Page 68 of The Bartender's Baby

Nate kissed my jaw, his beard soft against my skin. He used this beard oil that smelled delicious, and sometimes I found myself dragging his face down to mine just to get a whiff, let it soak into my skin so I still smelled him when he left for work.

“Did you drink enough water today?” he asked, and I pointedly ignored him. “Tabitha,” he chided, steering me out of the bedroom.

“I don’t want to have to pee every five minutes.”

He took my hand to lead me downstairs. “I think you’ll have to pee every five minutes, regardless of how much you drink.”

In the kitchen, he filled up my Maleficent water bottle to hand to me.

“I can’t take this with me.”

“Why not?

“It’ll be weird, me carrying this around the whole time.”

So then he shrugged and tucked it under his arm. “Let’s go.”

I didn’t bother with a bag since I had my own personal man-sized purse, and I let him usher me out to the car, parked in the back. Gen and Dylan’s wedding was at the historical society’s building downtown, only two blocks from where Nate’s new wine bar and bistro was located.

After we parked, he laced his fingers with mine and waved to another couple, Liam and his fiancée Kennedy, making their way inside. They slowed so we could catch up, a little boy antsy between them.

Kennedy greeted me with a hug. “How are you feeling?”

“Terrible,” I said, only half joking.

As promised, Gen had put together a little girls’ night with Kennedy and Brooke a few weeks ago. It was fun. We ate junk food and watched a few rom-coms and talked about our guys.I’d never had very close girlfriends, and while I hadn’t known Kennedy or Brooke that long, we all got along. We would have to anyway since all four of our men were best friends. Where one went, they all followed, and if they had their own little club, Gen said we’d need one too.

Brooke had suggested Tits and Tater Tots, and we all agreed, so our group text thread now had a name and a little graphic Kennedy had put together of a tater tot with red lipstick and big boobs.

Now, Kennedy gently squeezed my arm. “Not much longer until Frogger’s here.”

I nodded in agreement as Liam scooped up his son to introduce him to me. I’d heard about Finn, the hyperactive little boy and the reason Liam and Kennedy had met, when she was hired to be his nanny.

“Finn, this is Tabby,” he said. “Can you say hi?”

“Hi!” he shouted, while waving a dinosaur in my face. “This is Rex!”

“Hi, Finn,” I laughed as Nate held out his hand to him for a high five.

“Volume down, buddy,” Liam said. “Everybody can hear you fine in your normal voice.”

Finn merely kicked to get down and then tugged on Kennedy’s hand so she’d lower her big purse. The little boy plucked out a snack-size bag of cheese crackers. He tore it open, the crackers spilling everywhere. Kennedy bent in her dress to pick them all up as Finn proceeded to put his mouth on the ground and literally hoover them up.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Liam muttered as Nate tossed his head back to laugh before kneeling down to help with the crackers.

“Don’t worry,” Kennedy told me cheerfully as she stood, about half the crackers in her hand. “They’re not all like Finn.”

Thank god for that. He was adorable with his glasses and messy hair, like his dad, but that kid wasa lot.

“Yeah.” Liam slapped Nate’s back. “I’m sure yours is gonna be an angel.”

I shook my head in amusement and accepted a cracker when Kennedy held her hand out to me. Why not?

By the time we found the room, Finn and I had polished off the crackers, and we all ducked into a row of open seats. A few minutes later, Jude showed up with Brooke, his two kids in tow. Sebastian was somewhere between eight and sixteen—I couldn’t remember if they paid me—while Amelia, the little girl, was in kindergarten. They filled out the rest of the row, Finn playing on the floor in front of us.

Gen had told us this would be a kid-friendly wedding. They wanted to include Dylan’s kids, so they decided to let everyone bring their kids. But according to some of my quick math, there were still only about eighty people here, even with the few young ones included.

Dylan appeared at the end of the aisle, his four-year-old son Tucker next to him, both of them in navy suits and pink ties. Dylan jutted his chin in our direction as his attention skirted over the guests. When it landed on a few people in the front—his family, I assumed—he smiled at them then took a visible breath, his shoulders rising.

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