“Jesus. How old is Violet here?” Lance asks.

“I think she was turning seventeen or something,” Miller replies.

“Man, I wish the chicks in my Mathletes club had looked like that.”

“Shut the fuck up, Romance, before Alex breaks your nose.”

“Right. Sorry.”

I grunt but say nothing because he’s right. I would’ve given my left nut to sit next to her in math class and pretend I didn’t know what the fuck was going on so I could look down her shirt while she explained things. Violet’s the kind of girl who would’ve been helpful like that in high school.

She’s wearing one of those super formfitting dresses, and it’s short—like, way too short for a bridesmaid’s dress, hitting her high on her thigh. It must be a guy on the camera because he zooms out so he can get her entire, smokin’ hot, highly illegal body to fit in the shot. There’s a long lace train thing hanging off the back of the dress that drags on the floor.

Violet’s wearing silver platform heels. She’s obviously unaccustomed to them. She teeters unsteadily and holds onto the back of the chair. Signature red blotches break out across her chest—her very ample, not-covered-enough chest. She brushes a fallen tendril out of her face and squints, because she can’t see very well without her glasses.

She takes a couple of shuffling steps before she squares her shoulders, jutting out her chest. The dress seems to be slipping down. She hikes it up again and stutter-steps across the stage. Those heels are way too high.

Miller is standing at the bottom of the steps to the left of the podium. His hands are shoved in his pockets as he waits for Violet to come down. On the second one, her heel catches the lace train, and she careens forward, head-butting Miller in the junk. He, in turn, stumbles back. He might’ve been able to recover if Violet hadn’t grabbed his tuxedo jacket and rammed her shoulder into his knee.

“Wow, she’s not very graceful, is she?” Randy mumbles.

Miller bumps into the table holding the three-tiered wedding cake. It rocks forward and then topples off the back.

As if this isn’t bad enough, Violet scrambles to right herself, but her heel is still caught in the back of her dress. It pulls the whole thing down. And there they are: her boobs.

Miller hits pause instead of stop, so the video freezes on a shot of Violet’s exposed chest.

“Shit! Sorry! I meant to hit stop before that happened!”

The young Miller on the screen is wide eyed and horrified, just like the one currently in three dimensions. He steps in front of the TV to block the view. Thankfully everyone is looking either at the ceiling or their hands.

“So, um, I guess this kind of explains Violet’s aversion to weddings, huh?” Randy asks.

That she’s agreed to any kind of actual ceremony with people in attendance is a true miracle.

I clear my throat. “I think it goes without saying that this stays under the cone.”

There’s murmured agreement and some uncomfortable shifting around.

I definitely need to get my mom to back off. I wait until Darren and I are in his car before I call my mom and gently, but firmly, tell her to stop looking for alternate venues, because the Chicago cottage is where Violet and I are getting married.

She might be disappointed, but she agrees to cease with the texting torture. At least that’s one issue resolved.

-&-

The next few weeks are full of PT, training, and planning the wedding. I gain a lot of ground, though I still don’t get to be on the ice with the rest of the team for games. And we don’t make it past the first round of playoffs. It’s a challenge to watch my teammates beat themselves up over the loss, especially when we were on such a high last year.

Ultimately, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. We’ll have a longer off-season, with more time to recuperate and train. I’m trying to see the positive in the situation.

My ongoing issue once again has to do with my mom and her wedding interference. She’s switched tactics from alternate venues to expanding the guest list, two “very important friends” at a time. Every other day she sends me another message asking if so and so can be added to the list.

I shut her down, and then Violet feels bad for making me be the bad guy and ends up texting her back to say yes. On the up side, I’ve gotten a lot of blow jobs in the past few weeks. However, I have guilt over them, so I always return the favor with some kind of orgasm.

Today I get a text from my mom with yet another guest-addition request as I’m walking in the door after a particularly intense physical therapy session.

I don’t know if I should even bother to say anything to Violet about it as I text my mom back with a no. I find Violet on the couch with her Mac in her lap. At first I assume she’s doing something work-related, although usually she does that in her office. Maybe she needed a change of scenery.

She must be engrossed in her research, because she bursts into a fit of laughter, punctuated by a snort.

“Whatcha doin’?”

She looks up from the screen. “You need to see this!”

I sit beside her, ready to be entertained by whatever’s on the screen. It’s not what I expect.

“Uh…why am I looking at someone’s dick? And why does it have a face on it?”

Violet rolls her eyes. “Seriously? You watch internet porn all the time.”

“No, I don’t.” I watch it occasionally, especially when I’m away from home and don’t have access to Violet—usually in the bathroom with headphones on while I’m pretending to take an extra-long shower.