𝙽𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝙴𝚗𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑

Epilogue I

Grayson

"Come on, already," I muttered, while Tony fumbled with my bowtie. "I thought you said you knew how to do this."

"I thought I did," he muttered back, and I felt his fingers on the tie. He cursed, sighed, then tried again.

"Oh, my God. You're gonna strangle me before you're finished. Let me try." I pulled away, looking in the mirror as I tried to fix it. "Can somebody please look up how to tie to bow tie online? It can't be this hard. Come on. Somebody get my back today, huh?"

"Jesus," Marco joked. "You'd think you never got married before."

I shot him a look. "That was different back then. We didn't do it right."

"Seems to me you just get a license, have a ceremony, and you're married." Marco shrugged.

"Yeah, well, that's how we did it before. I don't know, I always felt like she might have missed out on something. Like she wanted to have a big wedding, even if she pretended like it didn't matter. It did. I want her to have everything she wants from now on, even if that means I have to wear one of these fucking tuxedos." I felt more uncomfortable than I ever had in my life. I didn't think I ever wore so much clothing at one time, either. I had to fight the urge to pull at my collar. I felt like it was strangling me.

"I don't see why you couldn't have gotten married in your kutte," Tony grumbled.

"You're only pissed because she made you wear a tux, too," I laughed.

"Whatever. She didn't make me do shit." We all waited for maybe three seconds before we burst out laughing. Tony's big, round face went red. Jess hadn't exactly been quiet in her insistence that Tony fall in line with what she wanted. She'd marched into the clubhouse with an order form in hand and told him if he didn't go to the store to get fitted for a tux, she would take the measurements herself. He had lasted maybe ten minutes before he got on his bike, with her following in her car to make sure he actually went.

I looked around the room, at my crew. It meant a lot to me that they would all be there, watching me marry the woman I loved for the second time. When I was a kid, it had mattered, but I hadn't understood a lot of what it meant to get married. I thought it was something people did, especially when they loved each other the way Jess and I had. I didn't understand back then that there was more to it. It was a family thing, too, as much as it was between the two of us. We were joining our lives together. The guys were part of my life, and I wanted them to be there to watch me make the second best decision I never made. The first was marrying her the first time.

One of the guys finally found a YouTube video on how to do a bow tie, and I watched two or three times before I followed along with him. By the time I finished, it looked pretty good. "See? That wasn't so hard," I said, even though I felt a little sweaty. It was nerves, I told myself, or the restrictive fucking clothes I was wearing.

Tony muttered something about how he couldn't wait to get out of his tux. "Come on, brother. It's not that bad. I mean, you can't stand it for a few hours? If that?"

"A few hours! I thought I could take it off after the ceremony! Oh, this is getting better and better."

"I dare you to take that off after the ceremony and put on your regular clothes. If you think she would keep from clawing you because she didn't want to get blood on her dress, think again." Tony glared at me. "And if you don't stop being a bitch about it, I'm gonna tell her that you whined the whole day."

A knock at the door. "Come in." Cindy stepped in, wearing her bridesmaid dress. She got a lot of whistles and catcalls, even though it was totally modest and down to the floor.