Page 18 of Never Not Friends

She squeezes my fingers. “You’re my best friend and the best maid of honor a girl could ever have.”

Guilt kicks me in the gut, hard enough that I forget how to breathe.

No, the best friend a girl could ever have wouldn’t be secretly in love with the groom.

“So exciting!” Blair says.

Camila echoes her, and the table fills with noise again, the kind where nothing is wrong.

But inside, something folds in on itself and stays there.

When Carly goes off on a tangent, Juliet turns to me.

“With how sick my mom is, I might need a lot of help to pull off this wedding in such a short amount of time.”

I find my smile. “Yeah, of course.”

“I should be able to do everything, but on the rare occasion that I can’t, would you be willing to fill in for me?”

“Anything you need. I can help with your mom or⁠—”

“No, my mom is super picky about who she lets help. I think it’s embarrassing for her to be this vulnerable, you know? So it’ll probably be wedding errands I need help with.”

Across the table, Vinny frowns. “Don’t put all that on Emma.”

The response flies out of my mouth before I even realize it. “I don’t mind. I’m happy to help with whatever.”

“You’re the best. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

Her smile is so sweet, so sincere. I can’t help but return it with one of my own.

As her best friend, it’s my job to help Juliet have the perfect wedding.

And that’s what I’m going to do, no matter how much it costs me.

The problem is mine.

Only mine.

EMMA

“Have I ever told you how much I hate Mondays as a schoolteacher?” Avery Anderson breezes into the teacher’s lounge like she owns the place, lunch in one hand, Diet Dr. Pepper in the other. She plops down across from me with a thud that makes my water bottle jump on the table. “Longest morning of my life!”

“Are your students being super talkative today?”

“Worse.” She shakes her dark head of hair. “They’re annoying me with complaints. ‘Teacher, my pencil broke. Teacher, he’s touching me. Teacher, my water bottle is leaking.’” A heavy sigh comes out with her words. “They’re driving me nuts.”

I smile because Avery’s just that kind of friend. Her bluntness and sharp tongue keep you entertained.

“I probably shouldn’t admit all that to our very own ‘teacher of the year,’ but oh, well.”

“Stop.” I roll my eyes. “It’s just a silly award.”

“No, it’s a big deal award that I will never get because, half the time, I can’t stand my students.” She pulls out a sandwich. “What about you? How was your weekend?”

Normally, my answer would be a fast “It was great.” But after the announcement of a wedding date last Friday night, I spent the rest of the weekend eating my emotions and staring at the red circle on May sixteenth that I marked on my wall calendar.

“My weekend was okay,” I say, but my shoulders feel like lead. I probably look like a cartoon character drooping under invisible weights.