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And Kevin was truly glad for him. He didn’t wish his own life on his best friend.
All that being so, Dave wasn’t right about the current state of difficulties. Loving the girl wasn’t the problem. Kevin loved Helen. One hundred percent, all his heart loved her. Had since the day he met her when she was working at the Ice Cream Palooza the summer before. Her blue eyes had connected with his gaze, and in the space of three heartbeats he knew he had to make that pretty blonde with the shy smile his.
Lucky for him, Helen had felt the same. For Kevin and Helen-almost-Murphy, love at first sight was as real as the church he was standing in.
No sir, loving Helen was not the issue. The problem was that life looked a little big, standing there in that dark hallway, waiting to promise to take responsibility for a family.
Anxiety wound through his gut and pulled tight.Family.No one knew—just Helen and him. Probably they suspected. After all, this wedding was tossed together in a hurry. But he hadn’t told anyone—not even his lifelong best buddy Dave. And Helen had promised she wouldn’t say anything. She’d simply meet him in between those fancy candelabras at the front of the church, wearing a white dress, and they’d make it all right.
Itwasgoing to be all right. It was going to be great. He could be a husband. A dad. Even if he didn’t know what that looked like, given the louse of a father he’d grown up with. He’d figure it out and sure as anything do better than his dad had ever done.
He most certainly couldn’t do worse.
The cord around his chest pulled harder, and Kevin moved to fish out that flask again.
“Not this time.” Dave intercepted his trespassing hand. “Music is changing.” With a firm grip on Kevin’s shoulders, Dave turned him toward the sanctuary. When Kevin thought he’d be pushed forward, Dave leaned over his shoulder instead. “Helen’s a catch. And she loves you. Do right by her, Kev.”
Before Kevin could turn a glare on his overbearing friend, he was nudged forward. Numbly—partially due to Jimmy Beam’s intervention, thank you very much—Kevin found his place near the pastor he’d met only the day before at the rehearsal. The man shot him a wide smile and flashed a thumbs-up near his hip.
Gripping one hand with the other, Kevin turned to watch the sauntering up the aisle. First, two bridesmaids. Helen’s best girlfriends from high school. They looked better suited to a cheerleading outfit than to preceding their friend down the bridal way.
Man, they werereallyyoung.
He wasn’t even old enough to legally buy the stuff he’d been sucking down all morning. Helen was only eighteen. Could they really be ready for marriage, let alone a kid?
He needed another drink. Too bad that was entirely out of the question, Dave being the inconveniently resolute type. And the both of them standing out there in front of everyone.
The music changed again, and the small gathering of witnesses stood. Kevin shifted his gaze from the flower girl, who had just littered the runway with fake red rose petals. A puff of white flounced near the doors opposite, the shadows cloaking the woman lost within the masses of poofy sleeves and frilly white lace. More, the white hat, anchored at an angle on her blonde hair, blocked her face from him as she looked down. Her face remained tilted floorward as she floated toward him. Hopefully, because she had to watch her step. Not because she couldn’t look at him.
But he needed, desperately, for her to look at him. Because this rising urge to bolt was becoming harder and harder to control.
Look at me. Tell me you love me. You’ll stay with me . . .
Just when he thought he couldn’t stay rooted, her blue eyes lifted, connecting with his searching gaze.
Kevin’s lips parted as his breath caught.Helen, he mouthed.
She gave him a closed-lip smile. Well, smile was a little generous. Grin? Not that either.
She was scared too. But there she was, now before him. Ready to take his hand, his name.
With eyes wide and glazed with unshed tears, Helen held his stare as her father transferred her hand to Kevin’s. After a long-held and suspiciously disapproving look, her dad proclaimed that “her mother and I” gave Helen to be Kevin’s wife. And then it was just Helen and him standing before God and man to pledge their lives to each other.
“You came,” she whispered, a mix of relief and nerves in her voice.
Kevin tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and leaned down to whisper, “I said I would.”
Her nose wrinkled, and she drew back the slightest bit. By her mild scowl, she could smell the bourbon on his breath. Her lips flattened, and she swallowed.
“Last time,” Kevin said as together they stepped toward the grinning pastor. “Promise.”
Helen didn’t look at him as she blinked rapidly.
He knew why. She’d heard that before.
In his defense, though, he wasn’t actually drunk. So the last time he promised her that it would be the last time was still the truth.
Even so, Helen’s pinched expression told him exactly what she thought—even if she tried to hide it behind a tight smile as she stared forward.
