“You’ve always been a brother to me. But watching you finally pull your heads out of your arses and pick each other?” He shakes his head again, softer this time. “I’m just happy for you, mate.”
I almost run out of jokes to say with that, coming from Trevor. “Someone had to lock him down before he ran off and married his toolbox.”
Trevor barks out a laugh loud enough to turn heads nearby. He claps the side of my face. “Welcome to the family, mate. You two basically married for many years anyway, just without calling it that. This whole wedding thing is just making it official. About bloody time.”
The sincerity of it wrecks me a little. He gives me one last satisfied nod before disappearing back into the crowd.
I find Carter at the bar a while later. A couple of drinks in, I start feeling unreasonably generous toward the entire universe. I decide to go over.
“Congratulations,” Carter says when I get to him. He means it.
I thank him.
George joins us a second later, sliding into place beside me as if he’s been there the whole time.
He wasn’t sure about inviting Carter, given everything that had sat between them for so long. He especially doesn’t want to make it worse after what he did to his friend, even after covering the moving costs when Carter relocated for the security job—done without fanfare, something Carter probably wasn’t even supposed to find out about but eventually did.
I told him Carter would probably want to be asked. He was there during George’s Navy years, when I wasn’t. Whatever that was, it was part of the man I married. I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t exist.
We chat for a few minutes about the wedding, the drive up, and how Carter's been doing with security work in South Carolina. How George landed a summer internship with Torque Dynamics, one of the few firms in the state actually retrofitting classic engines into hybrid builds. We both find it hilarious that George, of all people, is now somebody's intern.
Then Carter gets that little look and chuckles like he’s been itching for this moment all night.
“By the way, pro tip for next time. When you do it, make sure the CCTV is off.”
“What’s that?” I ask, eyes darting between them.
George says nothing, but he’s clearly fighting a smirk.
“There’s a security camera in the shop, at the bay?” I exclaim, heat rising to my cheeks. I whip my head toward Carter. “Did you see it?”
“I’m not a creep,” Carter says, shooting both hands up, his face now a bright tomato. “I saw enough to know it was private. Deleted it right away.”
“You deleted it.” I echo him, my right eye twitching.
“Immediately,” he adds, like that marks him as some kind of hero.
I would have strangled him right then and there if I weren’t the groom, and because apparently choking a guest unconscious at your own wedding is frowned upon in most cultures, and not considered “part of the festivities.”
George shakes his head. “Lance.”
I ignore him completely and turn back to Carter with my sweetest, most unhinged smile. “Can you un-delete it? Asking for a friend.”
“The friend is you,” George says flatly.
“Can you though?” I press Carter, fully committed now.
“Nope,” Carter says, cracking up now.
I can’t help smiling. Here I am, laughing with the man who once carried something for George that I always thought I had to compete with. Now we’re casually talking about our security cam sex tape at my wedding reception.
With that, I know the evening has fully arrived at the place it needed to be.
Trevor appears and pulls George away to see more guests. He kisses me before he leaves, and I can feel Carter’s eyes on us for a second too long.
Now it’s just the two of us at the bar.
“He’s going to need a full reset after this,” I tell him, shaking my head, watching my husband smile at someone’s uncle like he’s auditioning for “Most Sociable Man Alive.” I know for a fact he’d rather dig up a hole and crawl into it.
