Free Just Good Friends by Ruth Ann Nordin

front door opened, and he heard Zoe
call out, “The bride and groom are here!”
    Tiffany gagged.
    Fortunately, in the next second, Brad’s
parents and a couple others called out they had arrived, too. Good.
At least they weren’t going to be alone with Tiffany’s parents and
Zoe and Brad. There was no way he could survive the dinner if they
were the only people at the table with them.
    She sighed. “I suppose we should go
join them.”
    “ Lucky us,” he
replied.
    “ We’re twenty-four hours
away from leaving for the airport. We can do this.”
    “ Is that what you keep
telling yourself?”
    “ I have to or else I’ll go
crazy.”
    He didn’t blame her. He felt like he
was going crazy as it was, and this wasn’t even his family. Yep,
he’d be sure to never take his parents for granted ever again.
Reminding himself they only had one more day to go, he followed her
back to the living room.
     
     

Chapter
Eight
     
    “ And of course, it was
exciting to see our names together in the paper,” Zoe bragged
during dinner.
    Tyler held back the urge to groan. Ever
since the meal started, it’d been nonstop talk of how excited Zoe
was about getting married.
    “ It’s exciting for us to see
your names in the paper, too,” her mother said.
    “ It sure is,” her dad
agreed.
    “ At least you finally have
one daughter who is tying the knot,” an aunt, whose name Tyler
couldn’t recall, chimed in. She glanced at Tiffany and smiled. “No
offense, my dear, but we were beginning to worry about your poor
parents.”
    Tiffany, who was sitting next to him,
gave a slight shrug to indicate she took no offense to the
comment.
    Well, maybe she didn’t, but Tyler sure
did. It was hard to sit around this family and be constantly
reminded of how much “better” married people were than single
people. As if being single was some kind of disease. It took all
his willpower to eat the leftover turkey with the lot of them
around, and he was beginning to wish he had asked Tiffany to go to
a restaurant. It’d certainly be less painful than this
ordeal.
    “ I can’t wait for the
rehearsal this evening,” Zoe said after she sipped some of her
wine. “I can’t wait to see how the whole ceremony is going to play
out.”
    “ Smoothly, I hope,”
Tiffany’s dad quipped then glanced at Tyler. “The last wedding in
this family didn’t go so well. One of the children, who held a
candle, came too close to the bride and her hair caught on
fire.”
    Okay. Now that was funny, and Tyler
felt his mood lighten a bit as he laughed along with the
others.
    “ Well, there are no children
participating in my wedding, Daddy, so there’s nothing to worry
about,” Zoe said, once again finding a way to get the spotlight
back on her. “Mom, will Aunt Donna be playing her violin while I
walk down the aisle to say ‘I do’ to the most terrific man in the
world?” She reached out and touched Brad’s hand.
    A round of “ahhs” floated around Tyler,
and he thought he was going to puke. He took a deep breath to
settle his stomach before he was able to take another bite of his
meal. It wasn’t that he was opposed to romance and such, but there
was only so much he could take.
    “ Aunt Donna said she’d be
happy to,” her mom replied and clapped her hands then turned to
Tyler. “Just wait until you hear her. She plays the most beautiful
music.”
    “ That’s true,” Tiffany
added. “She does.”
    Tyler nodded. “I look forward to
hearing it.” It was probably the only part of the whole ceremony he
would actually enjoy.
    “ You know, I play the
piano,” Zoe spoke up, flinging her hair over her shoulder. “I got
really good, too. I could have gone off to a music school and
played professionally, but I couldn’t bear the thought of being
away from Brad.”
    “ That is so sweet,” Brad’s
mom said.
    “ It is,” another aunt
agreed.
    “ When you find that special
someone, you do everything you can to hold onto him,” the