“Hey.” I let out a breath at the sound of my friend Enzo and turn, seeing him stride up to me. He has a beer in one hand as he watches the crowd around us. “What a day, huh? I’m sure Graham is glad to have this all behind him.”
“Are you kidding? He’s been looking forward to this day for years,” I defend, looking at my best friend who holds his new wife close. Both were grinning ear to ear at each other on the dance floor. “Where’s your significant other?”
He points to the side, where Nora, his girlfriend and business partner, is talking with the caterer. “She’s grilling them about the consistency of the salmon. It’s the onething she can’t quite get nailed down.” He grins at the thought, and if I had to guess, I would say he’s teased her about that relentlessly.
Enzo and Nora used to be childhood enemies, and they then ended up working together at a restaurant, fighting for the head chef position until they inevitably fell in love. Until Nora was fired and Enzo quit. Then they worked all the time trying to save for their restaurant. They opened it last month, and it’s been an enormous success.
“Who was your friend?” Enzo asks, and I remember myself.
“Oh, this is.” I turn back to Elizabeth, only she’s not there. I look around, my eyes scanning for her everywhere, and turn up empty. “Elizabeth.”
“Pretty name. She was quite the looker,” Enzo comments, taking another sip of his beer. He may be complimenting Elizabeth, but his eyes haven’t left his girlfriend.
“She’s gorgeous,” I comment absentmindedly, still on the hunt, my neck craning to find her. How did she slip away?
“Uh oh.”
“What uh oh?” Garrett has now joined our little group, followed by Archer, another tight member of our friend group and Enzo’s brother-in-law.
“Derek found another woman to fawn over.”
I jerk my attention back to the guys and see some knowing smiles on their faces. “I did not.”
“I don’t blame you, that woman you walked over with was fine as hell,” Garrett comments, not even giving me the decency to look in my direction.
“She is fine as hell, probably the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen. But don’t ever say that again,” I demand, not thinking any of their comments were funny.
“See?” Enzo says to our smiling friends. As if they know everything about me.
“What are you chuckleheads laughing at?” My eyes take another involuntary sweep around the area we’re in. She seriously disappeared. Maybe she is an angel.
“You and your dog with a bone trick,” Garrett says, and Archer smacks his shoulder.
“Be nice. He just likes having a girlfriend, who could blame him?”
“Me,” Garrett comments. “Why would anyone want to be tied down like that to a woman?”
He gets collective stares from the rest of the guys, and he shrugs his shoulders. “What?”
“You just insulted our girlfriends,” Enzo says, deadpan.
“Wife,” Archer supplies proudly, not seeming to be bothered by the conversation when he gets to pipe in with a comment like that.
We get it, you’re blissfully happy with your best friend’s sister.
“Can we circle back to talking about me?” Because really, they came over to just insult me? Ridiculous. “I don’t like having a girlfriend, I want a partner in life.”
“Okay, but any woman here could walk up to you and ask you out and you would say yes,” Garrett says, getting a nod of agreement from the guys.
I gape at them all, placing my hands on my hips, affronted. “That is not true.”
“It is true.”
“What’s true?” Chris, the last member of our group that didn’t just get married, walks up.
“Derek never being single.”
I glare at Garrett, since he seems to be the one with a bone to pick. “Are you calling me a serial dater?”
