“Until now, but Mase is right, you made them dinner. That’s huge.”
“You guys have very low expectations of me. I brought them chocolates the week before.”
My friends all goggled around at one another.
“What?”
Mason sucked in a breath, waving one hand around in an oh no she didn’t. “How many times did this man bring me chocolates when we were dating? Once! One time! And he mostly bought them for himself!”
“Sweetheart,” Ronnie said, leaning across the table. “I think maybe he just wasn’t that into you.”
“Hey!” both Mason and I yelled at the same time.
Ronnie grinned.
“Also, let it be noted, Mase, that I ate most of Sidney’s, too.”
He let his head drop into his arms. “What are we going to do with you, man?”
“Um. Buy me chocolates?”
“Naw, you owe me chocolates. Forever.”
“This is why they couldn’t get married,” Oscar said to no one in particular. “Poor communication skills and too much sugar.”
Both of us reached out to shake him at the same time.
“Okay, okay, okay! Quit it!”
“Listen.” Mia waited until we’d stopped giggling like mad men. “This seems really good, Dec. And I’m happy for you.”
Ronnie raised her glass. “Me too.”
The others followed and I reluctantly raised my Coke as well.
“To Declan!”
“To Declan!”
“You guysssss...”
Mason reached over to pat me on the back. “All joking aside, I like them, and I like you two together. You got this.”
“I really don’t.”
“We have your back,” Ronnie added. “Anything you need.”
“Um, no.” Oscar looked down his nose at me. “You lucky asshole.”
At least two people kicked him simultaneously.
He sighed. “Fine. I have your back too. Even though I don’t know why you need anyone to have your back since you’ve seriously been dating for five minutes and already found someone you want to see more than—Ow!”
Ronnie smiled pleasantly. “All he needed to hear was the first part, darling.”
After that topics mostly shifted to the usual orders of business—work, wedding stuff, family of origin updates, wedding stuff—and away from me, which was nice. But it left me with too much time to think. Was I really trying to do this? Date someone? Was I really trying to bill myself as a person who could...do that?
I’d barely dated in college. Barely. If this job required experience, I’d be distinctly unqualified. Plus, I’d left my last (literal) engagement at the last (literal) moment without any warning. No, I guess I could have walked up to the altar and then turned and run for it.
But that was why I couldn’t get out of the limo. Because if I started walking, that would be it, I’d go through with it, even though in that moment I knew it was a bad idea.
I hadn’t known it until that moment. And Mase didn’t realize that until later. A long time later.
So how was I supposed to go into anything with that kind of track record? This whole thing was made of bubble gum and toothpicks. What was I thinking?
* * *
The nice thing about your ex being your best friend is that they don’t hold back. That’s also the worst thing.
“You got scared so you’re trying to justify backing out. Get your shit together, Swick-Smith.”
I leaned into him as we walked to our cars. “Remember when we were thinking about hyphenating our names?”
“Declan and Mason Swick-Smith-Ertz-Scott.” I could hear the grin in his voice. “Sometimes I wish we’d gotten married just so we could introduce ourselves as the Swick-Smith-Ertz-Scotts.”
“And send Christmas cards. ‘From the home of the Swick-Smith-Ertz-Scotts.’ It’d be us in front of a fire holding up our phones with cute puppy photos.”
“Ha, like we wouldn’t actually get puppies, we’d just have pictures of puppies? Nice touch.”
“I don’t think we’re responsible enough for puppies, Mase.”
“Truth.”
It was nice, walking arm in arm with someone. Would Sidney be into that? I’d have to ask.
“Don’t get scared,” he said more seriously. “Have fun. You obviously have fun together, focus on that.”
“Yeah, but...” I wasn’t sure how to phrase the thing that kept niggling at me. “But like...what if I fuck it up again?”
He exhaled, breath white in the cold air. “Honey, you didn’t fuck it up last time.”
“I left you at the altar.”
“I was there. Yeah, okay, you definitely fucked it up. With regards to the wedding, not the relationship.”
“Uh, and the difference is what?”
He patted my arm. “Look, I wanted to be married. A lot. I thought you did too.”
“I mean... I thought I did? But then I guess it scared me more than I wanted it.” It still made me sad. Some part of me never stopped wishing I’d...wanted to be married as much as Mase had? Or maybe that I’d figured out I didn’t sooner? “I still don’t know how I could have not fucked that up.”
“Well. You could have, you know, told me before our families were all assembled and we’d paid for the catering.” Arm squeeze. “Before the invitations went out, even. Or, like, in that first conversation when both of us were all ‘Should we?’ you could have been like ‘Maybe not.’ Just spitballing here.”
“I didn’t know at that point, though.” It was simultaneously hard to remember that moment and impossible to ever forget it. “I was so excited. And you were excited. And it seemed like we could...do anything, be anything. Our future was this big open door and we just had to climb through.”
He smiled as if he was remembering that too. “Yeah. It really did feel that way. But what I worked out later, sometime after I’d stopped fantasizing about kicking your butt and before I casually asked Mia how you were doing like I didn’t actually care?”
I bit my lip. Giggling right now would be wrong. But I could so picture that. “I badgered all of them incessantly to tell me if you were okay.”
“I wasn’t.”