The schedule said the ceremony ran until one-thirty, drinks on the lawn until three, dinner under the marquee at four.
Nowhere did it say Gaz will breathe prosecco into your face and ask if you’ve ever dated a man with a testimonial.
“A what?” Amelia said.
“A testimonial.” Gaz swayed.
He was very large, very golden, and very much married, just last week, in fact, to one of the bridesmaids, though apparently none of that was relevant.
“It’s a match they put on for you. For your service to the club. Big honor.”
“Congratulations,” Amelia said. “That sounds structurally significant.”
That delighted him.
It was the wrong thing to say.
Everything she said to Gaz turned out to be the wrong thing, because the right thing,please go away, was not something a maid-of-honor-adjacent cousin could say at the wedding of Bree Quinn to Declan “Deck” Donnelly, midfielder, twenty-three, owner of four sports cars and, as of eight days ago, a fiancé.
Now husband.
A husband Bree had apparently acquired the way other women acquired vacation sandals. Brightly, impulsively, and with no thought at all to whether they would still fit by winter.
Amelia loved Bree. She did. Bree had been sunshine in human form since they were children, all blonde hair, big feelings, and the absolute certainty that the universe liked her personally. When Bree called from England and said she’d met the love of her life while on vacation, Amelia had assumed she meant a pastry chef, a rescue dog, or possibly a pair of boots. Not a footballer with a fantastic jawline and an enormous signing bonus.
“You have to come,” Bree had said. “Please. I can’t get married without you.”
“You’ve known him eight days.”
“Almost nine.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“It does if you’re romantic.”
And somehow, that had been that. Amelia had rearranged two client meetings, paid far too much for a last-minute flight, packed three emergency phone chargers, and come to England alone because the invitation had said plus one, and Amelia had stared at that blank space for a full minute before clicking no.
Not because she was sad about it. She was busy. That was different.
Besides, bringing someone to a wedding required having someone to bring, and Amelia’s most consistent relationship over the last two years had been with her calendar app. It never forgot her birthday, but only because she had programmed it not to.
Bree, meanwhile, had known Deck for eight days and was glowing like a woman in a perfume commercial. Deck kept looking at her as if she’d invented beer. Every time his hand settled at the small of her back, Bree smiled without even turning around, as if some part of her already knew where he was.
Eight days.
Completely insane.
And, somehow, a little bit lovely.
Amelia hated that thought.
The venue, at least, was doing a great deal of the heavy lifting.
Ashcombe Castle sat on a green rise above a river the color of weak tea, and it was a ruin, properly, gorgeously ruined, the kind of place the English seemed to grow like other countries grew corn.
Half the curtain wall still stood, grey stone furred with moss, and at the far end, away from the marquee, the string quartet, and the small herd of footballers, a single round tower reachedup against a sky that had been making promises about rain all afternoon.
Someone had strung the whole thing with fairy lights and white roses. It looked like a magazine cover. It probably looked like the inside of Bree’s head, which had always been a more romantic place than Amelia’s.
