Page 168 of First Shift

Mikey and I spoke at the exact same time:

“I am an asshole.”

“He is an asshole.”

He laughed, delighted, flipping his hand palm-up on his thigh. His eyes flicked down to it and then back up, his fingers waggling in a “gimme” gesture.

“To be clear,” he said. “I look at him with stars in my eyes all the time, even when I’m calling him a fucking weirdo.”

“You’re the fucking weirdo,” I mumbled, feeling the corners of my mouth tip up as I set my hand in his.

“I got you,” he mouthed.

He did. He always would.

Reluctantly, I dragged my gaze from his to glance between Bell to Ethan, then Morrison and Sebastian. I took a deep breath, then let it out, expelling my trepidation with it. This was a safe space. These men had our backs.

“Okay. What do you want to know?”

“First of all, how did this happen?” Morrison asked.

“Well,” Mikey began, his face splitting into a shit-eating grin that I knew meant he was planning on having fun with this. “When two boys love each other very much …”

THIRTY-NINE

CALLY

Morrison, who’d been in the process of swallowing, choked as his beer went down the wrong pipe, his eyes watering. Sebastian smacked him on his back, his face devoid of any outward reaction to our news.

“You’re getting married?” Bell’s voice went up several octaves, hitting a pitch I didn’t know he was capable of making.

“Yes,” Mikey said, sounding completely unflappable as he tipped back his own beer. I wondered if anyone else had noticed the way his hand was shaking. “At eleven o’clock. If you can be there, great. If not …” He shrugged, as if he didn’t care either way.

To be clear, he cared—a lot. Mikey was a deeply sentimental person and it was important to him that we had some show of support—though I wasn’t sure he’d ever admit it.

“Are you out of your mind?” Morrison wheezed, wiping his mouth with the arm of his sweatshirt “You’ve been together for like two months. Be honest—is one of you being deported? Or did Callahan finally actually murder someone and now you need to invoke whatever law it is that says spouses can’t be forced to testify against each other?”

“We love each other.”

“And that’s great,” Ethan said diplomatically. “But is marriage really necessary?”

Mikey turned to look at me. “It is,” he whispered, his answer for me, and me alone.

For the next hour, the three other hockey players in the room tried their damnedest to talk Mikey and me out of getting married. Or—at the very least—holding off on getting married.

Ethan gave us a stern, pragmatic lecture, citing all the ways our careers could suffer when word of our marriage got out. In rebuttal, Mikey pointed out that Bell’s career hadn’t suffered one bit when news of their relationship broke. Bell had flashed him a flat, unimpressed look, saying, “Neither of you are me.”

No, we weren’t, nor did we want to be. That man loved the spotlight in a way that was simply unnatural.

For his part, Morrison kept saying we were so damn young and stupid, and that we should definitely wait until our pre-frontal cortexes fully developed before making a decision like this.

Sebastian, who had remained suspiciously silent throughout, suddenly cleared his throat. “I think it’s nice,” he said, twisting the silver cufflink on his left sleeve between his thumb and forefinger.

Morrison spun on him, his tone incredulous. “You do?”

Sebastian nodded. “They’re in love, and they want to commit themselves to each other in a real, tangible way. No one’s forcing them to get married. They want to.” He looked our way. “Just to be clear—no one is forcing you to do this, right?”

“Correct,” I said at the same time Mikey said “nope,” his lips popping on the P.