Good Boy (WAGs #1)(14)

She lifts her chin, and it almost looks defiant. Almost. “He’s on a golf weekend in West Palm.”

“Ah.” Wes’s face shuts down. “You didn’t tell him you came, did you?”

Slowly she shakes her head.

Wes inhales deeply. “All right. Well. This is Jamie—” He lays a hand on my brother’s arm. “And Cindy and Richard and Jess.”

“We’re so glad you made it,” my mother gushes. “Maybe we should change our processional a little bit? Would you like to walk your son down the aisle?”

Both Wesleys shake their heads at the same time. “Please carry on,” Mrs. Wesley stammers. “I’m just happy to be here.”

Wes clears his throat. “Mom, we’ll talk more later. We have to, uh, get this show on the road before Jess here bursts a vessel.”

“Let’s find you a seat, Ang,” Blake says, offering his arm.

She takes it, and they walk off slowly until Blake points at a vacant seat near the front and walks her to it.

We all stare after them.

“Wow,” Jamie whispers as she sits down.

That’s pretty much the only word on my mind, too. I’d just spent the last three months in anguish over the fact that Wes’s family wouldn’t show up for his wedding. I had my mother call the Wesley household in Boston. The calls were never returned. I wrote a personal letter, which was ignored.

And Blake Riley just waltzes up with Mrs. Wesley and plunks her into a rental chair. Unfuckingbelievable.

“All right!” Blake booms as he rejoins us. “Let’s get hitched! Give ’em the high sign, J-Babe!”

He’s right, of course. The musicians have been playing Pachelbel for longer than Pachelbel was alive. I wave to the minister, and she steps gracefully out from the sidelines to take the podium. The musicians segue smoothly into the Bach piece I chose for the processional, because my brother insisted that the wedding march is only for chicks.

Then my father puts an arm around Jamie’s shoulder. “Let’s line up, shall we?”

Jamie nods, and the two of them step out of the tent and wait for the rest of us.

Blake reaches out to grab Wes’s shoulder. “I’m proud to stand up for you, man. Let’s do this thing.”

Wes flashes him a grateful look. Then my mother takes Wes’s hand, kisses him on the cheek and says, “Ready, honey?”

He smiles back, and the two of them line up behind Jamie and my dad.

The music notes climb up my spine, breaking out as chills across my back. And suddenly I’m not ready. Jesus. My baby brother is getting married, and Wes’s mom made the right choice at the last minute. The music is really pretty, my eyes are hot and my mouth is as dry as a desert.

I’m getting all gooey and the wedding hasn’t even started yet.

“Deep breath, Jessie,” Blake murmurs. “Everything is fine.”

He’s right. It is. But there’s no time to agree.

With a gentle firmness, he takes my arm and leads me to the front of the group. There is nothing in front of me but the pretty green grass of the aisle. The guests turn and look toward us.

This is it. I’ve been planning this for three months. I hope I’ve pulled it off. Maybe I’m about to get my period, because I’m drowning in emotions right now. And so much could still go wrong…

“Ready, and…” Blake whispers.

I step forward with him. Once. Twice.

Just as people turn to watch us, he actually grabs my butt.

It must be divine intervention that I manage not to shriek. Instead, I do a sort of awkward shimmy that almost takes me down onto the grass, but I recover quickly. “Oh my God,” I whisper out of the side of my mouth. “Why do you torture me?”

“You looked a little glassy-eyed. Needed to make sure you wouldn’t faint on me. Better now?”

If I had a knife, he’d be dead right now.

We walk down the aisle together, and I hope the photographer doesn’t capture my feral smile.

We reach the podium and, right on cue, we take our places on opposite sides of the minister. We turn to forty-five degrees just as we’d rehearsed, and I give Blake a death stare. He smiles kindly at me.

When I look at the crowd, they’re all watching Jamie, Wes and my parents. The four of them look radiant. My parents take their seats, my brother arrives at my side a few moments later, and I give him a little unrehearsed hug because I can’t help myself.

“Dearly beloved,” the minister begins. “We are gathered here today to celebrate the union of two very special young men…”

My attention is drawn to a sniffle in the front row. Oh boy. It’s Dyson. He pulls an embroidered handkerchief out of his breast pocket and blows his nose. Loudly.

The pastor makes some introductions and then invites my mother up to read Emily Dickinson’s poem “Forever is Composed of Nows.”

It’s beautiful, but the poem takes me too deeply inside my own head. It reminds me that I need to move forward with my own forever by getting the now part right.

My brother Joe reads a Walt Whitman poem, and then my sister Tammy stands up for her reading. She carries baby Lilac up to the podium, and everyone says “Awww.”

Smiling, Tammy reads a bit of the judge’s ruling that overturned Proposition 8 in California. “Marriage under law is a union of equals,” she finishes, and the audience claps.