Page 2 of Just One of the Groomsmen
Addie rolled her eyes. That’s what she got for giving him an accidental compliment.
Every single one of her boys had egos the size of pickup trucks, and the many girls who’d fawned over them through the years didn’t help any.
Shep raised his voice, speaking above the din. “So, you guys might recall I’ve been seeing Sexy Lexi, going on almost a year now.”
“How could we forget?” Addie quipped. “You talk about her nonstop.” She glanced at Tucker, who’d yet to meet Shep’s girlfriend, thanks to busy schedules and his last canceled trip. “Seriously, we go to get a beer and watch the game, and it’s Lexi this, Lexi that.”
Shep didn’t frown at her like she’d expected, grinning that twitterpated grin he often wore these days instead.
“She’s actually very lovely,” she added, then curled her hands around the table. While his Southern belle girlfriend worked to hold it at bay, Addie didn’t think Lexi was her biggest fan.
She hated always having to downplay her friendship with the guys in order to not upset the balance of their relationships. Hopefully a little more time and getting to know each other, and Lexi would understand that Will Shepherd was more like a brother than anything.
All the guys were, and thanks to the fact they’d both stayed closer to home the past few years, she and Shep were even more sibling-like than the rest.
It wasn’t the first time her friends’ girlfriends were wary of her, and she doubted it’d be the last. Sometimes she worried she’d get left behind, just because she’d had the audacity to be born a girl.
Being the only girl in a group of guys was merely a technicality, though. It wasn’t that she didn’t have female friends or that she didn’t know a lot of great women; it was that she’d grown up with these guys and forged memories and they liked to do the same things she did.
It was why she’d gone by “Murph” more often than Addison Murphy, or any other variation thereof. Thanks to her love of comfy, sporty clothes, she’d been voted “most likely to start her own sweatshirt line” in high school.
A title she was proud to have, by the way.
Easton had been voted “most likely to end up in jail,” and ironically enough, he was now a cop, something they all teased him about.
Which reminded her…
“Don’t let me forget to make fun of your prissy car when this meeting is over,” Addie whispered to Tucker.
He opened his mouth, assumedly to defend himself, and Shep cleared his throat.
“Anyway, last weekend I asked Lexi to marry me.” A huge smile spread across his face. “And she said yes.”
Not at all what Addie had been expecting.
Marriage was such a big step, and it took her a beat or two to process.
But happiness radiated off Shep in waves, the guy who’d once rolled his eyes over “whipped dudes” long gone.
She was glad he’d found someone, even as a tiny part of her wanted to press pause on this night while they were all together, before everything changed in their group yet again.
“You get to bang Sexy Lexi for the rest of your life?” Ford held up his hand for a high five. “Bro.I remember when you had to work your ass off to score her number at that bar in Opelika, and Easton and I had that bet about whether her amazing rack was real.”
“Bro, that’s gonna be his wife,” Addie said.
“Yeah, have some respect,” Shep said. Then he put a hand to the side of his mouth and stage-whispered, “They’re one hundred percent real. I told you guys that, right?”
“Only, like, one hundred percent of the time you talk about her.” Addie smiled.
This was the one downside of being the only girl. Sometimes things got a little too TMI about the women they were sleeping with or hoping to sleep with.
Everyone continued to offer their congratulations, and after a few claps on the back and obligatory jokes about balls and chains, Shep said, “I want you guys to be in my wedding. To be my groomsmen.”
Addie’s stomach dropped.
“You guys” usually included her, but she knew the word “groomsmen” didn’t. “Ha!Y’all are gonna have to wear stuffy penguin suits and take hundreds of pictures. Have fun with that.”
Shep looked at her, and a sense of foreboding pricked her skin. “Before you go celebrating too much, you’re in the wedding party, too, Murph. I told Lexi I wanted you as one of my groomsmen.”
