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That, I wouldn’t take back. It was true. And though Jax didn’t refute it, he did pause for a second as if trying to decide if I was being serious. Unfortunately, I was being deadly serious. And in that moment, everything shifted.
Would he laugh? Reject me? Reject the gravity of what I’d just said to him?
“Good,” he said finally, standing. “That makes two of us.”
TWENTY-THREE
jax
There was something about a wedding, especially one in a small chapel in Sicily, that brought out an unusually sentimental side of me. I never dreamed of marriage or a wife, even if a family was something I wanted someday. But every time a buddy of mine got married, there was a little piece of me that thought, yeah, I could see it.
Today was no exception. And unlike the usual vague notion of a someday marriage that would probably happen, when Mazzie walked down the aisle and I got a peek of Gian’s expression, there was a very real longing to see Natalie coming down that aisle instead.
Ridiculous.
We weren’t even dating. Didn’t live in the same place. And yet, I’d envisioned it nonetheless, brushing it off easily until the next equally intrusive thought wormed its way into my brain.
She would marry eventually. And it would be another man.
The thought of Natalie,myNatalie, in bed with someone else was all the proof I needed if there was any doubt in my mind about the strength of my feelings for her. Which, to be honest, there wasn’t.
I liked her. A lot. And after last night? There was no fucking way on Monday I’d go back to Kitchi Falls and pretend none of this happened. We needed to have a little chat, Nat and I. Problem was, that would mean talking about the one thing whose absence had allowed Natalie to retract her claws for a few days.
“Here you go.” Natalie handed me a Peroni. She’d cried at the wedding, and if I weren’t mistaken, those were tears in her eyes now too as she watched Mazzie and Gian slow dance.
“Thanks,” I said, moved by the depth of her feelings for her friends.
The reception was in a huge courtyard of a restaurant two blocks from the church. The procession here was one of celebration and clapping, onlookers cheering the newly wedded couple. A perfect wedding, in my opinion. Not too big, family and close friends, in a place known for celebrating the love of both. Well done, Gian.
“Penny for your thoughts?”
I turned to her, Natalie in a pale-yellow silk dress that accentuated every curve. With her hair piled on top of her head, she looked like some kind of sun goddess.
“I was thinking about the wedding,” I admitted.
“Yeah? What about it?”
“Just that it was so...not Gian.”
She laughed. “I wish I knew this ‘old Gian’ everyone keeps talking about.”
“Be careful what you wish for.”
“If you could have three wishes, what would they be?”
“That’s a tough one.”
Actually it really wasn’t. One came to mind pretty easily. And by the way Natalie was looking at me, she could read the direction of my thoughts.
“That can’t be one of your wishes.”
“No?”
“No. To waste a wish on sex? I’m talking big wishes, like life-changing ones.”
I resisted saying that sex could be life-changing, refusing to consider that last night’s might have been. “Okay, life changing. Can I wish my mom to stay alive forever?”
“Nope. Immortality isn’t possible.”
