Page 96 of Leave

“Dude, no.” Chase shook his head. “I’m bringing a Sharpie. We’re drawing dicks.”

“Oh, grow up,” Andrew said. “Obviously we doboth.”

Matt facepalmed, and the saleswoman, Riley, and I laughed.

“No passing out,” Matt muttered. He looked at me with exasperated eyes. “It’s good, though? Really?”

I nodded and took the jacket off the hanger. As I put it on, I said, “Fits great. Is the color good?” It was a rich gold color that I’d thought was kind of ugly on its own, but it didn’t look too bad once I had the jacket on.

Matt quirked his lips. “I’m not sure yet.” To the saleswoman, he asked, “Do you have that style and size in other colors? We don’t have time to special order, so I have to go with whatever you have on hand.”

“Let me go take a look in the back.”

“Thanks.”

I grimaced. This would’ve been a lot easier if I’d been able to do a fitting a few weeks or months ago. It also would’ve been easier if he’d had me wear my uniform, but I’d have stood out like a sore thumb. As the best man, there needed to be a slight difference between me and the other groomsmen, but not so different that I was mistaken for the groom. Sophia had also vetoed a white tux for Matt, so now he was pulling his hair out trying to find something that fit her aesthetic.

He clearly didn’t mind too much. Right now, he was a little stressed, trying to put his finger on exactly what would work without throwing things off, but he wasn’t annoyed with his fiancée. He really didn’t care about the tuxes or what he and his boys looked like as long as the final result made Sophia happy.

And she wasn’t a bridezilla by any means. Like him, she was stressed, and he was trying to keep that to a minimum. Handling the look of the male side of the bridal party took some pressure off her; it was one less detail she had to think about, and from what my brother had said, all those small decisions were killing her.

“I swear,”he’d told us on the way in today,“planning a wedding is like death by a thousand cuts.”

“You’re not wrong,”Riley had commented from the backseat.“One of my friends is sure that at least half of women accused of being bridezillas are just down to their last nerve. You spend months being asked about the thread count of napkins nobody will ever notice and how many ice cubes should go into each drink, then see if you don’t turn into a stark raving psycho.”

Matt and I had both grunted in agreement.

Shaking my head, I’d said,“I don’t think my platoon did that much advance planning before we went into a combat zone.”

“You probably did,”Matt said.“But everybody did some of it. It didn’t fall on one person’s shoulders to figure out exactly where every bullet in every gun would be stored.”

I’d made a face.“Ugh. No.”Then I’d elbowed him.“So what are you doing to keep her from going crazy? Hmm?”

Matt had gestured at the mall coming into view.“Handling the tuxes, for one thing.”

“Uh-huh. And?”

He’d rolled his eyes.“Besides coordinating with the bartending company, making all the arrangements to rent extra tables and chairs, and hand writing all the invitation envelopes because my beautiful bride writes like a serial killer?”He’d punched me across the console.“Nothing, asshole. Not a goddamned thing.”

I’d just chuckled as I’d rubbed my arm.

Yeah, I had to give him credit. He was hardly a passive groom who sat back and let the bride handle everything.

The saleswoman came back in with a handful of fabric swatches. She and Matt looked over them as she told him which ones were in stock in my size.

He pursed his lips. “You know, as much as I don’t want to put anything else on her shoulders…” He took out his phone. “I should get Sophia’s opinion.” He took a picture of me, then started thumbing a text to his fiancée.

“Good idea.” The saleswoman smiled at the other groomsmen. “In the meantime, let’s bring out everyone’s tuxes and make sure we have everyone’s sizes correct.”

The guys all nodded, and she left again. I’d already tried mine on, since everyone was most concerned about mine. The rest of the guys had been measured in the store for theirs, so she’d been confident she had everything correct for them.

“You would think measurements would be universal,”she’d told me apologetically as she’d brought mine out.“But you’d be amazed.”

“Not really,”I’d said.“The tailors on-base have fuck—err, they’ve screwed up my uniformsseveraltimes.”

“I don’t doubt that.”

Fortunately, mine had fit. And as the other guys tried theirs on, everything seemed good there, too, though Tristan’s waistband was a little tighter than expected.

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