The Worst Best Man

the center of the garden are inviting, but I’m drawn to the ornate wrought-iron

ld my arms over my chest and hover near the threshold

nose and puts her hand out in a so-so

She’s not joking. With that scathing soliloquy

“We still need to eat, though. How ’bout we get the paella to go?”
I groan. “That sounds good, but it’ll take forever to make.”
“What if I told you I already ordered it?” he asks, his eyebrows waggling.
“I’d thank you from the bottom of my heart and tell you that we’ll both be getting a workout tonight.”
He grimaces. “Shit. That’s a shame.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t order it yet,” he says.
“But I thought . . .” I shake my head. “Never mind.”
The man’s ridiculous, but I wouldn’t want him any other way. I drag him out the door.

Remembering where we are, I settle further into his embrace and say, “To be continued, right?”
He presses his lips against my forehead. “To be continued forever.”
The sound of someone sniffling pulls us apart. I turn to see my mother, Tia Viviane, and Tia Izabel by the steel door. Tia Izabel dabs her eyes with a handkerchief. My mother, who’s wearing a triumphant smile, puts her hand out in front of Tia Viviane. My aunt grumbles while she fishes inside her purse, then she slaps a twenty-dollar bill in my mother’s hand.
My mouth falls open. “Mãe, you were betting on me?”
She shakes her head. “No, never, filha. I was betting on Max.”
He leans over and whispers, “Your mother’s a smart woman.”

“And just so we’re clear,” I say. “You’re neither my first choice nor my second choice. You’re my only choice.”
“Lina.”
There’s so much emotion packed into that one word. It’s as though he’s added a new entry in the dictionary for it: Lina, noun: my love, my future.

In the end, it doesn’t matter if I’m Lina’s first, second, or fifteenth choice; what matters is that I’m the right choice. And the onus isn’t on her to prove that I come first in her life. No, the onus is on me to prove that I’m the best man for her. Every day. For as long as she’ll have me. If she’ll still have me.

Oh right. The toast. “I’m Natalia’s favorite cousin, Carolina Santos. I—”
Natalia appears at my side and hands me a slip of paper.
I shake my head as I read it, then share the message with everyone. “Before I toast the couple, Natalia would like me to tell you that we should refrain from any public declarations of love, announcements of pregnancies, or wedding proposals at this event. Violators will be kicked out at their own expense.”

“Did you find this place for them, Lina?” the infamous Estelle asks.
She’s sitting across from me, and she’s been a perfectly lovely table companion. Her reputation for causing unnecessary drama seems undeserved.
“It was one of the options I showed them, yeah, but the idea of holding their wedding at a unique location was theirs.”
Estelle smiles knowingly. “And probably cheaper, right? Everyone knows Viviane is”—she slaps her right forearm with her left hand—“with her money.”
Never mind. Estelle’s a wedding troll.