The Mistletoe Wedding

by Izabella Brooks

  I have to. I only have today. I mean, sure, I could go to North Carolina to see her, try to demand that she listen to what I have to say, but I’m sure she wouldn’t give me the time of day, which is why I didn’t go before. There’s something about her being back here, not on home turf, but close, that is different. It levels the playing field.

  “Okay.” Andy claps his hands. Finally. “Thanks everyone. Girls can go with Amy, guys stay with me.” He gives directions like he wishes he could work with the girls and give Amy us rejects, but obviously, he takes one for the team. Maybe he’s worried about getting kicked to the couch tonight. “We’ll do our separate photos, then we want just the bride and groom and then we’ll do the family photos. The rest of you can take a break after we’re done here.”

  Thank fucking god for that. My face is tired of holding it to the left so that the bruising isn’t apparent. I wouldn’t say I have a good side at the moment, but there is definitely a better one.

  Breona peels away from me and I swear she’s breathing hard. She can’t resist glancing over her shoulder as she bends to gather up the giant tote bag she’s been lugging around with her. It’s half the size of her and I give her props for taking the maid of honor thing seriously, especially because I’ve done such a shit job of being a best man.

  Her eyes are wild. Glowing. Huge. She blinks at me, and for a second, stares. Looking into those honeyed orbs, I feel like I’m back where we used to be. Friends. It’s funny how I always hated that zone so much. I’d do just about anything to be back there.

  I think she’s going to say something to me, but then she turns her head and scuttles away after Amy, Cozzie, and Arla.

  I trudge to do my duty, which basically means more of trying to keep my bruises and war wounds out of the photos Jake is going to have to look at for a lifetime.

  We do all the stupid poses that are social media worthy, then, because we’re us, a few ridiculous ones which will never make it onto any sites. Ever. We give Andy a finale to remember, undoing our belts and pulling down our pants to flash him the stupid pink boxers with the red hearts that Jake bought us all to wear. God, if the guy wasn’t practically the brother I never had… While Andy is capturing what is no doubt the better side of us at the moment, a shriek goes through the air.

  That can only mean one thing. The parents and grandparents are here.

  We hurry to straighten up and fix our tuxes and I catch a glimpse of Barbara charging down the beach like a mad hornet. Sand sprays up for her pumps—yes, she’s actually walking in heels on the beach—while she eats up the distance. She looks less like a dragon and, with her scorching red cheeks, more like a pissed off crab. I chuckle at the mental picture and give Jake a sympathetic nod. “Good luck with that, man. We’re out.”

  Andy is already busy trying to tackle the disaster of the families before they even start. Jake trails off to help them and, in the distance, Arla rounds a bend and comes running. She has her white shoes in her hand, her dress and veil trailing in the breeze behind her. Her face is flushed, but her lips are pursed with determination and, as usual, her gaze is locked on Jake. Behind her, a flustered Amy is trying to keep Arla’s dress presentable, which is a real task, given the sand flying in all directions.

  I really hope these guys charge a hell of a lot for their services. I wouldn’t last a minute if I had their job. Besides that, weddings suck.

  The rest of us get the hell out of the way. Bryn wanders off with Trell, heading towards the limo in the parking lot. I just hope Trell keeps him from getting into any of the mini bottles in the car. The guy seems hell bent on self-destructing today. I want to ask him what the fuck is going on with him, or with him and Cozzie, but that’s not going to get us anywhere but into another fight, and I think Arla and the girls have had about all they can handle for today.

  Speaking of Cozzie, she rounds the same bend Arla just came from, a point where the beach changes direction and veers off. She spots Bryn and Trell, but purposely heads the other direction, even though the girl’s limo left. She strides towards a group of benches in the distance.

  I let her go. She wouldn’t tell me anything anyway.

  I round the bend and spot Breona immediately.

  She’s sitting on the sand, on top of her sweater, which is splayed out underneath her like a makeshift beach towel, staring out at the ocean. She hasn’t heard me coming and her shoulders are sloped inward, her hands arranged around her knees, which are tented up. Her bare feet are buried in the white sand. She’s vulnerable, sweet, so beautiful and unguarded it’s like a kick right to the mouth. My dick agrees with my brain’s assessment and the fucker nearly tears straight out of my pants.

  Great.

  I stick my hands in my pockets to hide the fact that I’m currently sporting a tent big enough for an entire family to camp in, and amble down the beach in what I hope is a casual gait. Not that it matters. Breona doesn’t look up. She’s lost in her own world until I clear my throat from a few feet away.

  Her head whips around and she stares at me with huge eyes. Eyes so naked and large and dark that they seem to encompass the entire ocean crashing against the sand only a few feet away.

  “It was you,” she huffs. “I know it was you.”

  “Of course it was me. Who else would it be?”

  Breona’s nostrils flare. “That just smacks of guilt. Obviously your conscience finally got the better of you. If you think paying off my student loan is going to make me forgive and forget, you don’t know me at all.”

  “No,” I admit. My hands stay firmly in my pockets, because all her rage is just making me harder, fucked up as that is. “But I did know you. Once.”

  Her eyes narrow, ready for war. “I thought I knew you too, but we both know how that ended up.”

  “It ended up with you storming off to North Carolina in a huff. It ended up with you not listening to anything. Not reason, not me, not your family, not your friends. No one. You were so determined to make it as a one-woman island—”

  “I did make it. I did. I made it just fine, without any of your help.”

  “That’s not what you were saying yesterday. Yesterday, you blamed me for stealing your scholarship and racking up all that student loan debt. I took care of it for you, as you suggested I should. I didn’t pay it off because I’m swimming in obscene amounts of cash like you think or because I felt guilty. I paid it off to get your attention. I want to talk. I want us to get the truth out there. I want you to believe me, once and for all. That’s why I paid it. So that you know that I’m being perfectly honest.”

  “Oh, really?” She doesn’t move or unfold herself or storm at me, but I can tell she wants to. She doesn’t want to give me the pleasure of seeing her react, but she can’t keep emotion from storming her face.

  “Can we cut the shit for a second? The truth is, if I hadn’t gotten that scholarship, you wouldn’t have either because I told you that your essay needed work and you handed it in anyway. You didn’t do a good job of quoting your sources and that’s what they didn’t like. It had nothing to do with me taking it and using it or stealing passages from it. I never would have done that. I tried to help you and you didn’t want to listen to me. I can’t help that they didn’t like it. There were twelve other people besides me who wanted that scholarship. One of them would have gotten it.”

  That pretty much does it. If Breona’s face wasn’t a thunderstorm before, it is now. “Right. Well, each of them could have used it as badly as I could have. You were the only one who didn’t need it and you took it from us.”

  “I didn’t. I didn’t take it. I earned it.”

  “You did take it, because you didn’t need it.”

  I don’t want to talk about this now. Not tomorrow. Not ever. I can’t help myself and the words tumble out before I can stop them. “I did need it. I did. You had no idea what was happening at home. What was going on. I did need it, because my mom left my dad in December of that year. He was a drunk. He fucking hit h
er for years. She finally couldn’t take it anymore and we left. Moved in with her parents. I stayed at school because she didn’t want anyone to know. My asshole father kept everything. She’d signed a prenup and he didn’t give her a cent.”

  Breona’s mouth drops open, because why the hell wouldn’t it? She was one of my closest friends, besides Jake, and even he didn’t know what was going on until years later. I never told anyone what kind of hell it was for me there.

  “Karsyn, I…I…”

  “No. Don’t say anything. Don’t say you’re sorry. Don’t say you didn’t know or that I should have told you what was going on. I know I should have. Maybe. I should have told someone. Gotten some help for my mom before she snapped. It’s lucky it was a good snap and that she was fine after she got herself a job and the support of her family. She’s happy now. She actually has a boyfriend. They’ve been together for three years. I should have gotten help for her before instead of letting her deal with the drunk asshole my dad was.”

  “That’s not your fault,” Breona says, the same token shit that most people want to say. I don’t blame her. What else is there for anyone to come up with?

  I choose to ignore it. I turn and stare out at the ocean, so infinite and wide and beautiful. So unfathomable, just like the clusterfuck that is life.

  “He finally came around last year. Not for her, but because I’m his only kid. He decided to give me my share of the house when he sold it. A hundred grand. Of which I just spent almost half paying your loans off. So there it is. Now it’s all out there. I did fucking need that scholarship. I didn’t take it from you. I would have been glad if you’d won. If I could go back, I would have edited your stupid essay for you and forced you to hand it in instead of the other one. I would have made sure you went and I didn’t, because then at least you would have stayed and at least you wouldn’t have wound up hating me.”

  That sounds like a pity party, but I can’t help it. It’s the truth. It might be pathetic. I might as well have just served her my balls on a silver platter, but I can’t fucking help it.

  Breona stares at me for a second like I might be a python ready to constrict around her, wrap her up and choke the life from her, but then her lips wobble, not into a smile, but not into that hard, pulled down line either. She pats the sand beside her, and like the pathetic, obedient puppy that I am, I go.

  I plop down right beside her, tenting my legs like she has. We’re so close. So close, but not touching. So close that I can literally feel every single movement her breath causes as it rushes out of her lungs.

  It’s just her. And. Me.

  Alone.

  On this stretch of beach, it feels like we’re completely isolated from the rest of the world. Everyone else is doing their Christmas Eve shit and apparently that doesn’t include a stroll on one of the nicest beaches in the world, so we really are alone for the moment, but it’s more than that.

  I feel like we’re back. The old Breona and the old me. She looks at me with such open vulnerability that it hurts just about every single aching pit I have yawning inside. I feel naked. Stripped bare. Back to my old self too.

  She’s looking at me like she sometimes looked at me in high school, and maybe I’m not as much the old me as I think, because I realize she’s staring at me expectantly. Openly. Like she wants me to close that brief gap of distance between us and kiss her. The old me wouldn’t have. The old me would have second guessed and doubted and talked myself down.

  Not this time. Fuck that. I am not passing up this opportunity. If she doesn’t want the kiss, well, she can just add it to my long list of transgressions.

  I set one hand on her shoulder and a tremor rips through her and hits my splayed fingers. She thrusts a hand out to push me away, or so I think until it rests gently on my jacket with no force behind it.

  Her eyes flutter closed and her lips part, an open invitation that I am not going to turn down in any lifetime.

  Breona might not like me, but I’m pretty sure she doesn’t hate me anymore, not now that I thrust a huge confession between us and made myself ultra-pathetic. She might just be kissing me out of pity or as a token thank you for the sixty grand of debt I just made vanish for her, but god, I’ll take even that. I’ll take it because all that hate was ripping me to shreds. I’ll take it because I’ve been in love with her for somewhere around fourteen really, really long years.

  I lean in and smash my lips to hers.

  Yeah. I’ll take it and then some.

  Chapter 9

  Breona

  I don’t know what I’m doing.

  I mean, I do. I’m kissing Karsyn so hard that our teeth smack together. He doesn’t stop. I don’t stop. He pulls at my bottom lip, sucking it into his mouth. I let him do that too. The hairs on my arms and at the back of my neck stand up. I can’t stop them. I’ve made this man public enemy number one for so long it feels like a betrayal of myself to be doing this.

  Karsyn’s big, strong, slightly calloused hand slips around to the back of my neck. He squeezes me protectively, but there is also something primal in the gesture. His teeth sink into my lower lip and I let out a hiss of pain. My lips part and his tongue bursts through the seams and pushes into my mouth, so hot that I know that I’m probably going to die right here on the beach in the middle of the sand.

  Which would be extremely inconvenient and terribly disappointing for Arla and Jake and everyone involved.

  I plant a hand between us, on Karsyn’s rock solid tux covered chest. I push hard, and even though I don’t have the power to actually move him more than an inch, he pulls away. We’re both breathing like a real mess, gasps and heaves and vibrations everywhere.

  “We can’t do this,” I gasp. “Oh my god.” I stare at his perfect lips. They’re a much brighter, unnatural shade of cherry than before. “You have my lipstick all over your mouth.”

  “I’d like to have something else coating my mouth.”

  It’s the dirtiest thing anyone has probably ever said to me. I’m not one who likes dirty talk in bed. Or out of it. Coming from Karsyn, though, it’s enough to make my legs tingle right into my thighs. The spot between them too.

  “I…god. We need to get that lipstick off before someone comes this way and sees. You can’t go back looking like that. That stuff was supposed to be all day wear.”

  “I doubt they had this in mind when they designed it. It’s my fault. Earlier, when I saw you wearing it, I imagined wrecking it completely.” His pupils dilate and I panic.

  I scramble off my sweater and dive for my tote, looking for the makeup wipes that the makeup people supplied us with. They should be right next to the blotting papers which I tucked in the far right pocket of my tote. My hands are shaking so badly that holding them feels like an impossibility.

  Something jumps up into my throat and I’m not entirely sure, but it feels like a cross between my pulse, hammering wildly, and my heart, which is beating out of control. Maybe that’s the same thing?

  I finally find the stupid pack of wipes right where they should be. I dig one out and practically hurl it at Karsyn. I know I’m a mess. Wild eyed, my lips probably swollen. My own lipstick is likely all over the place.

  Karsh takes the ridiculously tiny wipe in his massive hand—a hand I don’t remember being that big when we were in high school, but I do remember wanting to touch it to see if it was soft or hard, warm or cold. Basically, I wanted to feel what boy hands felt like. They’re no longer the hands of a boy though, Karsyn is all man. Well, the parts of him that don’t look like a Greek god or a freaking sculpture or something.

  I dare a glance at his face, which is a mistake. A lock of dark hair, mussed from the wind, curls over his forehead. His pupils are still blown and his lips are swollen, even though the lipstick is gone. His eyes narrow and he smirks when he catches me studying him. I want to look away, but that would be admitting defeat, so I keep my eyes trained on his.

  “Just because you paid for my student loan doesn’t m
ean we can…that we can…I have a life back home. It doesn’t have you in it.”

  “No? Last time I checked, you were single.”

  “Yeah, well, I happen to like it that way. I’m not looking to start anything up.”

  His brow arches. “That’s fine by me. As far as I know, weddings are a good place to hook up. I don’t care that you’re going back home. You want to promise me one night? I’ll take it.”

  Something inside me sinks at that and leaps all at the same time. I don’t want to be his one-night stand. I tell myself that’s because I don’t want to be his anything. We’re both standing in the sand, him in his stupid dress shoes which have to be full of half the beach by now, me barefoot. I’m a good half a foot shorter than him, but he seems so much larger. We’re only a few feet apart and something dances between us. A strange, electrified current, like lightning just zapped the beach right between us. I’m scared to breathe. Scared to speak. Scared to do or say anything.