“Are you coming to the rehearsal dinner later?”
I blinked. “I wasn’t aware I was invited.”
Gabby stared at me for a beat, as if the question itself didn’t make sense, before shaking her head. “Lynn forgets to tell everyone things. Of course you’re invited.”
The answer came too easily, too naturally, and it threw me off.
“Seth,” she said simply, “you’re practically family.”
Something uncomfortable shifted inside me at that.
For years, I had quietly assumed I had lost the right to that word. That I had stepped so far outside it that it no longer applied to me.
The strange thing was that no one else seemed to agree.
“I’ll see if we can make it,” I said. “I, uh, need to check whether my spare suit can be pressed in time.”
Gabby’s eyes narrowed immediately. I already knew she didn’t believe me.
But before she could respond, her attention shifted. “Oh, look.”
I followed her gaze. Darryl and Elliot were walking across the lawn toward us. Every nerve in my body went alert at once.
This was the moment I had built up in my head over weeks, replayed in different versions, imagined with different outcomes. Now that it was actually happening, it felt smaller than I had expected.
Darryl reached us first, smiling before anything else. “Seth.”
“Hey.” The word came easily. There was no tension in it, no carefully measured distance.
Beside him, Elliot stepped forward and offered his hand. “It’s good to finally meet you properly.”
I shook it. “You too.”
When he turned to Dane, Elliot greeted him just as easily. There was no suspicion in his expression, nothing that suggested he questioned why I was here.
That surprised me.
Because it meant trust, not just in me, but that whatever had existed between Darryl and me belonged firmly in the past.
By the time the conversation drifted onward, I found myself relaxing in ways I hadn’t expected. No one seemed uncomfortable. No one looked like they were waiting for me to slip.
The years between then and now, which I had carried around like something heavy and unresolved, suddenly felt less absolute. Only smaller than I had made them in my head.
And through all of it, Dane stayed beside me.
He never hovered or interrupted, never tried to steer conversations or step into spaces that weren’t his. He was simply there, as if he had already decided this was where he belonged.
Every so often, I found myself looking at him without meaning to. And every time I did, his gaze found mine.
The afternoon blurred after that, conversations shifting between old friends and former classmates. Everywhere I turned, I was being greeted as if no time had passed.
I had assumed everyone had moved on from me. But maybe I had simply stepped out of their lives and decided the door had closed behind me.
Across the lawn, Lynn suddenly lifted both arms and waved. “There he is!”
Several familiar faces turned.
“Seth!”
