Page 4 of Finally a Bride: Best Friend's Brother

“No, you weren’t, but did we really know the real you, McCabe?” she asks with a shrug.

It’s like I’m in the crosshairs of a sniper gun. My sister’s got bullets for words. That’s our mother coming out in her.

“What do you need help with?” I ask and shove my duffel bag into the corner.

I need to prove that I’m not the piece of shit everyone thinks I am.

The beautiful woman will have to wait.

TWO

Ella

“I don’t understand?” Mallory’s voice carries like a yodel from the top of a mountain. It’s the lung capacity from being a professional singer. “What do you mean not coming?”

Her head starts to fall and she grabs for the wall.

“No! No! No, but stop saying that!” She looks up and her eyes are glossy telling me one thing. She’s in over her head, drowning, and I need to step in.

“Give me the phone,” I say, waving with my hand for her to hand it over.

“But…he’s…” And that’s all I can understand before it drops into my hand.

“Hello, this is Ella, maid of honor, what’s the issue?”

There’s no reason to pretend there isn’t one. Clearly some shit is going down and I’m here to make shit go away.

“Hi, Ella, this is Vander, Cedric’s best man.”

“Hi Vander. What seems to be the problem?”

“Cedric isn’t doin’ the wedding.”

Doing?

“What do you mean ‘isn’t doing’?” It’s taking way too long for my brain to catch up to make meaning of what he said. “Is he sick?”

Mallory’s bottom lip curls in and she hugs herself shaking her head side to side.

“No. He’s decided that getting married isn’t for him.”

The phone falls from my hand and cracks loudly on the linoleum floor below where we were hanging fairy lights. Magical. Ethereal. And now, they look out of place and like they’re just too much. My skin tingles and I wrap my arms around my friend as she collapses into me.

Holding her close, her sobs become body-rocking.

I nudge us toward the back. “Hey, hey, let’s go into the women’s lounge and sit down.”

She nods against me as her feet shuffle toward the bathroom. I grab her cracked phone. Ironically, probably how her heart is right now.

And it’s the least of her worries.

Inside of the women’s restroom, she falls onto one of the sofas in a women’s resting area. I sit next to her, but I don’t know what to say to her. My chest burns from bile backing up.

What is there to say?

I can’t make it better. I can’t make it right. I can’t even think straight. This seems just cruel.

An event she planned from when she was a teenager and probably dreamed of years before that is now crushed.

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