“What big day?” Liam asks.
Freddie rolls his eyes. “Funny.”
Liam isn’t trying to be funny. No, Liam is being dismissive, simmering Freddie’s wedding down into insignificance. It hurts him to think about it, so his solution is not to, and once we get tonight out of the way he’ll delete the memory of Freddie ever asking us from his head. Or so he’ll try to make me believe he has.
“As my dad won’t be there—”
“Too right he won’t be there,” Liam growls, and a swift darkness descends over him. “He wouldn’t beanywhereif it were up to me.”
I kick Liam under the table. It’s not the first time Liam has threatened Freddie’s dad, and if he walked through the door right now, I’d have difficulty keeping him under control. Going down for the murder of Freddie’s dad would be worth it in Liam’s eyes, so I’m glad he lives on the other side of the country.
“As he won’t be there,” Freddie starts again. “I thought your parents could be at the top table with us and in all the photographs. It would mean a lot to me.”
Liam turns his attention to me, and from the twitching vein at his temple, and the muscles in his jaw being plucked like strings, I’d say he’s pissed off.
“What’s that look for?” Freddie asks.
“He’s imagining how insufferable our mum will be when she starts looking for a new hat.”
I’m making this worse by dragging out the inevitable, but I don’t know how this night is going to end. I know what I have to do, butdoingit gets harder with each passing second. My T-shirt sticks to my clammy skin, and I wipe my palms on my jeans out of sight.
“Keegan’s already picked the colours if that helps?” Freddie says, then unprompted, he adds, “Purple and green.”
“I’ll let my mum know.”
Liam’s nostrils practically bellow as he breaths out.
“Seriously,” Freddie says, looking between us. “What’s going on?”
Ah fuck. We talked about it on the drive over, about how I was the best option to break it to Freddie that we weren’t going to be his best men. Liam suggested I was better with words, better at delivering them to ensure minimal damage, but we both knowthis is going to hurt Freddie no matter how much I try to soften the blow.
I take a deep breath. “We were thinking about the whole best man thing, and we’d like to take ourselves out of the running.”
Freddie’s eyebrows drop millimetre my millimetre until a severe frown creases his brow. His irises darken a few shades, turning a deep sapphire as he scrutinises me. “Running? There is no running,” he says. “I’ve asked you two. You’re my best friends. You said yes. It’s done.”
“We’re hoping to un-done it.” I cringe.
“Undo.” Liam rumbles, which is his only input.
“You . . .” Freddie bites his lip. “You don’t want to be my best men?”
We want to be hisbestlovers and hismen, so there is an argument for being his best men, but not in relation to marrying someone else.
“I’m hardly reliable,” I say. “If you leave your stag party up to me, you’ll end up tied to a bed somewhere on a remote island.”
Liam touches his foot to mine beneath the table, and I think “yes, we’d both enjoy that scenario,” but it’s not the time to think about it, and nojustificationfrom Liam will make that fantasy a reality.
It can’t happen.
Kidnapping Freddie for our own benefit would be wrong on so many levels.
Freddie looks utterly unconvinced.
I try again.
“We’ll end up with huge tattoos across our foreheads and get salmonella from some cheap all-inclusive I book us into.”
“I don’t care about elaborate stag parties. I’d be happy to chill at yours, play computer games, eat snacks, and crash on the sofa. It can be like old times.”
