Meg's Best Man: A Montana Weekend Novella

by Bruner, Cynthia

  She looked over the crowd for a moment. Whether it was nostalgia for their own weddings or a sense of longing for what Josh and Leah had, there was that faint undercurrent visible on their faces. Meg felt the joy of having Leah in her life, but this was also an exclamation point on the end of her youth. Of course the summers with Josh had ended almost a decade ago, but this made them seem even farther away.

  He was a married man now, not just her cousin and playmate. He would have his own family someday, and although she would be involved with them, they would not be her family. She felt like she was losing a brother. She looked over at Mark, and when he saw her face he put his arm around her and gave her a hug.

  It was amazing how much a loving touch could make a person feel better.

  Still, there was truth to her sadness. She felt as if she was standing still. It was time to point herself in a direction, even if it was one she didn’t expect, and get going. God, please help me recognize the doors you want to open for me. Help me to see the plan you have for my life and to take it. Don’t let me pass right by in the busyness of my daily life.

  Meg was lost in thought, wondering what the future held for her as she watched the couple exchange rings and Joshua lifted the veil to kiss his bride. The crowd whooped and cheered. Meg stood with the other guests as the newly married couple walked back down the aisle. For just a moment she saw Brie and Gage walk by. Brie was facing her way, one hand in the crook of Gage’s elbow and the other resting on his arm, and she was looking up at him with a radiant smile. Gage was facing away, so Meg could only guess he had the same look on his face.

  Her stomach did another flip. It was just a quick glimpse as they walked by, but there was something about it that seemed so wrong. Her brain knew they were probably dating. If he was dating Brie and flirting with Meg, he was a jerk. And she wasn’t even sure he’d been flirting with her. From what she knew of him, all of the attention he paid her probably had more to do with him being weird than being attracted to her. And he lived in Texas. How convenient that she kept forgetting that part.

  But there it was. A sick small feeling that said wrong. This wasn’t how it was meant to be. She was supposed to be there with him. She was supposed to be the maid of honor, and he was supposed to be her best man. Meg closed her eyes and took a deep breath, hoping to clear the insanity that was running rampant in her brain. It had been so long she’d forgotten that a crush could tweak every synapse, making you believe only what you want to believe.

  She rubbed at her temples with her fingertips. This was stupid! She was nervous and half sick just thinking about the man, and the day before she would have given anything to make him leave her alone. Stupid, stupid. “Stupid.”

  Mark leaned sideways to give her a quizzical look. “You okay?”

  She gave him a bright smile and nodded, hoping he would think it was someone else who had been talking to herself like a crazy person. As people filtered out from the seats, Meg realized she had missed Caleb and Cadence walking down the aisle. She hoped they had gotten over their irritation at having to walk together, since they each thought their sibling was the least cool person in the world.

  Meg thought about the hug Mark had just given her, and she had a funny feeling about him. He was different, her little brother. There had always been something special about him. He had a talent for sensing what was going on with other people and for addressing it with compassion. She gave him an admiring look and found him trying to flirt with the girl next to him as he nervously wrung a piece of paper to death. Well, he was still a guy.

  The wedding party walking toward the back of the cabin, where the pictures would be taken. The wildflowers up there were beautiful, and the late afternoon light would be perfect. Everyone in the wedding party looked amazing… especially the tall Texan. That same man was offering his arm to the fox in the green dress again.

  Meg needed to get busy. She saw Catherine by her Expedition and went over to see if she could help change the event from wedding to reception. But Catherine would have nothing to do with that. “You will not mess up your pretty dress,” she informed Meg. Meg peeked a look at the notebook in Catherine’s hand and saw a diagram drawn of where each food item was to go.

  “I didn’t know you used cheat sheets,” she teased.

  “You just wait until you get as old as me, and you’ll need them too. Meg, check the front seat for the lighter, would you please?”

  Meg checked and found one between the seat and the center console. She returned it to Catherine, and Catherine immediately passed it off to one of her workers. They all did her bidding cheerfully, probably because they had mooched more than a few delicious meals off her. All of Joshua’s friends had.

  “Mom,” Caleb called, “they need you for the photos because they’re going to do the family stuff first. You too, Meg.”

  Catherine issued her last instructions rapid fire and gave Meg a gentle push toward the cabin.

  “Aunt Catherine, Caleb must have been mistaken. I thought the formal photos would only be for the wedding party and the immediate family.”

  Catherine spun on her heel. “And what does that make you, Meg?”

  She knew that look. It meant that she would be much better off if she gave the right answer. “Um, family?”

  Catherine scowled, which wasn’t the worst she could do, but Meg hated it. “Get moving,” Catherine ordered. “Besides, I can tell you’ve been wanting to sneak up there. You’ve looked that way at least a dozen times.”

  “No I haven’t!” Meg had to move fast to follow the other woman. As she headed toward the back of the cabin, Caleb and Mark joined them. Leah and her mother were being photographed. The photographer, an older and relentlessly cheerful woman, was forcing them into a real hug. At first Leah’s mother was very self-conscious about her dress, the angle of her hips, the set of her chin, but for one moment their eyes met and they both laughed, and the camera spun off a few shots. “Good timing,” Meg mumbled.

  “I thought so too,” a voice behind her said. It sent a chill straight down her spine and a blush to her face.

  Meg turned to find that Gage had been standing there, pressed up against the back of the cabin and half hidden by the lilac bush. She scowled at him. Catching herself doing it, she wondered if she looked like Catherine when she did. She fought to make her expression neutral, even casual, as she said, “I didn’t see you standing there.”

  He was standing with his arms crossed, one boot heel back up on the cabin, his hat low over his eyes, and a stalk of grass hanging out of his mouth like a western cliché. Standing that way pulled the cuff of his long, dark jeans up just high enough for her to see that his black boots had red roses on the shafts. He caught her looking. “You want a pair, don’t you? Well, you’re out of luck. They’re custom made.”

  “You had boots custom made with roses on them.”

  “They look good, don’t they?”

  She looked him in his amber eyes. Everything about him looked good, from his broad shoulders to the points on the end of his unexpected boots. “Well, you do line dance,” she teased. Then he gave her that grin, the one that was an invitation she wanted to accept, and Meg forgot how to speak.

  Mark’s hand on her shoulder made her jump. “Aren’t you going to introduce me, Margaret?” her little brother asked. His voice sounded deeper than usual. She wasn’t used to having a man protect her, not since the days Joshua and Jacob kept potential suitors at bay, and she was surprised to find that she appreciated it more than she had back then.

  Gage straightened up, tipped his hat back, and held out his hand. “Mark, right? I’m Gage, Joshua’s friend. He has told me so much about you. I’m really interested in this youth counseling website you’re proposing.”

  Mark took his hand and shook it earnestly. “Josh has told me a lot about you, Gage. I’m glad to finally meet you in person. Are you interested, really? Because I’m still trying to find support for it.” Her brother slipped right past her, and t
he two men wandered back over to the cabin together. So much for protection, she thought.

  The next hand on her shoulder was Catherine’s. “Gage is a good one,” she said with an encouraging smile.

  “I’m not looking for one, Aunt Catherine.”

  The older woman raised one eye. “Seems to me you’ve been looking for him all weekend.”

  Meg remembered that Catherine had planted the seed in Gage’s mind to help her park her camper the night she arrived here. This tricky woman was not to be trusted. “He has a girlfriend.”

  Catherine tilted her head to the side a little, but very little emotion showed on her face. “Did he tell you that?”

  “No. I just thought it was obvious, that’s all.”

  “What’s obvious? That you are jealous?”

  Gage and Mark were walking toward them, and he was staring right at her. Meg’s breath caught. Somehow Gage had heard those words over his conversation with Mark, the noise of the wedding guests below, and the directions the photographer was giving. She was sure of it. She would have to remember that the wild mustang in her story had freakishly good hearing. Catherine turned to Gage and crossed her hands in front of her belly as he walked closer. She wouldn’t.

  “Meg was just telling me that she thought it was obvious that you had a girlfriend. Oh, look, it’s time to get my picture taken with the newlyweds. Jacob? I think it’s our turn now.”

  Gage’s face had a line drawn down between his brows she had never seen before. He didn’t deny it, he didn’t ask her anything, he just looked at her and it made her squirm. Desperate for a distraction she turned to Mark. “What is this about a counseling website?”

  “It’s nothing,” her brother said. “I’ve accepted an offer at Trinity Texas College, and I’m working with the counseling department to set up online counseling. The trick is providing multiple access points with hack-proof security. Since I’ll be doing a double major in Bible Studies and technological science, I’m kind of their dream come true. I’m getting free room and board and a tuition waiver.”

  “Texas what?”

  “It’s a Christian college near Austin. I saw it when I visited Josh down there. Lots of cute girls with awesome Texas accents. And since I’m probably going to be a pastor like Uncle Jeffrey, it seemed like a good move.”

  Meg felt like she was watching a movie. She was emotionally involved, but the action that went on around her was far beyond her control. How could it be that the Texan knew more about the life decisions of her little brother than she did? She and her brother wrote just about every day, didn’t they? How had she missed something so important?

  “I didn’t know that,” she said.

  He shrugged. “It’s a pretty recent thing. It’s been in the back of my mind for a while, but I just woke up last week and knew that’s what I wanted to do, so I drove down there and did a job for them at their mountain campus for a weekend. Summer camp, basically.”

  “You’re basing your whole life on a weekend trip?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, kind of. I know what I want, and that’s it. I know there’ll be bugs to work out, but there always are. I’m ready to commit to a college, and that’s the one.”

  “But there are a lot of colleges, Mark.” She wasn’t sure why she was trying to talk him out of it. It sounded like this could be a good college, but becoming a pastor was such a huge decision. Besides, so many things that sound good at first turn out to be horrible mistakes. He needed to think about the future.

  “Yeah, there are a lot of good colleges. And this is one of them.” He gave her a slow punch to the arm. “And it’s mine now.”

  Catherine called to her and Mark, and they made the trek over to the photographer. Meg kept the rest of her questions to herself for now and put a smile on her face. The photographer had a knack for making people feel comfortable, and in no time they were all laughing and trying several funny poses. She might have a stupid look on her face in those photos, Meg thought, but she knew they would be a lot more interesting than the studio shots she had seen from other people’s weddings.

  Leah asked for a photo of just the two of them, and Meg was happy to be asked. Then it was time for the real bridesmaids and the bride to be photographed, and Meg watched for a while. Joshua stayed nearby with a smile on his face. He couldn’t take his eyes off his new wife. Meg wandered a little farther away. Catherine and Jacob had left, probably to manage the wedding reception buffet. When she realized that Gage was headed her way, she ducked into the outhouse.

  “Coward,” she whispered to herself. Then she whispered, “Hello, Mouse.” The first moose she had ever painted was on the wall of the outhouse. She tried to make it look like a happy moose, sticking his head through a window directly over the seat. Catherine had sent her in there to paint the walls blue and maybe put a flower here or there, but that hadn’t happened. One of Joshua’s buddies had told her a story about having a moose come right up to him as he was busy relieving himself in the woods, and it inspired her, in a way.

  She found out she liked painting a moose, and she put another one in a fake pinup calendar painted on the door. That was for Jacob, who had talked about his own father’s racy calendars with a mixture of disapproval and fondness. After finishing the outhouse, she drew more moose for the fun of it, and that was how Mouse the Moose came to be.

  Meg carefully opened the door a crack. She couldn’t see anyone or hear anything but the distant laughter of the girls. She slipped out, closed the door softly, and started out at a fast pace.

  “Hey,” Gage said from right behind her. He must have been standing next to the outhouse the whole time.

  Startled, she spun on him. “First you sneak up on me in the shower, and now this? You have a problem, you know that?”

  Gage pointed at the outhouse, shook his head, stuttered, and his ears turned red. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to do anything wrong.”

  Meg took her hands off her hips and crossed her arms over her chest. “What did you want?” she said more softly.

  “I wanted to talk to you about something. About what Catherine said. I just wanted you to know that I’m not dating anyone.”

  Meg tried to look as if that couldn’t matter less to her. “You’re not dating Brie?”

  There, a flicker in his gaze. “No.” She waited, knowing that wasn’t the whole truth. “I used to go out with her. And she got the idea that I wanted to go out with her again, but I didn’t.”

  “And how did she get that idea?”

  “From me,” he said. He stepped back to look around the outhouse, evidently to make sure that Brie couldn’t hear him, and then came back to Meg. “Listen. I don’t want to say very much, because it’s really between me and her. But I think you’ve probably already heard that I was a jerk to Brie in many ways. In just about every way a guy can be a jerk, as a matter of fact.”

  “Did you hurt her?”

  “No. Well, yes. I didn’t physically hurt her, I’d never do anything like that. But I hurt her heart.”

  You’ve probably already heard. No, Leah had not told her anything specific, but Gage seemed to think she had. And Brie hadn’t said a single word, not that she had any reason to. Meg wondered if she’d ever heard the words “I hurt her heart” spoken out loud before. He said it as if it mattered to him, as if he regretted it.

  At the same time, Meg felt as if she was at the tip of some kind of iceberg. Why say anything to her? Come tomorrow he would be gone, and so would Brie, and they could work out their maybe-get-back-togetherness in Texas. Gage wasn’t done talking, though. He took a step closer to her. “I just want you to know that I’ve done some pretty awful things. I have a past that’s, well…”

  “Checkered,” she supplied, using Leah’s word.

  He nodded.

  “Why are you telling me?”

  That seemed to take him off guard. “I thought it might matter to you.” His amber eyes searched her face, and his shoulders slumped. He seemed to be looking f
or the right words. “I have a bad reputation and I did a lot to deserve it. I’ve worked really hard this last year, and although that may not seem like a lot of time to you, I’ve learned a lot. And I guess I was hoping that you and I could be friends. Because I really like you.”

  “You don’t know me,” Meg stated. She ignored the little rush that came with his last words; that was just her silly girl self feeling flattered. “And I’m not sure what to think about you. And since you live in Texas—”

  “Oh, Gage’s charm extends far beyond Texas.” Meg hadn’t even realized Brie was there until she stepped around the outhouse, a stiff smile on her face. “It’s nice that he likes you, but I wouldn’t put too much stock in it. Gage likes all the girls. Don’t you, honey?”

  Gage looked at her with an expression that Meg could not read at all, and he said nothing.

  Brie came a little closer to Meg, and she could see that Brie’s neck was flushed red, despite her cool tone of voice. One hand held her bouquet tight at her side, and the other was crossed over her middle. Her French manicured nails dug into her own arm. With a nod of her head she tossed her red hair over her shoulder. “Meg, I see you’ve gotten to know Gage better than I thought. I guess when I wasn’t here he expected you to stand in for me in more ways than one. Maybe stand is the wrong word, though.”

  Meg felt embarrassed and guilty, although she was sure she hadn’t done anything to feel guilty about. With a sinking feeling, she admitted that though she hadn’t done anything wrong, Gage had been haunting her every thought. If he was committed… What was that about her thinking they were getting back together? She tried to talk and her voice came out sounding squeaky before she got it under control. “I didn’t realize you and Gage were dating,” she said, hoping to get the truth out on the table.

  “Well, we haven’t dated for some time, but my phone has been ringing off the hook for the last month. ‘We need to get together, Brie. I need to see you right away, Brie. We’ve been through so much together, Brie, please give me a chance.’”