Page 24 of Never Not Friends

The statement is casual. The way he says it is not.

“I just want Juliet to be happy.” I smile because smiling keeps things easy.

He watches me for a beat longer than necessary then shifts his focus to Lila. “I guess we’re going to take the simple route.”

“Perfect. And if you decide on something different, Juliet has until tomorrow to make changes. So let me show you some different layouts on the date and time.”

Vinny leans in to read, putting his body closer to mine, close enough that I catch a familiar hint of his cologne. My brain very helpfully supplies the memory of fifteen-year-old me noticing it for the first time in cooking class and thinking I might never recover. Maybe it wasn’t this exact cologne, but the feelings it evokes are the same.

We spend the next thirty minutes finalizing everything. Lila enters our choices into the iPad and, like magic, prints out a sample for us to double-check everything.

“I’ll give you a second to look things over.” She gathers everything up, leaving us alone in the main room.

Vinny squints at the invitation like it personally offended him. “I’m sorry,” he says, tapping the card, “but people are going to think I’m marrying a woman named Luliet.”

“What?” I lean over his shoulder, looking at the paper. “That’s clearly a capital J.”

“Well, I read that as ‘Please join us for the wedding of Vincent and Luliet.’”

I bite my lip. “Luliet sounds lovely.”

“I would absolutely not survive marrying someone named Luliet. She’d probably slowly poison me for years until I died.”

“Or maybe she’d be one of those wives who never tells you directly what’s wrong with you. Instead, she says it about someone else’s husband. Like, Jennifer’s husband never puts down the toilet seat. April’s husband leaves his socks around.”

He smiles. “I like your version of Luliet better than mine.”

I take the card from him, laughing. “You’ve always struggled with reading cursive.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Oh, really? Because I remember you making me rewrite all my notes in US History in eleventh grade because you couldn’t read my cursive handwriting.”

“I would hardly call that scribble of yours cursive.” He picks up another font sample and frowns at it. “What about this one? This J is much easier to read.”

“It’s beautiful. Very classic.”

“Like…boring classic?”

“No, more like timeless.”

He glances at me with a smile. “You love that word.”

“Timeless?” The corner of my mouth lifts.

“Yeah. You call those ratty sweatpants you love timeless. The ones that you cut off the bottoms.”

“Those sweatpants are timeless.”

“No, they should be condemned for the number of times you’ve worn them.”

“They have my name printed across the butt. What’s not to love?”

“They’re an instant male repellent.”

“I guess they’re to blame for my abysmal love life,” I joke. “In that case, I’m throwing them away as soon as I get home.”

Vinny studies me for a second, his smile slipping. “I take it back. Keep the sweats. Never get rid of them.”