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JAMESON
There are way too many people at my wedding.
I figured the wedding party would be most of it, and we arenot.There are eight guys up here with me, and we’re all in a row, looking out at apackedcathedral.
“How did you find this many people to come?” I ask Mason over the ebb and flow of the chatter, which is louder than the string quartet. “I don’t even know this many people.”
“Weknow this many people.” He stands next to me, pulling off his outfit better than I must be, Robin curled up on his chest. The baby carrier did weird things to the line of his jacket, so he’s going without it. Hades and Zeus don’t have their kids. They’re sitting in the front row with a woman who has soft gray hair. At first, I thought she might be elderly, but she’s not. Her forties, maybe? I don’t know. There's a guy next to her with a scar on his face who’s pretending to make Daisy’s cat talk to her, and Conor lies on the floor, watching Daisy.
“How doweknow this many people?”
“Because I invited anyone I could find who had some connection to Mom and Dad. Everyone who has agoodconnection with Phoenix. At least a hundred people are here because Zeus knows them.”
“What does it matter if Zeus knows them?”
“They’re gossips,” Mason says, looking pleased with himself.
“Well, fuck. How many people are here because Gabriel knows them, then?”
“Two hundred,” Gabriel says from behind Mason.
“If the point is to get the word out, I guess there’s no chance we fail at that.” I’m busy looking through the pews for familiar faces. There are a few people here from my programs at NYU. A few people who squint at their programs like they don’t know why they’re here. About halfway through the guests, it occurs to me that I’m hoping to find two people who will never be here and stop looking.
The string quartet switches to some stuff that sounds like they’re warming up again, and the crowd gathered to watch me marry Lily shifts around in anticipation.
“Do you have the ring?” I ask Mason.
“Yes. Do you want to bail?”
I stare at him.
He stares back.
“No.” I enunciate every word so I’m sure he hears me. “I do not want to bail. Didyouwant to bail when you married Charlotte.”
“I did not,” he allows. “I did think I was going to have to cancel the ceremony.”
“What? Why?”
“Because my knee hurt.”
“Like…a lot?” It would’ve had to be excruciating for him to consider canceling the ceremony. He was relentlessly excited about his wedding.
“I could barely walk on it.”
“Why didn’t you say something? You looked fine when you came upstairs.”
“Iwasfine when I came upstairs.” Mason pats Robin’s back in a soft, steady rhythm.
“What fixed it?”
He narrows his eyes. “Hades came down and gave me a pep talk.”
“Apeptalk? What the actual fuck?”
“I heard that,” Hades says from Gabriel’s other side.
“Oh, come on. I expressed mild disbelief,” I say back.
