My Maid of Honor Took My Groom, So His Best Man Took Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Veil
At the altar the maid of honor lifts Kirsten's veil, kisses the groom and says he is hers; the best man says the maid of honor is his fiancee, and Kirsten finds the honeymoon tickets in his jacket carry the maid of honor's name on her card, takes them and walks up the aisle on his arm.
Shea lifted my veil with both hands and kissed my groom on the mouth.
I stood at the altar with my bouquet and watched my maid of honor do it.
A hundred and forty people watched with me.
Then Shea stepped back, wiped her lip with her thumb, and said it loud enough for the back row.
"He's mine."
Nobody moved.
Todd stood there with his hands half raised, and he did not push her away.
He smiled at her, a small relieved smile, and then he looked at me and made it careful.
"Kir," he said. "I was going to tell you after the photos."
After the photos.
I had been standing on a cliff in lace for forty minutes, and he had planned to tell me after the photos.
In the second row, Todd's little sister put both hands over her face.
Todd's mother looked at her lap.
I looked at Shea's left hand, still resting on his lapel.
It was bare.
It had been bare since the spring, when she told me her ring was being resized.
Behind Todd, the best man stepped down off the platform.
Brennan Driscoll was six foot three in a rented gray morning coat.
He had stood beside the groom the whole ceremony without looking at anyone.
I had met him four times.
He crossed the grass, and every head on the bluff turned to follow him.
He did not look at Todd.
He took me by the arm, just above the elbow.
His palm was hot through my lace sleeve, and his grip was steady.
I leaned into it before I knew I was going to.
"So is my fiancee," he said.
He had a voice that carried, low and flat, from years of talking over engines.
"Or she was."
Shea's face changed.
"Brennan. Not here."
"You picked here," Brennan said.
"I can explain."
"She gave me the ring back in March," he said to the chairs, to the officiant, to Todd's father in the front row.
"I kept quiet because she asked me to. She said it was Kirsten's summer."
Someone in the third row gasped, a real one.
Todd let go of Shea's hand then, and I saw it land.
He stepped toward me, and his voice went soft and reasonable, the voice he used on customers at the boatyard.
"Kir, come on. Let's not do this in front of everybody."
"You did it in front of everybody," I said.
"We have a flight tomorrow. Brennan, give me the envelope. It's in your jacket."
Brennan looked at him for a long moment.
Then he reached into his breast pocket and took out a long white envelope, creased from sitting against his chest for an hour.
"You handed me this at three-thirty," he said. "You said hold on to it."
Todd put out his hand.
I took the envelope first.
Brennan let me.
It had the airline's blue logo in the corner, and the flap was only tucked.
I pulled out two printed e-tickets, folded once.
The first one read MERCER/TODD.
The second one read LUND/SHEA.
I read it again to be sure I had the letters right.
Shea had booked our honeymoon in April.
She had said it was her gift, a surprise.
She had asked for my card number for the deposit with her head on my shoulder.
At the bottom of the page, in small print, was the line that paid for both seats.
Card ending 4417.
That was my card.
"That's my card," I said.
Nobody answered me.
The wind pulled at my veil, and I took it off.
I folded it twice and set it on the nearest white chair, and then I faced the bluff.
"The cake is paid for," I said. "So is the bar. Please stay and eat."
A few people actually laughed, short and shocked.
Todd said my name.
I tucked the envelope down the front of my bodice, where it scratched.
Then I turned my arm in Brennan Driscoll's hand until I held on to him instead of the other way around.
I walked back up the aisle on my own wedding day.
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