Page 42 of The Snuggle Is Real

That's it. Hi.

Are you okay?

Fine! Getting my hair done with Winnie and Lauren. Focus on MacKay.

The exclamation point is doing a lot of work. Emily doesn't use exclamation points. She thinks they're a sign of emotional weakness.

Can we talk before the ceremony?

The three dots appear. They disappear. They appear again.

It's a wedding, Malcolm. There's no time to talk at a wedding. Trust me.

I put the phone face down on the passenger seat and sit there with my hands on the steering wheel of the parked car.

I know what this is.

This is a downward trend.

Emily is in full retreat. Panic mode.

Preserve the friendship at all costs!

It runs through my head over and over.

But fuck, we’ve been doing that for fifteen years.

What has it gotten us?

Fuck all, that’s what.

I need a plan.

The ceremony is beautiful.

I know this objectively. The afternoon sun is coming through the stained glass windows. A string quartet playing a cover of something that I'm pretty sure Faith put on a playlist titled Cry Your Eyes Out. Faith walks down the aisle on her father's arm, and MacKay makes a sound like he's been punched in the chest, and my mother starts sobbing so loud that Great-Aunt Opal hands her a handkerchief from inside her hat. Today’s hat is sunshine yellow.

I stand at my brother's shoulder with the rings in my pocket, and I look for Emily.

She's in the fourth row on the groom's side. She's wearing a dress the color of cinnamon, and her hair is pinned up so the back of her neck is bare. She has a program in her lap and she's folding the corner of it, over and over.

Lucy McIntyre is sitting next to her on one side, Winnie on her other side. In Lucy's lap is Spice, the lopsided pumpkin, who is now covered entirely in rhinestones and has a tiny bow tie glued to his felt stem.

When the officiant asks for the rings, I hand them over with confidence that my brother is doing the right thing.

When MacKay says his vows—I didn't know I was waiting for you until you showed up—I glance at Emily.

She's crying.

Not the crisis-manager kind, either. Not the dab-under-the-eyes, check-the-timeline kind. Her mascara is going. Lucy has pulled a tissue out of somewhere and is handing it to her.

Emily said she hadn't cried at vows in years.

She looks up. Right at me. For one second, everything is there in her face, all of it, plain as fucking day.

Then she looks down at the program and folds the corner again.

That’s not going to work for me.