How Forever Feels by Laura Drewry

would’ve told her about the chick at the bachelor party, and then she would’ve called it off right there and then.”
    “No way; this isn’t on me.” Only it was, sort of.
    “Did you ever tell her?”
    Jack lunged to his right and palmed the ball as it bounced back toward them. “No.”
    “I didn’t think so.” Will reached for his beer and took a long swig then wiped his hand across his mouth. “Have you even spoken to her since we ran into her after the split?”
    “Not until last night.” Jack lifted his beer and grinned. “She was at the pub with the rest of your fan club.”
    “You mean her fuckin’ posse,” Will spat out. “The whole group’s—”
    “Hey.” Jack wasn’t grinning anymore. “You gave Snip the right to badmouth you for the rest of time if she wants to, and as for the other three, they’re her friends. Whose side did you think they’d take?”
    “You’re right,” he said, with a steady look and a slight tip of his beer bottle in Jack’s direction. “Friends should always have each other’s backs.”
    “Don’t even—”
    “I fucked up, Jack, and I get it, you’re pissed, and that’s why you’ve been avoiding me and Stella. But we’re family, man. Don’t I deserve a second chance? I mean, shit, doesn’t everyone deserve that? When you fucked up and landed in that group home, Mom and Dad gave you a second chance, didn’t they?” Will flashed a wide grin and shrugged. “Besides, you know Mom won’t settle for anyone else but you as my best man.”
    Fuhhh!
Will might be a shit, but he was right. Burt and Genie had given Jack a chance when no other family would even consider fostering a fourteen-year-old boy, and certainly not one who’d started smoking weed. If the Carsons hadn’t plucked him out of that group home when they did…to this day the thought still made him shudder.
    He might have been the tallest boy in his room, but that didn’t mean shit when his five roommates were all muscle and liked to use him as their punching bag. Jack wasn’t stupid, though. He learned pretty quick that no matter what happened, at the end of every day, he was still going to end up back in that same bunk in the same room with those same guys; so when asked, he learned to tell the doctors he’d gashed his forehead open on a cupboard door, and that he’d bruised his ribs falling down the stairs.
    By the time he’d shown up in the emergency department with his right arm in two pieces and his left shoulder dislocated, he’d simply shrugged and called it an accident. There was no way in hell he would ever tell anyone what they’d done to him that night, and by the time he’d recovered, the Carsons had saved him.
    They’d taken him in, given him a safe place to live with consistency and stability, things he’d never had before; and it was their guidance that helped steer him away from the stupid things he’d started doing, things he’d only done to try and show the other guys in the group home that he was cool like them.
    Smoking a bit of pot and stealing candy from the 7-Eleven didn’t exactly make him a hardened criminal, but he couldn’t honestly say Genie was wrong in what she’d said at the rehearsal dinner.
    He’d been heading in the wrong direction and they turned him around, so to this day, if something made Genie’s life easier or happier, Jack did it. And Will wasn’t stupid; he knew the second he mentioned Genie’s name, Jack would do whatever was asked of him, even before he huffed out a resigned sigh.
    “Attaboy. You won’t regret it.” He slapped Jack on the shoulder and they started back toward Stella, who’d just stepped outside, letting the screen door slam behind her. “I hope you like pink.”
    “Seriously?” Jack groaned quietly. “Why can’t I just wear the same one I wore to your last wedding?”
    “Because Stella wants her own wedding, not a revamp of someone else’s.”
    So for the next couple hours, they sat out on the deck and