Page 110 of Elf-ish

All my favorite people are gathered in one place.

Jude included.

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Like champagne, weddings can be bubbling with happiness. Or a predictable headache, the one you’ll experience after too much of the fizzy sensation.

Thankfully, Beau and Belle’s ceremony is short. The drinks start to flow. Dinner is a buffet of bar foods. Other than the high-top sweetheart table where Beau and Belle are seated, the rest of the room is open seating. As I’ve waited for most guests to go through the buffet line, I’m quick to learn we’ve run out of most items, especially the cheeseburger sliders I’d been focusing on as my personal reward for throwing together this last-minute wedding.

I’m starving and my first bride’s-choice candy cane martini has slunk through my bloodstream rather easily.

Disappointed, I take my mostly-empty plate to a table in the back corner where Jude is seated.

“You aren’t eating?” he questions as I sit.

My feet ache in the thin, strappy gold heels I’m wearing, and I kick them off underneath the table.

“I’m starving, but they’ve run out of food.” My shoulders sag as I fall back in the wooden folding chair. “I’ll just drink my body weight in martinis. That will fill me up.”

Jude stares at me a second, then stands. “I’ll be right back.”

I have no idea where he’s going, and I don’t ask. The weight of this wedding is hitting me in the chest. A sense of finality rests there. All my siblings are married, although Dane is getting divorced and I don’t know what’s happening with my sister and her estranged husband. How are we all such a mess? We had loving parents as a prime example of what marriage should look like. How could we each be so bad at picking partners?

My gaze leaps to Beau and Belle. I hate to admit it, and I’d never say it aloud, but I give their marriage less than a year. Meeting because they were drunk on a plane. Announcing their wedding at Thanksgiving. Getting married weeks later. Their age difference. Their everything difference. I didn’t want to be a skeptic, but I didn’t see them lasting.

None of us Winter siblings had a perfect track record for long-term relationships.

Your miracle is coming, Gran said.

Poor Gran. She didn’t understand. She and Gramps had been another example of a devoted marriage. One where the big things were important, but the little things mattered most, like—

A set of three cheeseburger sliders and a heap of fries on a plate is set in front of me.

I look up as Jude takes a seat beside me and shifts his chair closer to mine.

“Eat.” He nods at the plate, and I nearly cry again because of this man.

“What did you do?” I whisper.

He simply nods toward the plate again.

Sitting up straighter, I reach for one mini-cheeseburger and bite into it. Instantly, I close my eyes and hum.

“That is so good.” The simple reward I anticipated for throwing this wedding together.

Jude’s hand comes to my thigh beneath the table. He chuckles.

Turning my head toward him, I remind him, “I told you I love food.”

His mouth pops open like he intends to speak, then he slaps his lips shut. He swallows thickly, like whatever he was about to say is choking him. With those clear blue eyes on me, he shifts in his seat. The hand on my thigh is removed, and he rests his left arm on the back of my chair. He sits sideways and settles his right hand on my thigh instead.

He tips up his chin toward the burger still in my hands. “Eat.”

I take another bite while Jude slips his hand around my thigh beneath the table.

“Jude,” I whisper in warning.

“Scoot to the edge of the chair.”