even allowed herself to drink in his handsome features.
The game was coming to an end. Tanya and Timothy tied in third place. Scott was 1 point behind the leader and he was about to throw his final ball to win the game. He had never missed putting down all ten pins. He would have won if Jenna had not intentionally bumped him when he was about to execute his throw. Thus he lost balance of his footing and slipped.
The bowling ball landed in the next lane’s gutter. Thus their game ended in loads of laughter as Scott tried to get back at Jenna with playful manhandling gestures. The children joined in on the game. Tanya was on her mom’s side while Timothy was blocking Tanya to side his dad. It took Scott no time to tackle Jenna and put her under his deadlock grip. All four of them were in closely knitted positions for about 10 seconds. And if there was a photographer there during those seconds, he would have captured the perfect Kodak moment for the perfect family picture. When Scott and Jenna turned their heads, their lips were an inch apart from each other.