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topped out at five seven. It made school dances a true horror.”
    “But I still danced with you anyway.” He opened the car door for her.
    “Not that you could dance,” she said with a knowing wink, referring to the dance lessons she’d tried to give him.
    “I’ll ignore that and finish my sentence. I was about to say that I always will. Dance with you, that is.”
    “Ah,” she said, pretending to wipe a tear from her eye.
    When he drove into town and pulled up in front of the cemetery, she didn’t have to pretend to wipe the tears running down her face. He helped her do that with a gentle finger as tears shined in his own Bengal-tiger-blue eyes.
    “I thought we should have Jemma with us today since…” he said, trailing off to clear his throat.
    Her eyes scanned across the graveyard to find her best friend’s grave. When Jemma had died nearly eight months ago of a heart murmur, her own heart had been yanked out and flattened by a fleet of tractor trailers on the highway.
    “Since she couldn’t come,” she finished for him, her own voice as hoarse as his. “You really are the sweetest man alive. Have I told you that today?”
    He wrapped her up in his arms. “No, but feel free to say it every day. I have a feeling we’re going to need some reminding. All right. Now, let’s go see our friend.”
    When he came around to her car door and helped her out, he snagged a bouquet of pink roses from the back. Jill sniffed when she saw them and then reached for his hand. Pain pinching her heart, she walked with him through the gray markers of death.
     
    ***
     
    Brian hadn’t expected to feel grief squeeze his chest on his wedding day, but he hadn’t stopped thinking about all the good old times he’d shared with Jill. Which had led him to think about their two best friends growing up: Jemma and Pete. As kids, they’d always been known as the Four Musketeers. They had bonded on the first day of kindergarten after toilet papering the schoolroom together because it was…well, impossible to resist the pink and blue toilet paper in the boys’ and girls’ bathrooms.
    The school had switched to standard toilet paper soon after, but that had only been the start of a long career as practical jokers. The Four Musketeers went on to hang purple pens on pink ribbons from the florescent light fixtures in third grade. In seventh grade, they smuggled a dozen pink plastic flamingos into their classroom. And when they were sophomores in high school, they freed dozens of frogs destined for the cutting block in biology class after Jill and Jemma’s protests of animal cruelty were ignored by the administration.
    Now, Jemma was gone way too soon. And Pete…well, they weren’t very good friends anymore. Pete had left town after Jemma’s death, needing to escape the weight of old memories, and they hadn’t spoken since.
    “Pete’s been here,” Jill said when they stopped in front of Jemma’s grave.
    Sure enough, a mixed bouquet of flowers—the same type Pete had always bought for Jemma when they were dating—lay against the gravestone. Brian traced Jemma’s name and the angel carved above it. “Yes, and they’re fresh.”
    Did that mean Pete had decided to come to their wedding, after all? After some discussion, Jill had agreed to extend a peace offering and invite him, but they hadn’t heard back.
    “Maybe he’ll come,” he told her, squeezing her hand.
    They’d both lost their best friends in different ways, and the hurt of it had rocked them to the core. Now, all they had were each other and this new family they were making together—and the wacky Hale family, of course.
    “I…wish Jem was here,” he whispered, his throat tight with emotion.
    “Me too,” Jill said, brushing away more tears. “I always thought she’d be standing at the altar with me.”
    Pete was supposed to have been his groomsman, but that hadn’t worked out either. He pulled her into his arms as she cried, and rocked them both.