The Worst Wedding Date

I believe I’ve mentioned that there’s not a lot that embarrasses me.

I’d happily be a nudist if I lived in a place where my dick wouldn’t be at risk of frostbite over half the year. I’ve spent time in jail and won’t hide it. Never had any hesitation in telling a buddy they’d have to pick up the tab for my beer if they wanted me to go out with them when my bank account was low. I knew I’d make it up to them in other ways later.

How the world works.

Everything evens out if you do your best.

It’s something my mom told me a long time ago that’s held true throughout my life.

But there is no evening out the fact that Laney Kingston and a feral pig made me blow my load in my pants.

Take Laney out of the equation, and I’d be less embarrassed.

I don’t know if she knows.

But if I know anything about Laney, it’s that it won’t be long before she has regrets. And regrets will mean that she keeps babysitting me while pretending nothing happened and nothing’s changed when for me, nothing will ever be the same again.

So I don’t wait for the regrets.

Instead, as soon as Laney throws herself at Emma and Sabrina when we arrive at the karaoke bar down the street from the resort where the dinner after-party is happening after the luau dancers apparently didn’t show up for the lessons after dinner like they were supposed to, I bail and head out into the night.

I love karaoke.

But there’s no way I’m staying tonight. I need to get a grip on my emotions. Play with my kittens. Knit.

Hell, it’s a good night to get some work in on my side hustle. Really feeling in the mood right now. And I’m a tad overdue on my next assignment.

As it were.

But instead, I dash up to the room just long enough to change my pants, and then I head to the beach.

Need a little peace and solitude. Meditation time. Be one with nature. Get my head back on straight and a little less embarrassed before I bombard myself with the kitten brigade.

Don’t want them to know what I did.

They’d be the wrong kind of nice about it.

Remind me how much Laney fell in love with them this afternoon.

Make me wish she was there so I could kiss her. Pull her into the bedroom and show her I’m not some green buck who only comes in his pants.

Jesus.

Last time that happened?

Never.

Never’s the last time.

Don’t know how long I walk. How long I sit when I find the perfect sitting rock and tune in to the sounds of the ocean while I watch the occasional light of a passing ship.

I do know I’m grateful for the moon lighting the beach, even if the moon being so high and bright means no Milky Way viewings this week. Grateful for the small knitting needles that I can tuck into my pocket with an equally small ball of yarn too.

Don’t knock the knitting.

It’s meditative.

Important, even.

Plus, it reminds me of my mom. She taught me to knit in the hopes it would be enough of something to fidget with during the times when I needed to sit still.

Not that I was ever brave enough to take it to school, where it would’ve probably helped me the most.

Didn’t want other kids making fun of me.

Ironic that it’s one of the things my fans and followers in my side hustle seem to love most about me now.

Eventually, I find my inner peace again. I’m totally zen as I start my walk back.

Harmonious with all that has happened tonight.

Yeah, I blew my load in my pants. But Laney’s a woman. An attractive woman that I’ve always had a secret thing for who was rubbing her pussy all over me. Of course I got hard and lost all of my control. Who wouldn’t have?

Plus, it’s been a while since my last hookup.

Guess I’m getting pickier.

Pickier?

More insecure?

Fuck.

Both.

Wouldn’t think it, would you?

Yeah, I know I look good. Spent a lot of time bulking up the past few years, and not just naturally through all the construction work.

But you don’t grow up knowing people judge you by everything on the outside without knowing you want someone attracted to who you are on the inside.

And this body?

Won’t last. Still gonna get old eventually. And I can’t keep this diet up forever. I fucking hate this diet.

Laney’s tacos almost broke me. Smelled so damn good.

But so long as my side hustle needs me to look like this, I don’t eat fried fish tacos covered in whatever that magic sauce was that Laney licked off her fingers like it was the best food she’s ever eaten in her entire life.

And I’m done thinking about tacos.

Done thinking about how even if Laney doesn’t have immediate regrets, she will when she finds out what’s been funding most of my bank account.

And my side hustle’s important.

It makes a difference. Unconventionally so, but that’s why I’m so fucking good at it. It doesn’t follow the rules.

I don’t follow the rules.

And that’s okay.

I’m not hungry.

I am at peace.

I am—dammit.

I am almost back to the path that leads from the beach up to the resort buildings when I hear Chandler.

“Yeah, of course. We’ve got a bungalow saved just for you, waiting for whenever you want to get here, and—no. No, of course. Nobody will know. You’re just an old friend, you know? Totally get where you’re coming from, man. Completely. One hundred percent.”

Fuck me.

I didn’t hear that.

I did not hear that.

There’s subtext and context and a story that I don’t want to know, but the biggest thing—I don’t want Laney moving out of my room.

There.

I said it.

If there’s an open bungalow, Laney could move in to it, and I don’t want her to.

There’s the not-so-subtle sound of a bug zapper zapping a bug, and I flinch.

He’s still using the damn fire starter.

“Yeah, man. I mean, we’re family. So we act like it. The good kind of family. Couldn’t buy a better one. Heh. Joking. But like, not, considering you just—anyway. Come on out. You’ll see, and I won’t tell them who you are. Not unless you want me to. Honestly, I’d rather the announcement not come until after I’m on my honeymoon. But don’t worry. You’ll win them all over. I mean, it’s you or shutting down. Can’t argue with this, can they?”

Yep. Heard enough. Don’t need to stay here. Not my drama.

Won’t make it my drama.

Learned a long time ago that no good comes of telling Emma anything Chandler’s done that makes him look like anything less than a god.

She doesn’t want to hear it from me. She doesn’t like it when we don’t get along. She loves us both, even if we can’t stand each other, and she insists they don’t have secrets so she knows it all anyway.

And you know what?

I’m glad it sounds like Chandler found a way to fix the café’s money problems.

Glad to know he’ll give her the family and the life she wants, and that they’re starting the married part of their life without his business in debt.

At least, not the kind that’ll get the shop shut down imminently.

He’s what she wants.

I do an abrupt about-face, intending to head to my room the long way so I don’t have to see Chandler—or so he doesn’t have to see me—but instead, I almost run over a woman who’s standing there holding up a hand like she was about to tap me on the shoulder.

She leaps back with a shrieked “Ack!” then puts her hand to her heart. “Sweet baby Jesus in heaven, you scared the ever-lovin’ shit out of me.”

“I get that reaction a lot.”

She giggles, and recognition hits me.

Saw her this morning. One of the kids’ moms.

And now she’s looking me up and down like she’s considering having a snack.

Specifically, a Theo one-night-stand snack.

“You were out there buildin’ all those sandcastles with my son this mornin’,” she says in a thick Southern accent.

I nod, angling toward my escape. “Kid at heart. That’s me.”

“I just wanted to say thank you. My Elijah doesn’t have a daddy in his life, or any good menfolk to set the kind of example you want good menfolk to set, so that was incredibly special to me.”

“My pleasure.” Any other night, I’d stay and chat. But not tonight.

“I’ve been thinking all day that you just seem so darn familiar. You ever been to Goat’s Tit, Alabama?”

My whole body flushes hot, and I wish I could rip off my shirt and fan myself with it. This is the only part of the side hustle that ever makes me squirm. And it shouldn’t. They shouldn’t recognize me.

Guess my tats are distinctive.

Or my voice.

“Haven’t had the pleasure,” I say.

“You sure?”

“Never been to Alabama at all. But if I ever do, I’m starting with a town called Goat’s Tit.”

A hand claps down hard on my shoulder, and it’s not hers.

It’s the second half of what I was hoping to avoid the minute I realized this woman wanted to talk.

“Ol’ Theo here’s never left the state of Colorado until this week,” Chandler says. “Parole conditions.”

I know my sister loves him, but his small dick energy has been the only part of his personality growing in the past year or two.

And knowing that he’s being a dick because he doesn’t like that I’m paying for the wedding doesn’t help.

Dude should be fucking grateful. Not threatening to tell the whole town where I got the money if I breathe a word about covering everything here.

Which I wouldn’t do anyway.

I grit my teeth while I force a smile at the woman. “Only time I was ever on parole was for joyriding a go-kart down Main Street at three in the morning in my underwear when I was nineteen.”

Chandler stiffens.

“Too much snow,” I continue. “Crashed into the revered statue of Snaggletooth the Gold Miner and put a chip in his pickax.”

Fun night. Sneaking beers with all of my friends, some back in town after their first semester of college, the rest of us enjoying a Friday night off after long work weeks at minimum wage jobs that our parents all hoped were temporary until we found something bigger to do with our lives.

Chandler was there.

Right up in the thick of it.

Right up in the thick of ratting everyone out to the cops too. Always assumed he thought the rest of us were too drunk to remember what really happened.

But I remembered. I wasn’t too drunk.

Not that the cops believed me.

Why would they? It’s the rules. Your family’s standing in the community makes a difference in how you’re treated and how much you’re believed, and Chandler’s family brewed the juice that made Snaggletooth Creek run, while my family collected roadkill for taxidermy during the lean times when hunters weren’t bringing in deer and elk and bears and lions.

Didn’t break my heart when Emma and Chandler split up not long after they went back to their respective colleges after that winter break.

And jail wasn’t so bad.

Did me a favor in the end, honestly.

Still would’ve preferred if Emma hadn’t gotten right back together with Chandler when they both moved home after college though.

The woman glances between us, one of her eyes crinkling a little more than the other.

Or maybe it’s a trick of the lamps.

“I—I must be thinking of someone else,” she finally says in her thick twangy accent. “Thank you for your time.”

“Enjoy your night,” I call after her rapidly retreating backside.

Not the first time Chandler’s cock-blocked me.

Don’t mind being cock-blocked, truth be told.

Not really interested in the Southern single mom.

My dick’s too hung up on someone else.

But I do care that Chandler’s rounding on me and glaring like I’m the problem.

I know I’m not the problem, and if he thinks he can channel making me feel like a high school fuckup, he’s dead wrong.

“What did you hear?” he growls.

Okay, tries to growl. Dude’s got a weak growl. Goes higher-pitched than he means to. It hasn’t worked on me since about fifth grade, when I asked him if the llama from The Emperor’s New Groove was his daddy.

Got suspended for fighting after that. Chandler got a lollipop and a broken nose and the gift of everyone’s amnesia about him starting it.

I let it go because it was easier than holding a grudge. “Heard the pretty lady flirting with me.”

“Before that.”

“Ocean. Night bugs. Music. Tourists.”

He keeps staring at me like he’s trying to decide if I’m fucking with him.

I rock back on my heels and give him the what? look.

“You better be as dumb as you pretend to be.” He’s going for the growl again. And I’m wondering just how big his dick must be for my very intelligent sister to truly want to marry this guy. “If you repeat a single fucking word, I’ll destroy you.”

Yep.

This is what my sister wants to marry. A guy who doesn’t want me at his wedding but knows he can’t object because that would make his bride unhappy. “Sure Em would love that,” I say.

His face twitches.

I nod to him. “Better get back to my babysitter. Have fun being you.”

I walk away without reminding him who’s paying the bills here. No point in it, and he’d take the opportunity to remind me he could spill my biggest secret.

That one’s mine to leak on my terms.

Not because I’m embarrassed.

But because I know other people will be. They’d think I need to be saved from it. That there’s something wrong with how I choose to make a difference in the world.

Chandler follows me to my room.

I pretend I don’t know he’s behind me.

For Emma’s sake.

It’s always for Emma’s sake. She’s the one who’d come to my bedroom door every single time I stepped in major shit while we were growing up, knock softly and whisper, “I know it wasn’t all your fault, Theo, and I still love you, and you’re still the best brother in the world.”

Therefore, I will do anything for her.

I can’t count the number of times she told me she knew it wasn’t my fault.

Especially after Mom died.

I know she knows all the shit with Chandler isn’t entirely my fault. And I know she’s allowed to love a guy who will never be my best friend.

So long as he truly makes her happy in every other aspect of her life, who am I to object?

The minute I’m inside my suite, I pull out my phone. Delaney would say I need to call the rental car company and get paperwork started, but I have other things I want—and need—to do.

I don’t call anyone. Instead, I text Emma.

Gotta work tomorrow morning. You can have Delaney back for a few hours. Overnight, even. Won’t leave my room. Promise.

I don’t expect an immediate text back, but there it is.

Um…speaking of…we’re headed your way. Laney’s a little…happy…and would like to go to bed. In her bed. She keeps saying you have something that will make it all better but that she’s not telling what since she can keep secrets too. And this is NOT me asking if what you have that will make her feel better is any part of your body.

She doesn’t threaten to disembowel me if I use my penis to make Laney feel better.

But she wouldn’t.

We have a deal.

We don’t interfere with each other’s private lives unless we think it’s a toxic situation.

I still know better than to take this as permission. Especially this week.

Got it, I text back.

I’ll take her for breakfast so you can work tomorrow, Em adds.

I glance at the pullout bed, still stuck halfway out because I’m tipping maintenance to stay away.

Not that I think it’s necessary.

Haven’t seen housekeeping in the time we’ve been here. Gift shop was closed right before dinner, despite the posted hours saying it would be open until eight. Heard a rumor the restaurants aren’t running well.

Seems Emma picked a falling-down resort for her wedding.

But if she’s happy, I’m happy.

Happy as can be with Laney heading back my way though.

Good thing she’s drunk.

I don’t freaking touch drunk women.

Hopefully she’ll pass out quickly. And snore. And drool. And maybe puke.

Not because I wish puking on her, but because it might make her less attractive.

I wince.

Let’s be honest. It probably wouldn’t.

It would probably make her even more real and relatable. And that’s something I’ll just have to deal with.