Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 53238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 266(@200wpm)___ 213(@250wpm)___ 177(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 53238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 266(@200wpm)___ 213(@250wpm)___ 177(@300wpm)
Mara jumps up from the couch, clapping and squealing. “My best friend is gonna be a pro hockey wife!”
“Are you sure?” Dex asks me.
I nod, imagining Olivia, Charlotte and Hallie’s expressions when we tell them the news. It makes me smile. “I’m sure.”
“Then we have a wedding to plan!” He looks over at Harry. “Gay man party-planning superpowers, activate!”
“We’ll have to do it indoors, obviously,” Harry says. “I’m thinking fall neutrals? Bring the outdoors in?”
“Perfect.” Dex flips to a fresh page in his notebook, the pro/con list forgotten. “We’ll need to go dress shopping immediately and secure hair, nail and makeup appointments.”
“You guys, this isn’t going to be a real wedding,” I remind them. “We just do a quick formality at the courthouse.”
Dex and Harry laugh.
“Have you met us?” Dex asks. “No fucking way are we letting our girl have some dreary pantsuit wedding at a courthouse.”
“No fucking way,” Harry seconds. “You’ll have at least a hundred dozen flowers, the best food money can buy and a tiara.”
“Maybe a vintage pearl one,” Dex says, writing in his notebook as he says it.
“I don’t know if Carter will want any of this.”
Mara scoffs. “Don’t give him a choice.”
“Because it’ll be so great to marry a guy who’s scowling at me during the ceremony.”
“Trust me, if you tell him he doesn’t have to do a thing but show up and pay the bills, he’ll be thrilled.”
“Tuxes.” Dex is still talking while writing. “We need to know if he has one and we’ll need bridesmaid dresses for all the girls.”
“And me, asshole,” Mara says.
“Wait, bridesmaids?” I silently plead with Mara for help on this one. “I think that’s a bit much.”
“The girls will want to be part of it,” Harry says.
“It also significantly ups my chances of hooking up with a groomsman if I’m the maid of honor, so...definitely bridesmaids,” Mara says.
I can’t argue with that. Still, the wedding plans are growing by the second, and I haven’t even told Carter yet that I’ll marry him.
I shake my head and sit down. “I hope this is the right decision.”
Mara comes over and bends down in front of the chair, so we’re eye level with each other.
“You know me. I’d never tell you to do this just so I could hook up with a hockey player. This is a chance for you to get out of debt and leave all that shit with Tyler behind you forever. For five hundred Gs, I’d do a lot worse than marry a pro athlete for a year.”
I blow out a breath, thinking about prying the quarters that were my tip out of dried, spilled beer during my last waitressing shift at the bar. Coming home exhausted at 1:00 a.m., smelling like fries and having to get up for my day job the next day. Mara is right--this will hardly change anything with my day job, and it will mean no more second job and years of scraping to pay off Tyler’s loans. All I have to do is move into Carter’s house and convince people I love him.
“Okay.” I nod, feeling more confident. “Dex, we’re also going to need a tux for a pig.”
He doesn’t look up from his legal pad. “Groom’s is already on my list, babe.”
I smile. “No, not him. An actual pig. Carter got the girls a micro pig for a pet. They’ll want him to be part of the ceremony.”
“Put a photographer on your list,” Mara tells Dex. “I have a feeling this wedding will be something we all look back on later and laugh about.”
I wonder again if I’m making a huge mistake. If I am, at least I’ll have my closest friends by my side as I formalize it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Carter
“Uncle Carter, look at Darling!”
Hallie holds up the pig she won an argument with Olivia about naming. He’s officially Darling Maxwell Stanton now.
Just a few months ago my house was empty other than me. Today, it’s full of people. There’s a pink two-tier cake in my dining room, my wife-to-be is getting ready in my bedroom and I have a pet pig wearing a tuxedo.
“What the hell, man?” Bash speaks out of the corner of his mouth, his smile still in place. “We need to alk-tay right ow-nay.”
I roll my eyes at his pig latin. My teammates were understandably shocked when I announced after practice yesterday that I was getting married today. I told them Suki and I had a secret whirlwind courtship. Knowing how opposed I am to even being in a relationship, Bash is convinced I’m being framed or something.
“Carter, the photographer needs you.” Suki’s friend Dex, our volunteer wedding planner, is a dead ringer for the actor Tom Holland. “She wants some photos of just you and then just you and the girls.”
I hold back a shitty comment about hating photos, nodding instead. Suki’s friends are taking this wedding way too seriously. In the back of my mind, I’m wondering if she might have a thing for me that they know about. If they think there’s any chance we’ll actually fall for each other, they couldn’t be more wrong.