for him, the wedding was final.
So it mattered. It really did.
He had put on a suit, too. A suit and a black cowboy hat, and the sun was sort of resting on the top of the fabric, mocking him a bit. He imagined this was what it was like to wear a coffin.
Stuffy and completely and totally constricting.
But he was doing it for her. He wanted to do it for her.
They hadn’t gone and gotten official with the wedding party, but Logan was his best man. With Iris, Rose and Pansy serving as Sammy’s maids of honor.
Iris had outdone herself baking a cake that had scant frosting and flowers and berries pouring over it, serving as decoration.
It was very Sammy.
She had also worked at making a beautiful lunch, which was absolutely overkill, considering the only attendants to the wedding were their family, the minister, his wife and Pansy’s fiancé.
It wasn’t like it was a big shindig, and not altogether different than the Fourth of July gathering they’d had only a couple weeks earlier.
But everybody had put on their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, and they all looked damn serious, like this was some kind of momentous occasion.
And it added to that constricting sense that Ryder had been noticing not long before.
But then Logan approached him, not in a suit, but wearing a sport jacket, which he had assured Ryder was the best he could do without disintegrating.
“Be good to her,” Logan said.
“I will,” Ryder said. “I’ve been nothing but good to her for all these years.”
“Yeah. But it’s different now.”
“Yeah, so everybody keeps saying. I got her a ring.”
“Really?”
“I did. That’s why we built this big trellis thing. I have a real wedding band in my pocket, too.”
“Did you get yourself a ring?”
“If Sammy cares about that she’ll make sure I get one.”
He didn’t know why he was so sure of that. Only that he was.
“You going to wear it?”
“Of course. When I make vows I stick to them. And I’m not going to have any trouble where she’s concerned.”
“Not going to be tempted to sleep with other women?”
He laughed, the sound rusty, getting stuck in his throat. “I’ve had trouble forcing myself to look at other women for the past seventeen years. Now that I have her it’s not going to be any trouble to look only at her.”
“I knew you were in love with her,” Logan said. “All this time.”
He shook his head. “I wish. I wish it were that easy and that simple. I just want to keep her forever.”
“Isn’t that love?”
“No,” Ryder said. “My parents were so good to each other. They helped each other. Effortlessly completed each other. Didn’t clash with each other. They didn’t... I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. They’re dead. They’re not here today. I’m about to be a father. And in just a few short years I’ll be the same age my dad was when he died.” He noticed that Logan’s face had taken on a strange expression, probably because he was being strange. But he didn’t really care. He felt owed his breakdown.
“Life is a bitch. And I’m not going to worry about what this thing between me and Sammy is. I’ll take care of her. I promise that much.”
“See that you do,” Logan said. “And maybe don’t worry so much about what somebody else’s marriage looked like.”
“You never even saw a marriage. How would you know?”
It was a low blow. Digging at the fact that Logan’s mom was single.
“True,” Logan said. “But then, if I was ever going to fall in love I suppose I would accept the fact that it was going to be my own particular brand of fucked up. Since I have nothing else to compare it to.”
“Well. Aren’t you enlightened?”
Logan shrugged. “Yeah, pretty much.”
“Leave most of that out of your best man speech, please.”
Logan pushed his hat back on his head. “Was I supposed to write a speech? I thought I would just tell everybody to drink.”
“Stick with that.”
After that the pastor showed up, and everybody began to assemble and take their places beneath the canopy.
He stood there, wondering which direction Sammy would come from. It was part of her charm, that they hadn’t done any kind of rehearsal. That she had said that he was just going to have to see what happened.
He wondered if she was thinking about her father, because of course, traditionally, a father gave his daughter away when they walked down the aisle. But her father had given her away to Ryder a