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wouldn’t have been a problem!” Stacia exclaimed loudly.
    Tears streamed down my cheeks as I laughed harder than I had in months, and Emmy was laughing so hard that she was having trouble continuing.
    “Stacia was screaming and flailing around, trying to get back inside the car, and I was laughing so damn hard that I about peed myself. We just so happened to turn onto Miller Road where a trooper had set up a speed trap. When he saw Stacia and her jiggly bits hanging out my roof, he pulled us over. She was still stuck the whole time he was writing us tickets—her for public indecency and me for reckless driving. Savannah was parked behind us, taking pictures.”
    I pulled my shit together long enough to add on, “My favorites are the ones when he was greasing you down with Armor All and trying to shove you back through.”
    Lizzy started to laugh so hard that she was snorting. “I have got to see these pictures…pretty please?”
    I pulled out my cell and started scrolling through. “No problem. Got ’em right here. I transfer them every time I get a new phone.”
    “I hate you bitches,” Stacia grumbled. “You’re all officially out of my wedding.”

    I played Savannah’s words over and over in my head all day long, and the more they ran through, the madder I got. I wasn’t choosing anybody over anybody—or at least I wasn’t trying to. I was just trying to move on with my life. I’d spent so long trying to get Savannah to see that we belonged together, but there was only so much rejection a man could take and still maintain his pride.
    I was so busy stewing over my conversation with Savannah that I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing. My hand slipped off the wrench I was using to change the alternator on Bob Carlson’s Camry, and I sliced my palm right open.
    “Son of a bitch!”
    “Bad day?” I heard from behind me.
    I turned to see my best friend, Luke Allen, standing in the bay door of my garage with a smart-ass smirk on his face.
    “That obvious?” I asked as I walked inside to clean my hand.
    Luke followed behind me silently as I washed up and reached under the sink for the first-aid kit. I rubbed on some antibacterial cream and slapped a bandage over my palm.
    “You wanna talk about it?” he finally asked.
    “You wanna get all girlie and start talking about our feelings and shit?” I replied sarcastically.
    Luke let out a lighthearted chuckle. “Well, last I checked, I hadn’t grown a vagina, so I’d prefer to skip the cryin’ and huggin’ part of the conversation, if it’s all the same to you.”
    “So noted.”
    The humor quickly died from his face, and he contemplatively stared at me. “But I do know that some serious shit is brewin’ in that head of yours. You’ve been outta sorts for a while now, brother. I just wanted to make sure you were solid.”
    I made my way over to my office and threw myself down in the chair. Running my uninjured hand through my hair, I let out a deep breath. “Christ, I don’t know, man. Shit is so tangled right now that I couldn’t tell you up from down if my life depended on it.”
    Luke took a seat across from me and propped his feet up on my desk. “This got anything to do with Savannah?” he asked casually.
    I threw my head back and studied the ceiling. “Yeah, man—Savannah and Charlotte. I don’t know why those two can’t just get along, but their animosity toward each other is really starting to become a pain in my ass. Savannah actually laid into me today, accusing me of choosing Charlotte at the sake of our friendship. Can you believe that shit?”
    He sat there with a pensive look on his face, like he was thinking about how to answer me. “Well, brother, I can’t say it’s been lost on me—the looks Charlotte gives Savannah when they’re in the same room with each other.”
    That comment threw me for a loop. I could sense Charlotte’s attitude change when they were in the same room, but I’d had no clue that it