“Well… no. Not exactly,” she hedges. “But there is a lot of green with pink accents, and that’s kind of the same thing, isn’t it?” She gestures to the kitchen, which seems to contain the totality of the pink accents in her home, as everything else I’ve seen isfirmlygreen. The walls, the curtains, the furniture. Green everywhere, broken up only by the kitchen and an egregiously overweight orange housecat.
Uh.
“Are we having a wedding or not?” Stryker grumbles, emerging from the hallway with two large, dark dogs. He guides them to kennels along a living room wall, then joins the rest of us in our huddle. He’s changed into a suit, I notice with more than a little surprise.
Archie whistles. “Iknewyou liked me!” He points at Stryker’s impeccably fitted midnight-black suit.
Stryker shrugs, tugging at his tie, a twilight-blue length of fabric that nearly perfectly matches the shade of his eyes. “Where are we doing this?”
“Timber!” Heidi yells, arms outstretched toward Millie, who truly does look like she’s about to go down.
Stryker swears, scooping his wife up into his arms and shoving her face into his neck.
“Millie faints when she believes Stryker to be looking particularly, in her words, ‘hot’,” Archie explains to me while Heidi fans Millie—and Stryker—with a book she pulled off of the coffee table.
Stryker frowns at her, snatching the copy ofHeart Events With The Forbidden Farmer Next Doorand tossing it back toward the coffee table, which it hits at a velocity that has it sliding across the worn wood and onto the floor.
“Hey! That’s our book club book!” Heidi protests, chasing after the downed tome.
“Then keep it out of my face,” he grumbles. “Millie doesn’t need fanning. She needs a central nervous system that can handle her husband being attractive.”
“Well, I don’t have a spare central nervous system lying around,” Heidi snips. “My boss doesn’t pay me well enough to keep extras.”
Stryker snorts as Millie emerges from his throat.
“I’m okay now,” she insists, turning to me. “Sorry, Sarelia. How rude of me to faint onyourwedding day.” She groans. “I swear I’m not an attention-hungry witch.”
My brows furrow. “Do people faint for attention?” I was under the impression it was an involuntary medical response to stress and overwhelm.
“Idon’t faint for attention,” Millie assures me. “Especially not on other people’s wedding days.”
“Nobody thinks you’re fainting for attention,” Archie assures her. “Least of all Sarelia. She’s a sweet angel who would never think ill of anyone I care for.”
I blink, blink, blink.
That’s… not quite accurate, judging by the months of jealousy I experienced when Heidi first started joining Archie’s livestreams, then again when Millie did as well. A nasty feeling, jealousy, and even nastier thoughts that come along with it—nasty thoughts that, I’m ashamed to admit, did not go away until I found out that Heidi and Millie are both happily married women.
“I’m just saying,” Millie just says, “I know today isn’t about me, and I’m not trying to make it about me.”
On the couch, Basil sighs.
“It’s not like you have somewhere to be,” Heidi tells him. “Chill out.”
“A wedding is a fairly important place to be,” Rosie quips, eyes glinting as she glances at her son. “I’m rather impatient to get to it also.”
A sentiment I would likely share with her if I were not so busy taking in the bits of Archie’s life that have never been shared online before—also known as: the bits of Archie’s life that have never been observed by me.
When you’re fangirl obsessed with someone in the way that I’m fangirl obsessed with Archie, you tend to learn how to savor the moments where you learn something new about the object of your obsession. You draw them out, watching videos of the same small actions over and over again. You put them to music in slow motion, then you watchthosevideos over and over again. You do this until you have their habits ingrained in your mind—until you can practically predict what they’re going to do orsay before they even know themselves. Every appearance, every interaction, every flick of their eyes becomes a piece of them to build your life around.
They become your whole world, and youloveit.
Some fans don’t get to experience the joy of it all, though. They don’t pick favorites. They shuffle through fandoms as their whims allow, never stopping long enough to truly appreciate any of them.
I’m… not like that.
From the moment I first experienced a taste of Archie through my screen, that was it. Just him for me, forever.
And now, I’m getting to experiencenewmoments that the rest of the world doesn’t get. I’m getting to watch as he interacts with people I’ve only sort of heard about in vague terms, but whom he clearly loves and cares for.Iam getting a backstage pass to the ultimate appearance of Archie’s life: his wedding.
