Jackson
"Holy shit, man. Are you having a panic attack?" Joe asks, his face folding into genuine concern.
"Am I? Is that what this is?" I suck in another breath that doesn't seem to go anywhere and pull at my collar. "It's so hot in here. Why is it so fucking hot?"
"You're standing directly in front of a fan," Bennet says, a hand landing flat on my back. "Breathe, man."
"I'm literally breathing." I yank at the collar again, and the room tilts a degree. "Fuck. I can't breathe."
Bennet throws his hands in the air like I'm the problem here.
This is all his fault anyway. I don't exactly know the math behind it, but it is. Him and his nursery wall and his be certain and his goddamn couch. Motherfucker.
"Okay." Joe steers me down onto the little bench by the mirrors, crouching in front of me like a corner man between rounds. "In through the nose, four seconds. You're not dying. You're just—" He glances up at Bennet over my head, and something passes between them that neither of them says out loud.
They both know what this is.
Hell, I know what this is.
I know exactly what this is, and knowing is not helping, knowing is making it worse, because my body figured this out three weeks ago and I just — kept ironing shirts.
Kept confirming caterers. Kept convincing Rian that this was real, that she didn’t have to worry about Rose.
That the Rose chapter in my life was over and we were starting ours.
There are three hundred people out there.
Three hundred. Filing into pews right now.
Someone is handing out programs with my name on them.
There's a cake. There's a cake the size of a filing cabinet and a string quartet tuning up and forty minutes — no.
I check my watch. Thirty-eight. Thirty-eight minutes, and my mouth has had three weeks, three weeks, to say one sentence to one person, and it said the opposite, so now my body is saying the silent thing for me in the only language it has left, which is heatstroke.
The fan is blowing directly on me.
I am dying in front of a fan.
"Water," Bennet says, already moving. "I'm getting him water."
"I don't need water."
"You need something, and it's not available in this room," he mutters, and the door opens behind him and Blaire walks in.
"I heard there's panic afoot."
She's finally, properly showing, in a gorgeous burgundy dress that puts her baby belly on full display, poked-out belly button and all. She crosses the room like a woman on assignment.
"Jack-Jack. What's going on?" She pulls me up off the bench, straight into a hug, and I bury my face in her hair.
"I'm panicking. I can't breathe. I don't know if this is a mistake." The words tumble out into her shoulder. "She deserves better than me. They both do."
"Any woman on this earth would be lucky to have you — Rian's just the one holding the winning ticket today. Don't you dare downgrade yourself." She pulls back and pats my cheek. "You need a stiff shot and you'll be good as new."
Then she reaches into her bra — her bra, in a cathedral — and produces a flask.
"Lucky for you, I came prepared." She levels a side-eye at her husband. "Maybe I should've been your best man."
"We're in a church! I wasn't going to pack a flask in my pocket in a house of God, baby." Bennet's hands go up in defense.
"See what I mean?" She unscrews the cap, hands it over, and I down the contents in record time — the burn landing in my chest right next to everything else that's on fire in there.
It doesn't touch the actual problem. But then, nothing in a flask was ever going to.
"I love you so much right now." I hang my head back and breathe through the sting as it burns down my chest. "You're right. I can do this. I need to do this."
"If it's the right thing for you — and you only — then yes, you can do this, Jack-Jack. I love you too." She reaches up and sets my tie straight, smooths my collar, pats it flat. "So handsome."
She crosses to Bennet and gives him a kiss, and he pulls her into a hug with a full handful of her ass, church be damned.
"Thank you, baby," he murmurs.
"Thank the new boobs. Where else was I going to keep a flask?" She pecks him once more, throws a wink back at me, and leaves the room a few degrees lighter than she found it.
"She's so much calmer than Jenn," Joe says, staring after her in genuine awe. "Like a fairy."
I squint at him. "Have you been drinking?"
"Don't tell her."
So that's the state of the groom's room, twenty-odd minutes out: one best man on a water run he never completed, one groomsman secretly half in the bag, one groom running on smuggled liquor.
"I can do this," I tell my reflection.
My reflection looks like a man who's been told that before.