This is my wife.
I couldn’t stop rolling the word around in my head. Wife. It felt good. It felt substantial. It made me want to climb over her, say it over and over again into her ear, tattooing it in her thoughts.
You’re my wife, Plum.
Jensen jerked me from this train of thought when he clapped a hand over my shoulder. “Married, Will.”
I looked over at him, repeating with a curious smile, “I know, Jensen.”
“To my little sister.” His eyes narrowed as he pointed a mildly threatening finger at me. “That’s weird, right?”
We’d had this conversation one other time: over dinner, after Jensen had walked in on us—me beneath the counter, Hanna bent over it with the skirt of her old prom dress shoved above her waist while I went down on her. Luckily he didn’t see much . . . but he certainly saw enough to deduce what was going on. In true Hanna fashion, she kept on the dress, put on a pair of sneakers, and made us take her out to pho to smooth over the potential weirdness. Jensen had been surprisingly unfazed until the middle of the meal when he dropped his chopsticks with a tiny clack against his bowl and announced, “Holy shit. You’re going to be my brother.”
Hanna and I both knew we would be married eventually, but hadn’t been quite ready then. At the time, we’d laughed. We were certainly ready now.
Jensen walked over to one of the leather chairs near the window and sat down. “Did you ever imagine this day? The day of your wedding, you’re getting ready in here with me, she’s down the hall getting ready with the Pride?”
I shrugged. “I figured I would find the woman for me, or I wouldn’t. I don’t think I gave it much thought.” I lifted my chin, inspecting my handiwork in the reflection. “Now it seems impossible that in some alternate universe I don’t meet up with Hanna. What if she never called me? What if I’d never shown up to run that morning?” Turning to face him, I blinked. “God, that’s horrifying.”
He could have teased me for this rare sentimental view, but didn’t. “I can assure you this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I suggested she call you to hang out,” he said, running a finger over an eyebrow. “But here we are. The next time you see her, she’s going to be walking down that aisle.”
I glanced over at him, having wondered on and off for the past few days how this event felt for him. Hanna and I would be married in the same private garden where Jensen had married his college sweetheart. And where Hanna’s older sister, Liv, had married her husband, Rob. Unfortunately, Jensen’s marriage to his girlfriend of nine years had lasted only four months.
Jensen broke into my thoughts before I could think of what to say. “Are you imagining how it’s going to go down?” he asked.
“Of course. I’m wondering if she’ll trip on her way down the aisle or stop mid-journey to hug someone she hasn’t seen in years. Hanna always surprises me.”
“Or if she’ll give up walking altogether and just sprint toward you.” He laughed quietly. “And it will never stop being weird that you call her Hanna.”
“I can’t imagine calling her Ziggy,” I admitted, and then shivered. “That feels pervy.”
“Because it is,” he said. “You were seventeen when she was ten. When my little sister was ten, you were sleeping with the mother of one of your bandmates.”
I shot him a disgusted look. “Are you trying to make me feel gross?”
“Yeah.” He laughed, standing to clap me on the shoulder again just as Bennett and Max pummeled my hotel room door.
Two
Hanna
I stepped back, staring at myself in the mirror.
“That’s . . . a lot of white,” I mumbled, swiping at the skirt of my dress. Behind me, Mom and Liv gasped emotionally.
“Are we sure I shouldn’t have gone for blue? Red? Something that maybe communicates ‘I have banged this man daily’ versus ‘virginal’?”
Mom let out a quiet “Hanna.”
“What? No one down there is going to see Will in a tux and buy that I didn’t climb all over—” I stopped midsentence, catching sight of Chloe behind me. “Are you . . . Oh my God, Chloe. Are—are you crying?”
Chloe reached for a box of tissues—one of many placed around the large bridal suite—and pulled one free, using it to carefully dab beneath each of her perfectly lined eyes.
“No,” she scoffed. “It’s dusty over here.”
Liv paused with the curling iron held midair and looked back over her shoulder. “I realize I’m the new kid here, but something tells me that’s not normal,” she whispered.