Page 196 of From Rivals to I Do

Chapter Eleven

Looking at himself in the mirror, Abel turned his nose up at the suit. He looked down at Charlie, who was sitting on the couch by the mirror, watching him as he put on the jacket and now the tie. The suit was about as nice as one might expect a rental to be. Black jacket, black slacks with pleats ironed in them, neatly pressed white shirt.... The fit was a little tight around his arms, but he was sure he wouldn’t be busting out of the tuxedo like the Hulk.

Still, he looked good. He wished he looked better. He tried to do little things to spruce up his look. His shoes had been polished to a new car-level shine. He even put a carnation on his lapel for an extra touch. “I look okay. Right?”

He turned to Charlie, who was sitting on the corner of the couch, smacking his gum loudly. He just turned eight last week and was already starting to sprout up like a weed. He had been sitting with his long legs tucked underneath him, watching Abel fuss over his tuxedo.

“You look great,” said Charlie between chews of bubble gum.

“Hey, remember to spit that out before we go out there. Your mother will kill me if she sees you chewing gum in that suit.”

“Okay, Abel-y.”

Abel smiled to himself. Camilla didn’t like Charlie to call him that. She preferred he called him Uncle Abel or perhaps Mr. Delgado. Charlie could never get the hang of either, so, Abel-y it was. At least for the next hour or so.

He thought about that for a second. They had never sat down and had the talk about all this with Charlie. They did in a rudimentary sense, of course, but little things like what Abel would be called after it was all said and done kind of flew out of the window.

“Hey, come here a second.”

Charlie got up from his place on the couch and walked over. Abel marveled at how little he had been when they first met. He stood just a few inches shy of his hips then. Now, he was almost as tall as his chest. The boy was going to be taller than his mother before he was ten.

“So,” he said, kneeling down to talk to him on his level. “After today, maybe Able-y isn’t the best thing to call me, you know?”

Charlie frowned a little. “Why not?”

“Well…things are going to be different, right? So, we must do things differently, that’s all.”

Charlie’s face was overcome with sadness suddenly. “But I like calling you Abel-y.”

“I know and you can still call me that, if you want, but…but if you ever feel like maybe you might want to call me Dad…I wouldn’t mind it. You know what I mean?”

The sad look went away in an instant and he nodded brightly. “Okay. Want to hear a secret?”

“Sure, kiddo.”

“I’ve been calling you Dad in my head already for a while now.”

Abel’s heart got warm, and he felt the familiar sting of tears coming to his eyes. “Hey, that’s awesome,” he said. He glanced down at Charlie’s bow tie and noted how crooked it was. “Here, let’s fix this thing.”

He untied it and started retying it back. “You know, one day, I might be doing this again when you’re bigger.”

Charlie looked confused for a moment. “When? When we go to church?”

Abel opened his mouth to say no, but then he remembered there was Christmas and Easter Sunday and that made him chuckle. “Okay, so, yeah, at church, but also maybe if you ever decide to…you know.”

Charlie gave him an odd look. His nose crinkled into a scowl. “Nuh-uh. I am never going to get married.”

Abel chuckled. “Never say never. Girls might look a little different to you in a few years. He got the tie straight and stood up, looking at the two of them in the mirror. “What do you think?” he asked.

“I think we look pretty sweet.”

Abel chuckled. “Yeah, me, too. You are a good Best Man. You know that?”

There was a knock at the door and Abel glanced at his watch. It was still a little early, but maybe the priest needed something from him. As he walked to the door, he heard Camilla’s voice on the other side.

“Don’t open the door.”

He frowned. “Camilla? What are you--?”

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