Page 24 of Burn Bag

“You could have fooled me.” He glanced at his watch nervously. “When is this wedding starting, anyway?”

“Soon. She’s the bride. This is her big day. She’s allowed to take her time.”

“If she shows up,” he muttered.

“I saw her pull in. She’s probably just fussing over her dress.”

Another minute passed in silence until Dash leaned over again. “I’m just saying, you could have at least let me participate in some way.”

“Then be the fucking ring bearer,” I snarled.

“You want me to walk up the aisle with a fucking pillow in my hand?” he asked, jerking back in surprise. “That’s just?—”

“Would you just go sit down?” I hissed. “You’re ruining this magical day for me.”

“Fine,” he backed off. “I’ll go sit down. Over there,” he pointed to the pews. “Where all the rest of the men who didn’t help you are sitting.”

“Good.”

“Fine.”

“Fantastic,” I gritted out.

“Fucking amazing!”

“Language!” my mother hissed, leaning forward just slightly. She sent me a chastising look that reminded me of when I was a kid. Frankly, I didn’t care if she was scolding me on my wedding day. I was just glad she wasn’t crying into her pillow still.

I jabbed Dash in the side and sent him moping back to the pews. Red took up the spot beside me and Eli stood beside him. Both of them were my best men. I couldn’t decide between them, and there was really no point.

“I can’t believe you’re going through with this,” Red muttered.

“It’s my wedding day. Can you try to be supportive?”

“I could, but that would be a lie. I think you’re fucking stupid.”

“That’s because you didn’t see the algorithm. I’m telling you, she’s the perfect woman for me.”

“Right,” he snorted. “A graph told you all that.”

“It wasn’t a graph,” I bit out. “It was—” I stopped myself from delving into it again. There was no point, and frankly, he wouldn’t listen anyway.

“Can we not do this right now?” Eli muttered. “Not that I agreewith this either, but if you insist on going through with this, we should at least try to make this day memorable.”

“Thank you,” I mumbled, grateful that at least he was on my side.

Eli sighed heavily. “I’m gonna need to get drunk when this is over.”

“What happened to making the day memorable?” I snapped.

“For you. I want to scrub this day from my brain. I can’t fucking believe you agreed to marry a woman you met one time for a whole ten minutes.”

“It’s meant to be.”

“It’s meant to be a disaster,” Red shot back.

“Hey,” I snapped, turning to face them both. “You’ve met the loves of your lives. You have kids and happiness and all the shit I want. Is it really too hard for you to just be happy for me and pretend to be on my side?”

“No,” they both grumbled.

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