“I’ll have a Sprite,” he told the bartender as I pulled tip money from my wristlet and slugged back about half of my first rum and Coke.
When we both had our drinks, it was time to find our table. So I headed up front, knowing as part of the wedding party I’d be seated near the lucky couple. I spotted Hudson and snaked my way through the others filing in.
“Double-fisting it tonight?” Hudson made the gesture for shame-shame with his hands.
I sat and hooked my finger around the back strap of the torture devices melded to my blood-encrusted feet. “I only have two hands. Otherwise, I’d have more.”
“Craig, good to see you again.” Hudson’s voice was full of phony enthusiasm. “Lex’s mom told me you two were coming together, but I could hardly believe it until I saw you with my own eyes.”
If I could have pulled the straw from my mouth, I would have sassed back, but I couldn’t. My priority was to get the alcohol inside my body as soon and efficiently as possible. However, without my strongest line of defense—my smart-ass mouth—at my disposal, I was left feeling Craig’s arm wrap around the back of my chair. Ew.
Hudson grinned. “Just think, in a year or two, that might be you two up there.”
My nostrils burned as the drink reversed course and sprayed out of my face. I hacked and coughed, gasping for air. Crusty Craig patted my back as I choked.
“Dad, did you and Mom have a wedding?” Jack asked, effectively saving his father’s life. He’d been standing beside his dad, and as Hudson refocused his attention on his child, he perched Jack up on his knee.
“No, Mom and I never got married,” he answered simply.
For all of his many faults, being a good father wasn’t one of them. And since I’d always wondered what Hudson and Lauren had told Jack, I quelled the urge to kick the chair out from under him in order to find out.
“Why?” the golden-headed boy asked, his head tipping to one side.
“Because we were better at being friends. And when you came along, we decided we wanted to be the best mom and dad we could be instead of being just an okay husband and wife.”
It was a good, honest answer, which seemed to satisfy the kid, and then the rascal turned to me.
“Okay, so, why aren’t you married yet?”
I took a break from my deadly drink to answer, “I don’t know, Jack. But as soon as I find out, you and my mom will be the first to know.”
Disappointed that the dip-your-nose-into-Alexis’s-relationship-status had spread to Jack, I went back to my cocktail.
Shit. He’d been one of the few people in the room I didn’t have to explain my life to.
Now, it was just me and Captain Morgan.
In high school, I had been an all-state wide receiver. Before that, I’d played catcher for the county’s World Series winning Little League team. Before that, I had been the undisputed best lightning bug trapper in my entire neighborhood. Hell, I’d once caught my son in midair when he’d launched himself off a swing as a toddler.
But when Calvin shot that garter belt in my direction, I didn’t bother pulling my hands from my pockets as I let that fucker bounce right off my chest.
No way was I catching it. I mean, seriously, how was the tradition of tossing something that had been rubbing between your new wife’s thighs for the better part of the day to a group of single men still a thing at modern-day weddings? Yet there I was. Middle of a country club dance floor, surrounded by pimple-faced teens and balding divorcées, all of whom were ready to fight to the death over the superstition that whoever caught it would be the next to get married.
What a shit time to be sober.
“Dad!” Jack scolded from the corner of the stage. Clearly, he was unimpressed with how his old man hadn’t made the coveted catch. He’d have to find a way to get over it though, because I wasn’t even willing to bend over to pick up the garter.
Vanessa’s sixty-year-old uncle, who was on his fifth divorce and still looking for “the one,” slid across the dance floor, quite possibly breaking a hip while snagging the equivalent of his niece’s dirty panties from my feet. Not creepy at all. The room erupted in cheers, and for once, I joined along with them because that fucked-up tradition marked the end of my best man duties.
Don’t get me wrong. I loved Calvin. We’d been best friends since our first day in high school, when I’d snagged a rare athletic scholarship to Willowing Creek Preparatory School. Yes, it was exactly as uppity, snobby, and pretentious as it sounded. Especially for a foster kid who had been in and out of the system for as long as I could remember. By the time high school had rolled around, I was living with my mom again and quickly coming to the realization that if I didn’t get my shit together, I’d be living with her until I ultimately became her.
Cal and I had become close almost immediately, and it wasn’t long until I was spending more time at the Lawsons’ house than my own. In a lot of ways, Cal, Alexis, and their parents, Judy and David Lawson, had saved my life. So, needless to say, I would walk through fire for that man, and that was exactly what the last six months of wedding planning had felt like. Today had felt more like I was being offered as the human sacrifice to a volcano.
The blushing bride’s family was absolutely insane, and I had somehow gotten tasked with running interference. Her mom hated her dad, who had brought his once mistress, now wife, with him to the ceremony. Her sister hated her mom, so she refused to so much as use the same public restroom with the woman. Her dad hated her mother’s brother Saul, though there were five of her brothers at the wedding, and so far, I was zero for three in guessing which balding New Yorker was Saul. And that’s not even to mention Grandma Marie, who had spent the entire day mad-dogging Cal.
It was a nightmare trying to keep all the family feuds straight. My strategy had been to bulldoze any conversation in which two of Vanessa’s family members were involved. I’d been positive I was going to be the wedding’s most hated guest before it was all said and done. However, now that it was the end of the night, I had not one single fuck to give.
“You ready to go, bud?” I asked Jack when I made my way off the dance floor.
He leveled me with a hard glare and crossed his arms over his chest. “What is wrong with you? You didn’t even try to catch it!”
Chuckling, I ruffled the top of his thick, blond hair. “That’s because I didn’t want to catch it.”
He let out a low growl and stomped his foot. “Why not?”
“Because.” I jerked my chin. “Come on. Go grab your jacket so we can get out of here.”
“Because isn’t an answer.”
He wasn’t wrong. But I was dying to get out of there, out of that suffocating suit, and possibly grab something that didn’t end in “tartare” to eat on the way home. I suspected explaining to my son why I had zero plans of ever getting married was going to take longer than the thirty seconds I had to spare.
“Jack, seriously, go get your jacket. And the bubble lawn mower Vanessa gave you for being the ring bearer, and—”
Thoroughly affronted, he balled his fists at his sides. “I’m not taking that thing home. All the guys will laugh at me.”