Oliver gave me a smile that almost made me forget how cross I was with him. “True, she thought we’d be a good couple.”

“You see.” I jabbed my finger at him triumphantly. “He’s mean as well. We’re a mean couple. A couple of mean people who say mean things and are mean to each other.”

“If it helps,” said Ana with an n, “I agree that weddings mostly suck.”

I slumped back in my chair with unexpected relief. “Thank you. Why is the only person who has my back the one I’ve never met before?”

“Because…” Oliver shuffled around to kneel facing me. He still had that mischievous look on his face that was making it hard to stay pissed off with him. “She’s new, and she’s trying to make a good impression.”

“And also,” Ana with one n added, “weddings really do suck.”

Rhys was shaking his head. “Oh, no, I love a good wedding, me. Everybody dressing up nice, people being all happy. Only a complete knobhead would have a problem with that.”

“And now”—I turned my jabbing finger toward Rhys—“you’ve just called your girlfriend a complete knobhead. Why am I the bad guy?”

With her head in Rhys’s lap, Ana with one n gave a little shrug. “I suppose because a lot of the time I can be a complete knobhead.”

“You see?” Rhys gave a vindicated nod. “A good relationship is based on honesty.”

Somehow I was still outnumbered. “Look.” I gave up. “If it means that much to you…of course you can come to our wedding.”

“And Alex and Miffy and Barbara and Gabriel and the Professor?” asked Rhys.

Alex and Miffy we’d have been pretty much obliged to invite anyway since they’d invited us to theirs. To be honest, I was increasingly convinced that weddings were just an elaborate cycle of vengeance that had got really out of hand. Some pair of selfish bastards had forced their friends to come to a tedious party two thousand years ago, and their selfish bastard friends had decided to pay them back by forcing them to come a tedious party, and then some wholly independent group of selfish bastards had built an industry around it and here we were. An eye for an eye leaves the world overpaying for table settings.

“Yes.” I shot a quick confirmatory glance at Oliver—although honestly at this stage if we were stuck with a wedding full of CRAPPers it was as much his fault as mine so he’d kind of lost the right to object. “You can all come. It’ll be lovely. The more the merrier.”

“There you go, Rhystocrats,” Rhys said into his phone. “Happy ending all around. For more heartwarming content like this, remember to like, share, and subscribe to my channel and to follow Cee-Arr-Ay-Pee-Pee on all of the social medias.”