Page 9 of Finally a Bride: Best Friend's Brother

“That makes sense. You always enjoyed carrying around a notepad and taking notes.”

I laugh. “I never thought of it that way. I was preparing so long ago.”

“So in your professional opinion?”

“Gonna be hard but she’s resilient. She’s going through the stages of grief quickly.”

Mallory’s voice floats from her place on the front porch. “Cedric, come on… you’ve just got cold feet. Please, baby… yeah, I know. You’re… but what about…” She walks around the corner and her voice trails off.

“Bargaining stage.” I motion with my head. “As her friend… I don’t know which is hard to say. I think that maybe what she thought was M2B was her wanting to be loved and that’s scary to consider. How do you really know?”

“Wow, deep.” McCabe says softly.

“Yeah, kinda my thing, I’ve been told.”

“Well, fuck you, too, Cedric! Fuck you and I hope that she gives you crabs!”

McCabe chuckles. “What stage is that?”

I try to stop a giggle, but it sneaks out. “I think that’s the reality stage of friendship. I need to stop her before she says something she might really regret.”

But he cheated? That sucks. It’s like knowing you had less of a person than you thought you had. You thought you had them wholly and it was only a portion. The reality was a lie.

“Good idea.” He pushes off and with his long legs he’s there before me. “Mall, hey, you don’t need to talk to him, if you don’t want to.”

“You’re right, bro. I don’t fucking want to talk to the goddamn cheater.” She ceremoniously hits the circular hang-up button. “He was seeing another woman for the last year. One from his firm. They’ve been sneaking around…” her body starts to crumble and McCabe scoops her into his arms and I get the door.

We take her to her room upstairs and she crawls under the covers.

“I just want to sleep… and never wake up.” The sleep is depression, but the “never wake up”— that’s definitely not good.

“She’ll be better in the morning, right?” McCabe asks.

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll never be okay,” Mallory says sobbing into her pillow.

And that breaks my heart. She can’t believe in tomorrow. I still believe she can find happiness. But she can’t see past right now.

We close the door and I bite the side of my lip.

“Maybe I should go…” I don’t look up at him. Part of me wants him to ask me to stay.

“Do you need to be somewhere?”

“No. Just don’t want to be in the way.”

“Classic Ella.”

My brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

“You always sat in the corner and waited for everyone to take up space.”

I cross my arms on my chest. “And you took up your space and three other people’s, Mr. Trouble.”

His chest puffs out. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He turns and heads down the stairs two at a time.

Shit. That was great.

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