seeing her again. I couldn’t imagine there being a scenario where the real June measured up to the one I had created in my mind.
Except, here she is. And she’s worlds better than the June of my fantasies. She’s beautiful and spunky, and yet soft as butter behind all of those sharp thorns.
In the middle of her business talk, she accidentally tells me about the time Justin Timberlake came into the bakery and how she was so nervous she spilled an entire tray of donuts onto the floor. This leads to her telling me about how sometimes she drinks too much coffee and it makes her hands jittery. Which leads to the story about the time she tried to cut her own bangs after drinking three cups of coffee, creating a new system in her family for identifying a date in time known as BBB and ABB (Before Bad Bangs and After Bad Bangs).
June realizes that she’s been talking about her life and promptly seals her mouth up, leveling me with laser eyes because I tricked her again. And that’s that. No more personal talk. We spend the rest of the morning fine tuning what we want to make for the rehearsal dinner, and then she kicks me out an hour later with barely a second look.
After I’m back at the hotel, I work out in the gym to clear my head of June, and when that doesn’t work, I take an ice cold shower. When I’m out, I wrap a towel around my waist and check my phone. I have three text messages in a new group chat.
Stacy: Hi guys!! Friends dinner tonight at our place for old time’s sake?
Logan: I don’t know why Stacy added the question mark. It’s not an option. This is a mandatory friends dinner. Be here at 7:00 or be removed from the wedding party.
Unknown Number: Is that a promise? I’m kinda getting tired of doing all of Stacy’s bidding anyway :)
And just like that, I have June’s phone number.
I immediately save it in my phone and then get ready to shoot off my reply when another text comes through.
June Bug: But for real, I’ll be there. But I plan on eating all of Ryan’s dessert so he doesn’t get any.
I pull up out front of Stacy’s house and notice June’s Jeep already in the driveway. I take a deep breath because I feel something close to butterflies in my stomach, though I refuse to call them that because it’s got to be the most emasculating feeling to claim.
I get out and slam my rental car’s door a little too hard. I can’t help it, though. As hard as I’m trying to play it cool, all of my actions are coming out aggressive and choppy. I’m a tightly wound rubber band, and I’m ready to snap.
After pulling a bottle of wine from the back seat, I walk up the nicely manicured sidewalk and ring the doorbell on Stacy’s little cookie-cutter cottage. There's a welcome mat that says Love lives here. I read it while I wait for the door to open and throw up a little in my mouth. Somehow, I know that if June and I were a couple, she would shoot me dead in my tracks before she ever let me close to a house with a welcome mat like that.
“Ryan!” says Logan with an odd smile when the door opens. His eyes are wide, and his lips are tight like he’s trying to tell me something. Someone teach this man the art of discretion. “Come on in. Everyone is in the kitchen.” He says that about seventy-five percent too loud as I pass by him.
I glance back at Logan with a look of suspicion—suspicion that he might have lost his mind in all this wedding planning—and then I head for the kitchen.
I hear June’s voice before I see her, and a big stupid smile pulls at my mouth. My feet move a little faster, and when I realize I’m showing the same level of excitement as a puppy going somewhere new, I make myself slow the heck down. I round the corner into the kitchen, and my smile falls.
There’s a random dude standing near June. He’s staring at her even though June is giving all of her attention to Stacy who is stirring a pot on the stove. Dude’s got dark-brown hair and a jawline that could be used for measuring perfect right angles, and I immediately decide his brain is