Page 61 of View With Your Heart

“Well, he didn’t have much of a say, but it’s one reason we call him Gee. He’s really never been called his given name except at formal school functions.”

Still in a haze of appreciation, I smile. “Wow.” It’s so sweet of her, although I can imagine it was a sore spot for her husband.

While I want nothing more than to take her to her room and honor the hell out of her, I can’t. With Gee home and the wedding tomorrow, I should leave. I’ll never sleep tonight, but I should go.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I say, but a question lingers as Britton doesn’t look up at me. I curl my fingers under her chin, forcing her eyes up.

“I’ll be there.” Something I can’t read fills those blue orbs, but I assume it’s fear. We only have so much time remaining together. We haven’t talked further than tomorrow, and I leave Sunday, but I want to talk. After the wedding, I tell myself. I’m going to lay it out and tell her I want to see her again. I want to be in her life somehow. I want her in mine.

I don’t know how it will work. I can travel back and forth between here and California. She can come to visit me, maybe for a long weekend, or during Gee’s school breaks. Fuck, I don’t know. I just know I need her in my life. I won’t let her slip away again.

+ + +

On Saturday afternoon, the men meet at the Carters’ family home.

“What the fuck?” Jess grumbles, looking down at his phone as he stomps up the staircase to the second floor as I’m entering the house I practically grew up in as much as my own. Located two blocks from Main Street, it’s ironically on the same block as the house Emily inherited from her grandmother.

“What’s up with him? Getting cold feet?” I ask his mother, who greets me as Jess ignored my entrance.

“He’s fine,” the matriarch of their family states, dismissively waving a hand before I give her a hug. Mary then leads me deeper into the house. Jess and Pam Carter get their cornstalk blond hair and denim blue eyes from their mother. She’s a local nurse and what people consider good people. She’s one of the best second mothers.

“He’s crabby because he didn’t get to sleep with Emily last night,” Leon states from the dining room as we enter it. “With the wedding being at five, it’s been a long ass day for him.”

Leon makes an apologetic face. “Sorry, Mary.”

Jess’s mother just shakes her head. “You boys make yourself at home. Lunch will be here soon.” Mary’s serving us sandwiches and such with minimal alcohol. She is adamant that no one shows up at the wedding hammered. Part of her caution might be her personal experience with a drunk driver who killed her husband a few years back. It was a difficult time for Jess, and it reminds me I haven’t been the best of friends. I didn’t make it to the funeral.

Jess’s groom’s party includes his brother, Leon, Ethan, and me, although Jacob is present at the house. We hang out, just shooting the shit, sharing stories, and learning more about each other. Or at least, I learn more about them. Leon’s had a hard life while Jacob’s had a privileged upbringing, but hints at it being not so great. It makes me feel fortunate I’m more in the middle with a history of typical teenage angst and disagreements with my parents, but nothing as extreme as these additions to the family.

Family. I have such an overwhelming sense of it today, with the wedding bringing us all back together. I’d seen my parents again at the rehearsal dinner, and Mum looked even worse than a week ago. Karyn told me I was overreacting when I didn’t have a right to react. She’d been living with my mother’s cancer day in and day out for the last year, handling things like she always did as the oldest sibling and with her bossy personality. I hadn’t spent as much time with my parents as I should have, but I have seen them more in the last two weeks than in the past decade.

“I think we need to know where Gavin disappeared to the other night,” Tom teases me.

“We covered this during the rehearsal dinner,” I reply, recalling all the intrigue at my disappearance with Britton during the Thursday night bar crashing.

“Yes, but we need details.” Tom wiggles his brows.

“How do you know her again?” Leon asks.

“Fell in love with her one summer when we were kids,” I admit.

“And then spent a weekend together when he was older banging her in a hotel room,” Ethan adds, giving away my secrets.

“Dude, don’t be an ass.”

“They fucked like rabbits,” Ethan continues, telling the guys at the table like he’s some high school chick spreading a rumor.

“We did not,” I defend.

“Well, you snuck out of the house enough when we were teens. I feel sorry for you if you weren’t getting laid all those nights,” Ethan teases.

“It’s not all about sex,” I tell him, although the last few nights it’s all I’ve had on my mind, wondering how I’ll get on a plane for California tomorrow, leaving Britton behind.

“I know,” Ethan sighs, looking over the table, with a suddenly sheepish grin.

“When you gettin’ married?” I tease him as he’s engaged without a set date.

“Soon.”