“Okay, enough gossiping. We have a wedding dress to fit,” she says as the seamstress walks in from the dining room. “But before we get started, Paula, would you mind taking our picture?” she asks, holding out her phone.
“Of course. Hallie, you look spectacular. You’re going to make my job easy,” Paula says, as she holds up Julie’s phone. We all lean in towards Hallie and smile, our arms around each other.
“I love you guys,” Hallie whispers, her voice brimming with emotion.
“Love you back, Hal,” I say, leaning my head against hers, thinking that no matter what happens, I’ll be able to get through anything as long as I have my friends by my side.
Chapter Two
Jeremy
“Juliette, you home?” Asher calls as we walk through the front door.
“We’re back here.” Julie’s voice comes from the direction of the sunroom where the girls have been holing up lately to plan Hallie and Ben’s wedding.
“Groom in the house!” Asher calls. “I hope that wedding dress is packed away, Hal. It’s bad luck for Ben to see you in it before the wedding.”
“Says the guy who didn’t even have a real wedding.” I smirk at Asher, knowing exactly the reaction I’m about to get. Hoping for it.
“Shut the fuck up, asshole. See this?” He holds up his left hand, which sports a platinum band on his ring finger. “This means I’m fucking married. My wife didn’t need to wear a big white dress for us to be legally bound forever and always.”
“Goddammit,” Jordan says, while Ben immediately starts laughing.
I spin around with a grin, holding my hand out. “Pay up, buddy.”
Grumbling, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a twenty-dollar bill, slapping it in my hand.
I was lucky enough to come out of college with two best friends, which is more best friends than I ever had at any other time of my life, and Jordan is the second one. He’s a pediatric surgeon and a dedicated shit-stirrer, so any time I get to beat him at something is a satisfying occasion.
Asher looks at us through narrowed eyes. “What is happening right now?”
I snicker, giving myself a metaphorical pat on the back. Asher is the most cheerful guy on the planet, basically the human equivalent of a puppy dog. There is only one thing that can get him good and riled up, and it’s the mere suggestion that Julie is anything less than perfect or that their casual backyard wedding last month wasn’t the most amazing wedding in the history of weddings. And I needed him to be riled up because I know what happens when he is, and I hate to lose.
“I bet Jordan twenty dollars I could get you to say ‘my wife’ at least ten times today before we lit the grill for dinner. I just won.”
“By like ten minutes,” mutters Jordan.
“Ten minutes or ten hours, fair is fair,” says Ben, pushing past us and walking directly back to the sunroom to, I’m sure, find Hallie and attach his lips to hers.
Asher just shrugs, cheerful expression back in place, and the three of us follow Ben into the sunroom. “I mean, she is my wife. I like calling her that.”
Julie looks up from where she’s bent over a pile of what looks like folded up tablecloths, eyes full of humor. “I’m assuming you won the bet?”
“Bet your ass I did.” I slap a hand on Asher’s shoulder. “Your man just can’t stop calling you his wife. It’s like he forgot you have an actual name.”
“Nah, he didn’t.” She comes over and slides an arm around Asher’s waist. “He just likes the reminder that we’re married now and married means forever. It’s a whole thing.”
Asher wraps his arm around Julie’s shoulders, bending to kiss her. “Juliette, you know what the word forever does to me.”
“Oh, I know.” She grins up at him.
My stomach gives a little twist at the word forever—at the reminder that there is now another wildly happy and stupidly in love couple in our little group of friends. Uncomfortable with thoughts I usually only allow myself to have when I’m alone, I look away from Asher and Julie and force my eyes to skip over Ben and Hallie, sitting on one of the couches with their heads close together.
Unfortunately, when I do, my eyes land directly onher.
It’s always Emma’s hair I see first. And every time I do, the eight-year-old memory of the red strands tumbling over her pillowcase like flames flashes through my brain, followed immediately by the memory of her face flushing in anger, her cheeks almost matching the color of her hair, as she told me to leave.
And as it always does, shame floods me.
