“I see you met Sarah.” A hand lands on my shoulder. Sean Walsh shakes his head, watching the older woman squawk at another ginger-haired relative. I’m not sure who. After a while, the various shades of oranges and reds blend together. “She’s a bit blunt in her dotage.”
“She reminds me of a friend,” I tell him, picturing Mason fifty years from now at weddings, pinching cheeks and pondering young men’s penis sizes.
He hands me a bottle of water with a disappointed sigh. “No Guinness until the reception, Christine says.”
“I’ve heard that’s a good thing.” I uncap the bottle and drink. “Kennedy says you sing in a bad accent.”
Kennedy’s dad throws back his head and laughs. He’s a man of liveliness, I’ve found. With a booming voice and wild gestures and wrinkles from boisterous laughter creasing the skin around his mouth and eyes. Once Kennedy introduced us, he’d thrown his arms around my shoulders and welcomed me to such a special day for his family, then asked what I thought about his kilt.
I’d grunted back. Not because it’s my usual response. But because I’d had no fucking clue what to say. The last time I met a girl’s dad had been Meegan’s. Her father had barely given me the time of day. And he hadn’t been wearing a tartan and knee high socks.
But Kennedy’s parents, Sean and Christine, let me tag along to the church with them, acquainting me with the rest of their friends and family. They take turns to greet guests and keep me company, since I know no one and they genuinely want to get to know me. And neither mentions Ashton in my presence.
For which, I’m grudgingly grateful. I’d thought about it all night. That Kennedy hadn’t told her folks about her break up, or me. That shit ate me up, long after she’d fallen asleep. Running through my head and making me toss and turn until at some point, I passed out. When I woke up this morning, with her cuddling me, hands warm as she lay tucked into my side, I made the decision. To let it go. To forgive her. To trust her.
Easier said than done, though, when every fucking person at this wedding aside from her parents has taken it upon themselves to bring up her ex.
I snap the hair tie around my wrist. I’d taken it from nearly a dozen of them in Kennedy’s toiletry bag on the bathroom sink.
Kennedy’s mom tugs at Sean’s arm. “Everything’s ready to start, Brigid’s waiting for you.”
Christine fixes Sean’s crooked tie before sending him on his way. She slips into the front pew beside me. “Kennedy had a little dress mishap in the bridal suite.”
“She okay?” I ask, rising.
She motions for me to sit. “She’s fine, a strap broke. Nothing a safety pin can’t fix. Normally, though, that’d be enough to send her in a tailspin—I love my daughters dearly, Spencer, but I know their faults—But you know, she said the funniest thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Shit!”
I grin from ear to ear. Christine scoffs with soft laughter, “What do they teach you kids at that school?”
“Biology… history… important parts of the English vernacular,” I chuckle. “The usual subjects.”
“Biology, huh?” And with a devious twinkle in her hazel eyes, Kennedy’s mom leans over and asks, “Spencer, you wouldn’t happen to know anything about Kennedy and latex on Valentine’s Day, would you?”
I cough, but I’m thankfully saved from answering by the church organist hitting the first notes of the wedding processional. Christine squeezes my shoulder, eyes already tearing up as we turn to watch the flower girl, the oldest of Kennedy’s nieces, walk down the aisle, guided by her mother, Aileen. Then comes the ring bearer, a boy from Charlotte’s family, and Kennedy’s other sister, Deirdre.
Shortly after, it’s Kennedy herself.
Time slows. She glides in a floor-length dress a shade somewhere between green and blue, holding a bunch of similarly colored flowers in her hands. An auburn tendril escapes from where the rest of her hair’s swept up at the nape of her neck. She smooths it behind her ear, head bent with a small smile, her mouth a deep, rich red against all that blue and green. I’m drawn to that shy upturn of her lips. At the way they slightly move, and then I grin widely because she’s counting out her steps and it’s fucking adorable how precise she’s being and how she’s so—
So goddamn breathtakingly fucking beautiful.
Taking a spot next to Deirdre at the altar, those red lips breathe out a sigh. Relieved she made it without tripping, that everyone’s eyes are off her for the moment, watching Charlotte’s bridesmaids take their turn. Her sister leans and whispers something in her ear. Kennedy smiles, scanning the crowd…
…until her eyes find mine. I can’t see any hazel from this far away. But I see their radiance. The happiness there. And I wish for anything I had her skill with a camera. To forever preserve that look on her face.
I’m glad I hadn’t followed through on one of those thoughts I had last night. The one that told me to leave the moment I woke up. Because if I had left, if I missed that look, the sheer fucking joy, on Kennedy’s face right this minute—
I’d be a fucking vacant-brained meatball.
Her eyes flit to the back of the church as the bridal march begins. I stand as Brigid and Sean walk down the aisle, Charlotte and her father behind them. I spare a glance for both brides. But for the rest of the entire ceremony, my eyes never stray from Kennedy.
* * *
“Armstrong! I remember where I’ve heard that name before,” Sean claps my shoulder. He takes one mighty swig from a glass of thick, dark beer. It’s not his first. No, that had been the minute we’d
