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“No idea,” Auntie Helena said with a flit of her fingers before she danced away.
Brax hung his head, shaking it in defeat. “We’re so doomed.”
Marsh patted his best man’s back. “If you didn’t know that already where Lily was concerned...”
“Oh, we know,” Holt said, moving to stand.
“Stay,” Marsh said, already on his feet. “I’ll send her your way.” He caught Levi’s gaze as he wove through the tables, tipping his head toward the kitchen breezeway.
Levi met him there. “What’s going on?”
Marsh hated to deepen the divot that had already formed between his brows. Today was supposed to be filled with fun and smiles, but teenage hearts didn’t care for adults’ timelines. “Boy troubles, I’m afraid.”
Lips pressed together, he took only a second to reach the same conclusion Marsh had. “I haven’t seen Reese since we first got here.”
“Me either.” Hand in the small of his husband’s back, Marsh led him down the breezeway and around the outside edge of the kitchen where February, Hawes, and Celia were prepping dessert trays with Celia’s daughter, Mia.
“Texas!” came a loud, high-pitched shout as soon as they rounded the last corner. In front of the pantry door, Lily looked exactly as Marsh had imagined, red ringlets wild, color high on her freckled cheeks, tiny hands fisted on her hips. “Reese was an as?—”
“Language!” David shouted from the other side of the door, and even through wood and over the kitchen noise, Marsh could hear the tears in his voice.
“He left,” Lily declared, standing firm.
“I told him to,” David countered.
Marsh crouched in front of Lily and gently palmed her shoulder. One protector to another. “You did good, sweetheart. Thank you,” he told the tiny, scary tyke. Definitely a Madigan. “We can take it from here.”
She didn’t look convinced. Thankfully, Mia knew the way to her cousin’s heart. “Hey, Lily, you want to help me with these cupcakes?”
She bit her lip, big brown eyes darting between them and Mia. “You got this?”
“We got it,” Levi assured her.
She didn’t need to be told twice, the siren call of frosting too tempting to resist. Marsh accepted Levi’s hand up and mouthed a Thank you to Mia.
“Can you toss me the candied ginger from in there?” she called.
Marsh nodded while Levi knocked on the door. “David, can we come in?”
The bottle of ginger appeared first, then a tear-stained David. His cheeks were as red as Lily’s had been, albeit for a different reason, and Marsh’s heart broke for the kid. He tossed the bottle to Mia, then slid inside the pantry, leaving the door cracked this time in case anyone needed them for something else. He leaned back against the shelves while Levi sat cross-legged on the floor next to David.
“What happened?” Levi asked.
“Reese is a freshman next year, and he—” His words caught on a tearful hiccup, and Levi slung an arm around his shoulders, hugging him tight against his side. “He didn’t even want to spend the rest of the summer together.”
Marsh and Levi had worried this was coming. Reese was two years older than David, and while the rising freshman had clearly been into David when they’d spent time together in San Francisco, he hadn’t made much time for David otherwise. David, despite his and Levi’s warnings, had gotten attached, though Marsh suspected it was more to the idea of a boyfriend than to Reese himself, given the two didn’t have much in common.
He pushed off the shelves and crouched in front of David, hand on his son’s knee. “Reese doesn’t know what he’s missing.”
David glanced up, then away, his free arm flopping at his side. “I mean, I knew it wasn’t long-term.” Sniffling, he reached behind Levi and grabbed a napkin from the stack on the shelf he’d clearly already raided, judging by the mountain of tissue balls at his feet. “It wouldn’t last with him at Duke and me at Davis, assuming I get in there. But I thought maybe I’d get a trip to North Carolina out of it.”
“We don’t need Reese for that,” Marsh said. His other best friend, Sean, owned a house with his wife and husband right on the Carolina coast. “We can go to Casa Henby-Paxton whenever you want.”
David returned his gaze to them, eyes bright. “For real?”
Snickering, Levi rose and lightly kicked Marsh’s knee. “You so got played.”
Marsh shook his head. “Nope, I got a trip to Hanover out of it.” He reached out a hand to David, palm out for a high five. “Wins all around. We can check calendars for some dates after the wedding.”
