Page 16 of Take Me (Cherry Blossom Lake #5)
By the time we make it to the venue, we’re a little tipsy.
Somebody greets us—Sam’s bridesmaid, I think—with two fresh glasses of bubbly.
“Drink up,” she urges, pointing us toward a small barn to the side.
“Sam and Max ordered tons of this stuff. Guests are gathering in there for pre-funk snacks before the ceremony. I highly recommend the shrimp.”
“Thanks,” Mason says, leading the way to the side of the room where his siblings stand huddled together.
They look up as we near them, and their sudden hush says they were talking about us. “Hey, Mason.” Kaleb holds up a hand to high-five his brother as I shift to greet his fiancée.
“Brooke, you look gorgeous.” I give her a hug before greeting the others. Jake looks itchy wearing a starched shirt instead of fishing bibs or flannel. Zoe’s husband, Cal, still looks like a man who can’t believe he got lucky enough to persuade the sassy little librarian to marry him.
“Cheers,” Lucy says, clinking her glass to her twin’s. “To love in all its forms.” She glances at me as she says it, and I feel an odd sense of relief that she knows we’re just playing at dating.
But not everyone does. “I’m so happy for you guys,” Zoe gushes. “You make the cutest couple.”
Jake grunts in apparent agreement. “Never liked that guy you dated before.”
“Oh.” I’m not sure what to say to that. “I forgot Neil was closer to your grade.”
“He was kind of an ass.” Cal’s younger than us, but he nods like he shares Jake’s opinion. “Saw him stuck in the mud by Puffin Point the other night and didn’t stop to pull him out.”
“True story.” Zoe laughs and links her arm through her husband’s. “We were running late for dinner, but we did call the cops’ non-emergency number in case he was really in trouble.”
Cal shrugs like he would have preferred to leave Neil stuck there. “That new winch you installed works great, by the way,” he tells me. “Had to help some tourists who got caught on the beach at low tide the other day.”
“Glad it worked for you.” I talked him into the upgrade, so I’m happy he’s getting good use from the system.
Zoe pats his arm proudly. “Such a good guy.”
Jake grumbles something about idiot tourists, while Cassidy gently chides him for biting the hand that feeds him. Dragging idiot tourists out for whale-watching tours is how Jake makes his fishing boat pay in the off-season.
As we chatter and laugh, I soak in the warmth of the Spencer-King family.
I’ve always felt like an honorary sibling.
They absorbed me as one of their own the first time Mason brought me home.
It was just a few months after the accident, when my dad was still learning to navigate life without the use of his legs.
He was there, but not there in the way an eight-year-old girl needs her only surviving relative to be.
“This is Erika,” Mason announced as he led me into his grandparents’ living room. “We play flag football. She likes raspberry bubblegum.”
And that was enough to make me one of them.
All these weird thoughts I’m having about Mason—wet, naked, tingly-kiss thoughts—they’re just that. Thoughts. Mason’s my friend, and we’re practically family. There’s no way we’re risking any of that.
I drink more rosé, feeling buzzy and pleasant by the time someone clangs a big cast-iron dinner bell. “Please adjourn to the east barn,” shouts a woman in a gauzy blue dress. “The ceremony is about to begin.”
Mason takes my hand, and I jolt as I follow him out with the crowd. “I’m glad we did this,” he says as he squeezes my hand.
“Dating, you mean?” We’re surrounded by everyone, so I need to keep up the ruse that it’s real.
“Yeah. It’s so normal, you know?”
“Yep.” I hiccup, then giggle.
Lifting a brow, we make our way to the barn strung with fairy lights and wildflowers bursting from hand-thrown clay vases. We kick through the straw as he guides me toward a row of folding chairs near the back. “Are you tipsy?” he whispers.
“Maybe a little.” I stifle another hiccup.
“Same.” He squeezes my hand again as Kaleb and Brooke slide in beside us. Brooke claims the seat next to me, and she smiles when she sees our intertwined fingers.
“I love this for you.” She opens her wedding program as the cellist in the corner plays take-your-seats music. “And I love the barn wedding idea.”
Kaleb leans in to join the discussion. “It’s an option, you know. We’ve got plenty of barns around Cherry Blossom Lake.”
“We’re still deciding.” Brooke leans closer to me.
“I know it’s hopelessly old-fashioned, but I always imagined myself in a big princess dress with a church organ playing Here Comes the Bride and the sun streaming in through stained-glass windows.
The bridesmaids would all wear black, but different dress styles to suit their tastes.
Oh, and calla lilies everywhere . They’re so timeless, you know? ”
“Oh.” I guess I’m supposed to have a vision of my own? “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”
“No, I know.” Brooke gives a self-deprecating laugh. “I’m still sorting out how much of this is me clinging to some cultural norm of how it should be —which isn’t the healthiest reason to do something—versus just genuinely wanting the whole princess fantasy, you know?”
“Totally.” Something sour coats the back of my tongue. I remember Neil’s words in the weeks leading up to our split.
“What do you mean you haven’t ever thought about what kind of wedding dress you want?” He’d stared like I had sand crabs coming out of my ears. “My sisters say that sets the tone for the whole wedding.”
“I guess it could be white.” That’s as far as I got with a princess fantasy.
“For God’s sake, Erika. Are you picturing something with a huge train, or more like a tea-length thing? Fitted or froofy? This stuff matters.”
I had no idea what tea-length meant, but I rallied as best as I could. “I’d like to get married in the church where my parents did.”
He looked at me sadly, like we weren’t on the same page at all. “That’s fine,” he said slowly. “But someone has to figure out all the flowers and decorations. The theme and the dresses and whatnot. All the girly stuff, right?”
I tried to agree, since things had felt tense for the past several months. “I’ll figure it out,” I assured him. “Have you told your commander yet that you don’t plan to reenlist again?”
“Not yet,” he said, glancing away. “Soon.”
That’s what he’d said for ten years.
Swallowing hard, I pull myself back to the present. To Brooke thumbing through Sam and Maxine’s wedding program, murmuring praise for their chosen font.
The ceremony starts, and God, it’s gorgeous. Sam wears a lacy white dress that trails to the top of fancy blue cowgirl boots. Her eyes shine bright, and her flower crown tilts to one side as she floats down the aisle toward a big, rustic arch made of barnwood and twined with tiny white flowers.
Taking her place on the right, she turns to watch Maxine stride down the aisle with her flowing red hair held back by a gauzy white veil. She’s breathtakingly beautiful, clutching a cluster of burnt-orange roses and baby’s breath laced with blue thistle.
“God, she’s stunning.” Brooke dabs her eyes with a tissue. “I hope I look half that beautiful for my wedding.”
“Like you have anything to worry about,” I whisper back. Brooke Braham looks amazing even when she’s wearing sweatpants and no trace of makeup. “You’ll be a beautiful bride.”
“Thanks.” She glances at my hand wrapped up in Mason’s and smiles. As her eyes lift to mine, she winks. “So will you, when your time comes.”
I don’t get a chance to respond, since the officiant starts the ceremony. There are lots of sweet little moments, like Maxine’s mom and sister singing an upbeat rendition of Brandi Carlile’s “You and Me on the Rock.”
There’s a point after that where the brides perform rock, paper, scissors to decide who goes first with her vows. Snickers roll through the crowd when Maxine makes a quip about scissoring, then blushes deeply when she hears that her mic picked it up.
Mason laughs softly beside me. “That’s something I’d do,” he murmurs. “I’d say something goofy for only my bride to hear, and I’d end up talking dirty to everyone’s grandparents.”
“Sounds like my kinda wedding.” Why did I say that? “I mean, your future wife would have to appreciate your sense of humor, right?”
“Right.” Mason squeezes my hand again as Sam starts reciting her vows.
The brides wrote their own, and there’s tender stuff about love and loyalty intertwined with real-world details about mucking out stalls and spending their first-date anniversary on a book tour with Brooke.
By the time the brides get to “I do,” I’ve got tears in my eyes.
“You okay?” Mason murmurs, and I nod.
“It’s really beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
Something connects us beyond just our intertwined fingers. It’s probably all that rosé. Or maybe the fact that I almost forgot my parents’ last anniversary. I feel time slipping past with only my father to mark all the milestones.
My mother will never watch me walk down the aisle to marry some guy I probably haven’t even met.
I dash away tears, blaming the wine or the hay or the flicker of candlelight.
Mason hands me a tissue, and I pull it together, forcing myself not to look at him. Pushing back thoughts that keep crowding my brain like unwelcome wedding guests.