Page 1 of More Than My Hometown

1

EWAN

How does that eighties song go? It’s a perfect day for a white wedding? Something like that.

And today is the absolutely perfect day for Dolly McLain’s wedding. Which I suppose is also my older brother Hux’s wedding. Although is any wedding ever about the groom? Not one I’ve ever been to.

This one isn’t the exception either. This is Dolly’s wedding. Her real wedding. The perfect, happily-ever-after, ride off into the sunset wedding that she deserves. It's a year later than the one that didn’t happen, but this is it. This time it’s for real.

This time it’s to Hux.

How it should have been to begin with. Something we all know, but are keeping our mouths shut about, because there are just some things that don’t need to be said out loud. Especially on one’s wedding day.

“About damn time you wifed her up,” Anton, brother number three in the lineup says, smacking Hux on the back.

Okay, maybe Anton is saying things out loud.

Once the instigator, always the instigator…

Hux raises a single eyebrow, glaring back at him in the mirror of the small room my five brothers and I are shoved in while we wait for the guests to arrive at the church. Everything goes still, none of us moving, with only the hum from the vent in the background as we wait for Hux’s reaction. It’s a line we’ve all heard a hundred times come out of Anton’s mouth trying to get a rise out of Hux, who as the middle of seven kids is about as stereotypical as they come—stubborn, nonconforming, and complicated—but he’s also steady and unflappable.

Something Anton loves to try and mess with.

“It is, isn’t it?” Hux laughs.

Tension dissipates instantly, all six of us bursting into laughter.

“You owe me fifty bucks, by the way,” Milo, brother number two, says to Hux, cracking open a Southern Brothers Party Mode and handing it to him.

Hux takes the bottle, his expression turning curious, asking the same silent question the rest of us are. Milo doesn’t answer him right away, simply continues to play bartender—a role he knows well as owner and operator of Southern Brothers Brewing with his best friend Brandt Rawlins—handing us each a bottle from the cooler he snuck into the church.

“Care to explain?” Gus, our oldest brother, finally prompts after a long moment of silence.

“I bet Brandt when we opened Southern Brothers who would be the first to get married, and it wasn’t Hux.” Milo shrugs, plopping down into one of the folding chairs set up in a semi-circle. Reverend Terry clearly didn’t put a lot of effort into making sure we were going to be comfortable as we waited.

“He guessed Hux and Dolly?” Anton questions, not bothering to hide his skepticism. Which is totally fair, since it’s not like they were a couple back then.

Milo shakes his head. “Naw, he guessed Ewan and Mai⁠—”

He stops himself before he says her name, but it doesn’t matter. I still hear it. My brain still automatically finishes it.

Maisey…

“But since I didn’t guess Hux, I gotta pay up.”

I swallow hard, shifting my weight, trying to pretend like his almost slip of the tongue doesn’t affect me. Like I’m not thinking about her. Like I haven’t been pretending not to think about her all week. Wondering if she’ll show at the last minute—be a surprise guest at her cousin’s wedding.

Especially since I’m technically here with someone else.

Even if that someone else is just a friend.

To be fair, that’s all Maisey was too. Sort of. Because there isn’t a word for what she and I were—this weird in-between of more than friends but not exactly more than friends. We were each other’s person in every way, but never crossed that line of physical intimacy that comes with that second part. Not for lack of want to on my part, but for lack of guts to try.

I’ve wondered damn near every day for more years than I can count if I should have tried.

Emily Barrowcliff, though, is one hundred percent friend, without any thought of crossing that line. From either of us. Although, these last six months, it’s been a lot of fun to let our small town of Hickory Hills think otherwise. If for no other reason than it’s meant no one has asked either one of us embarrassingly personal or prodding questions in places like the grocery store.

“I don’t see how that’s Hux’s problem,” I say, joining in so that no one accuses me of being too quiet.