“Honestly, you shouldn’t. You should find a better man. But I’ll spend my life trying to make up for this. I’ll do anything to fix this. Even if it means never seeing Felicity again. You’re my family, you’re my future. I’d give everything else up for you.”

I believed him. He’d been doing it since day one, putting me before everything else, even when I didn’t want him to.

“I just want to understand…why? Why did it happen? Do you have feelings for her?”

He gave a short never-in-a-million-years laugh. “No, never. We had our shot years ago and I knew even back then it wasn’t like that.”

“What? You two were…together?” This was news I should have heard before now.

“Oh, God, no, not like that. Only one time, and it was just…empty. No chemistry.”

“Alright, you’re going to have to give more detail than that. What happened between you two?”

Then Cody told me a story. A story that shocked me.

It was the story of a college freshman girl at the University of Pittsburgh meeting a fry cook at an Oakland bar. Their chance meeting bloomed into an instant friendship as Felicity unburdened her woes on Cody, feeding his ears—and ego—with her disappointments in life. He saved her that night, because their meeting would months later lead her to his handsome Dean’s List older brother Oliver. The man she would ditch Cody for and follow to the ends of the earth.

That night Cody introduced the two, a third wheel too blind to recognize he was unwanted, while Felicity and Oliver drifted closer and closer together, eventually pushing him out. By the end of the night Cody was sitting on the curb outside watching his brother steal his almost-girlfriend.

It had been a sore spot at first, a sibling rivalry that had always been simmering and then came to a boil. But eventually all was forgiven, not quite forgotten, as Felicity and Oliver said their “I do’s” with Cody standing in as the supportive Best Man.

But the Best Man wasn’t always at his best.

“I was pissed for a long time. Not necessarily over Felicity, but because Oliver had the balls to swoop in and take my girl. But eventually I saw they were good for each other, a better match than I was with her, anyway. In the end, I got my revenge, or whatever you want to call it.”

“Revenge?” That wasn’t a word that fit Cody.