Chapter Forty-Eight
Max
The thing nobody tells you about going to your ex’s wedding with your dead boyfriend’s brother is that there’s no etiquette guide for it.
Becca had been the plan.
Becca had been the plan since the night the invitation landed in my kitchen, and she mailed the RSVP before I could stop her.
She’d had opinions about what I should wear for months leading up to the wedding, and she insisted we still go even in the wake of the explosion. She had prepared a whole speech for if we ran into Patrick at the bar—she’d workshopped it; she’d run it by me twice; she’d made small revisions.
And then Becca had to open her mouth to Gio outside of the apartment last week—where he was, in his normal spot, parked outside the entrance keeping an eye on things and my whereabouts just like always.
Then, Gio told Nico that Becca told him we were going to a wedding and, specifically, that, ‘Gio and Rudi were obviously not invited so they’d have to give up the stalking for a night.’
And that’s what brought us to tonight.
Where Nico is currently standing in our too-small apartment arguing with Becca in the kitchen.
I haven’t seen him since he peeled me off his mother’s bathroom floor weeks ago, and, mercifully, he does not smell like the penthouse today.
The island looks small with him standing in the room. Becca looks even smaller. Her blonde, shoulder length hair is moving back and forth as she shakes her head at him, the rainbow streaks faded out to just the tips now.
He towers over her and she has to literally crane her neck. It’s actually humorous to watch them standing next to one another because he is over a foot taller than her.
And judging by his expression, he’s about to throw her out the window.
“She’s not going alone, Nicolas,” Becca shouts up at his face.
“Fine, she’s not going alone, something we agree on,” Nico says with a smile and points down at her face. “She’s going with Rudi.”
“Good fucking God—” Becca rolls her eyes. “Rudi?”
“Rudi.”
“You want me to have my best friend, who is going to her ex-boyfriend’s wedding after the worst two months of her life, take a married man as her plus one?”
“Rudi is a professional—”
“Rudi is married!” She raises her voice and flings her arms out at her side. “What is wrong with y—”
“Gio, then.” He throws his arms up, mirroring her stance.
“Gio is a goon.” She holds a palm up and looks at me. “A lovely goon, and I have great respect for him, but he is a goon and I will not send her to a wedding full of snakes with one of your goons, Nicolas!”
Every time she says his full name he grinds his teeth together and his jaw tightens.
A pause.
I place my chin in my palm and sigh deeply.
I could do without going to the wedding, honestly, but Becca has been fired up about this all weekend. Or maybe she’s just extra fired up because Nico is the one telling her no.
Becca working at one of the family businesses has been great for Becca—great pay, great benefits, she loves the hours and the job. But she’s in the same warehouse that Nico is often in, and he gets on her last nerve. But I think he enjoys putting himself there.
“Fine,” Nico says, his tone different as he lowers himself by bending his knees considerably to stand a few inches from her face with a beaming smile. “I’ll take her.”
Her eyes practically bug out of her head.
She gets even closer to his face, their noses almost touching, and starts laying into him about how she is the one who was supposed to go, she has a plan, she has a speech, and now he is trying to replace her.
She is grasping at straws because she’s losing the negotiation as Nico just smiles sweetly at her every word, relishing in it.
She throws her hands up and screams like a petulant teenager, as Nico stands back up to full height, a satisfied smirk at getting a reaction out of her.
“I’m picking what you’re wearing, you big fucking oaf.” She points in his face.
She goes to leave the room, not waiting for a response, but he follows her, saying he has a tux and doesn’t need her assistance in dressing.
“But if you’d like to undress me,” he yells before leaving the kitchen, to her or me I’m not sure, but he laughs as a pillow flies into the kitchen from the living room.
I laugh, but it’s a tired one.
The next weekend, Nico shows up at three o’clock in the afternoon to drive us to the winery outside the city for the four o’clock ceremony and reception.
I’m putting an earring in when I step into the living room and I freeze as an overwhelming sense of déjà vu hits me.
Putting my earring in, my heels clicking on the floor as I walk into a kitchen with a Renzetti leaning on a counter.
But Nico shakes me out of it as he takes a slurping bite of an apple in a suit that probably costs more than the apartment and all the things inside of it, and maybe my car, too.
He looks at Becca, who sits at the table with a disgusted expression.
He smiles at her like a man who won something. I shake my head and take a breath, pushing the memories aside.
“I didn’t offer you that apple,” she sneers under her breath.
“And I didn’t ask permission to eat it.”
I clear my throat and their eyes flick to me.
Becca found me a pink satin floor-length dress for the night.
It hugs my curves but is loose around the neckline and pools a bit around my heels. The straps have tiny pearls that fall delicately down my shoulders and cross at the plunging back of the dress.
Something passes between Becca and me. She gives me the softest, dreamiest smile, and I know she picked exactly what she would have worn.
“Ready? You look lovely,” Nico says matter-of-factly and sets the half-eaten apple back in the bowl with the others.
“She better look nice, the dress costs more than what you pay me in a month.” Becca shoots him a glare as she steps up to adjust the neckline of my dress.
“Well, I don’t pay you, so…” He puts his hands in his pockets and stands behind her.
“Well, you paid for the dress, so…” She mocks him and rolls her eyes.
She gives me another look and I swallow, reading the things she won’t say out loud in fear of me breaking: I’m sorry, I know, it’ll be okay, you’ve got this.
“I love you,” she whispers and hugs me gently.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” she adds at a normal volume.
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” Nico calls over his shoulder as he walks to the front door.
“I was talking to you, Nicolas.”
He spins on a heel and bites his bottom lip, narrowing his eyes at her with a smile. “In that case, define stupid.”
Becca points at the door and I try to laugh but it doesn’t come out.