I need to get a grip, and I need to get it fast. We’re about to spend a whole evening together. Dinner, speeches, dancing. The whole nine yards.
I can’t ruin things for Ridge and his mate. I won’t. This is their day, the best day of their lives, and I will smile and toast and dance and be the best man they asked me to be, even if it kills me.
Which, at this rate, it might.
Robyn and Ridge come down the steps toward where we’re standing, running the gauntlet of petals. Robyn’s veil streamsbehind her, and Ridge is looking at her instead of where he’s going, and they are so stupidly happy that my chest aches with it.
I throw my petals.
They drop straight down and land at my feet in a sad little clump.
I look at my hand. Shit, I crushed them into a wad without even realizing I was doing it. There are red and white smears across my palm, and I’ve delivered the world’s most pathetic petal toss in the history of weddings.
This isn’t a good start. Not a good start at all.
I brush my palm off against my trousers and roll my shoulders back.
I can do better.
Iwilldo better.
46
Carla
The photographer snaps a picture, checks the little screen on the back of her camera, and snaps another couple of hundred in rapid fire. At least, it feels like she takes a hundred.
“Gorgeous,” she says, mostly to herself. “Okay, let me move you around a bit.”
She marches into the middle of our group, takes Robyn by the shoulders, and repositions her and Ridge so that they’re standing between all of us, the bride and groom framed by us. Then she races back to her spot, lifts the camera, and takes another several thousand pictures.
My face hurts from smiling, but I smile some more anyway.
“Perfect. Now I want the bridesmaids and groomsmen together for this next one over there by the trees.” She waves a hand in that direction.
“Just us?” I ask.
“Yep.” She’s already ushering Robyn and Ridge off to the side.
The four of us shuffle together. Magma goes and stands on the outside, next to Flint, which puts Cath and me at one end and the males at the other. I’m next to Flint, who shoulder bumps me, giving me a wink.
I try to smile back, but I’m feeling that shitty deflated feeling again, which I hate.
If I didn’t know better, I would say that Magma’s avoiding me. But that can’t be right. We’re friends. Weeellll, sort of friends. Okay, not really, but still. We’re good. I thought we were good. Maybe he caught me glaring at his girlfriend.
Shit, I hope not.
The photographer lowers her camera and squints at us. It looks like she’s thinking something through.
“Right,” she says. “I want you two together,” she points at Magma and me, “and the two of you together, but all of you need to stand in a row by these trees.”
She herds us over to a stand of old oaks at the edge of the garden and arranges us in a line. Cath and Flint on one side. Magma and me on the other.
We stand in a row. Magma keeps about a foot of space between us and clasps his hands behind his back like he’s posing for a security force recruitment poster.
No, really, what is up with him?
Maybe I hugged him for too long. Is that it? Is it weird between us now?
