As quietly as I could, I backed up into the room with my thumb on the button of my shorts. But before I could get the door closed, Jared was on the other side, pushing his way in.

“Mom just sent me a text to say she was ready to go. Are you about done in here?” he asked.

“Uh… yeah,” I said hesitantly. “Lemme just use the bathroom right quick.”

“Cool, no problem,” he said, then flopped onto the bed.

I clenched my teeth. This was my best friend who lacked boundaries and constantly barreled through mine. There was no fucking way I was going to get him out of this room long enough for me to rub one out.

“I’ll just be a second,” I said, then ducked into the bathroom and closed the door.

“Hey, by the way, sorry if mom was like…inappropriate or whatever. I think she forgets that we aren’t kids sometimes, you know? It’s just in her nature to baby us.”

Was that what she was doing down by the pool? Why did my dick say differently?

“I think it’s sweet, but Brandi thinks it’s weird, so I know it can be a little off-putting sometimes,” Jared continued.

I rolled my eyes and unzipped my flies. “Why are you talking to me about your mom like I didn’t live with her for most of my junior and senior year of college?” I asked, reaching into my underwear to adjust my dick so that it wasn’t tenting the front of my shorts in an obscene way. “It’s no big deal, Jay. I know your mom can be…affectionate and nurturing.”

“Yeah, I’m just saying. That shit might be on ten now. You haven’t been around since the funeral.”

I frowned. This was the second time my usually unobservant friend had said something about how Darcy was reacting to his father’s death. Was he more concerned about his mother than he was letting on?

And here I was daydreaming about bending his mother over this quartz bathroom counter. That deflated my dick faster than anything had in the last month or so of planning this wedding with Darcy. I zipped up my shorts, washed my hands, and opened the door to the bedroom. “You’re really worried about her, aren’t you?” I asked.

“Yeah, kinda,” he said without looking me in the eyes. “She just hasn’t been herself, you know? If I knew that letting Dylan be the ring bearer at my wedding was going to cause this much drama, I wouldn’t have included him. But he’s my little brother. It’s not our fault we had such a shitty dad.”