That Wedding: A Small Town, Friends-to-Lovers Romance (That Boy Series Book 2)
That Wedding: Chapter 23

I don’t wanna be at couples counseling. I think it’s stupid. Phillip and I are perfect for each other. We get along amazingly.

Like, last night was amazing.

The way he sorta threw me on the bed.

How he was kissing me hard. The way he madly stripped off my lace.

It makes me hot, just sitting here, thinking about it.

And it’s a good distraction because I hate the man sitting at the desk in front of me. If it wasn’t for Mr. Diamond holding my wedding money hostage, I’d never be here.

Put me down as a hostile witness.

Phillip held my hand as we walked in the room, and it calmed me down a bit. He told me in the car that, worst-case scenario, we’ll learn how to deal with each other even better.

Pastor John says, “Phillip, JJ, I’m glad you’re both here. I understand you weren’t very excited about couples counseling.”

I don’t say anything. I just fold my arms across my chest.

Phillip says, “I think JJ is still upset about you suggesting that her parents abandoned her.”

“I didn’t say they did. I said some people feel abandoned. JJ might not realize it, but their deaths have affected her. They had to have affected her. I want to make sure that your marriage lasts. I assume that’s what you both want as well?”

Phillip says, “Yes, we do.”

I don’t reply. I just sit there. No one said I had to do anything other than show up. I probably look like a spoiled little brat, but I don’t care.

Pastor John nods his head toward me. “Jadyn, is that what you want?”

I roll my eyes. “No, I want an unhappy and miserable marriage, just like every other starry-eyed bride.”

Phillip glares at me and says to the pastor, “She’s being sarcastic. Of course we want a happy marriage.”

“We’re all on the same page then. Here’s what I’d like you to do first.” He hands us each a paper and pen. “I want you to write down three things that you love about each other.”

I put the paper on my knee.

Would it be bad if I wrote down three very specific parts of Phillip’s body? And, like, how amazing those parts were last night?

Uh, probably.

What do I love about Phillip?

Hmm, I love the way he talks to me. Well, the way he used to talk to me, like every night before I went to sleep. Now, we usually just fall asleep after being exhausted from our pre-sleep activities.

I also secretly love the way Phillip has always rescued me. How he always chooses me over, well, everyone. When I need him, he is there.

I also love the way he makes me feel safe. Like I’m where I belong.

Hmm, those are all really good things. I’m really good at couples counseling. I can’t wait to share my answers with Pastor John. I’ll show him. They’re, like, the perfect answers. Phillip and I will get an A-plus. We’ll be done with counseling, and then we can get on with the happily ever after.

I try to hand him my paper.

He says, “Oh, no. They’re for you to keep. I wanted you to think about it. Get you in the mood, so to speak. I understand you’ve set a date.”

“Yes, everything has fallen into place. We’re very lucky,” Phillip says.

Pastor John replies, “Okay, so tell me about your relationship. How long have you been dating?”

“A little over a month,” Phillip says proudly.

I roll my eyes. Pastor John has known us our whole lives. He baptized us both, and he was at our engagement party. He totally knows this already, but whatever. If Phillip wants to play along, I’ll let him.

“Wow,” the pastor says. “That’s not a very long time.”

“No, it’s not,” Phillip replies. “But we’ve known each other our whole lives, so it’s not like we don’t already know everything about each other.”

“Okay, so how are you handling conflicts?”

Uh, what conflicts?

As usual, Phillip reads my mind and answers, “We don’t have any conflicts.”

I’m quite proud of this.

Phillip and I are the perfect couple.

Pastor John should consider using us as a model for perfect coupledom. Phillip and I never fight. And, on the rare occasion that we do, I pout, and Phillip gives in. It works really well.

“Hmm, that’s interesting,” Pastor John says. “So, you’re telling me, you don’t fight? You’ve never had a fight?”

Phillip admits, “We sorta had a little fight yesterday about her buying shoes, but we, um, resolved that conflict pretty easily.”

“Great. How did you resolve it?” Pastor John asks.

Uh, I tricked Phillip into forgetting he was mad at me with a sexy lace bra and a barely there thong.

I give Phillip a worried glance.

Phillip says, “Well, she defused the situation by making me laugh.”

Phillip is good. I defused the situation. I sure did.

The pastor drones on, “Laughter is a key ingredient in a good marriage. So, what will you do if you disagree, but you can’t laugh about it?”

“Sex probably,” I accidentally burst out. I didn’t really mean to say that, but Phillip has been totally hogging this conversation. Not that I really wanted to be a part of it, but it’s hard for me to keep my mouth shut for extended periods of time.

The pastor raises his eyebrows and gives me a pointed glare. I’ve seen that glare before.

A few times.

Katie and I used to be candlelighters. We’d go in before the service, light the candles, and have to sit behind a column during the service. We were off to the side, hidden from the congregation but in plain view of Pastor John. One time, Katie had me practically rolling down the pew, laughing. She and Neil dated most of their sophomore and junior years. She was telling me about the first time she touched his boy part. How it felt and how she’d screamed when he made it grow in her hand. She’d thought something was wrong with it! We were clutching our sides, laughing silently, until I accidentally let a laugh escape. It was maybe kinda loud, almost a scream. The pastor stopped in the middle of his sermon, turned, and glared at me. That totally got me in trouble with my parents afterward. I should’ve hated him then. I mean, he’s a professional! He should have better sermon-giving concentration skills.

He says, “I see.” Then, he does that thing he always does when he’s pissed, but he doesn’t want to say it. He runs his hand down the sides of his little beard, stroking it.

At which point—I can’t help it!—I glance toward Phillip and start thinking about a part of him I’d like to stroke.

“Well, I guess we can skip the part about saving it for the wedding night,” Pastor John says haughtily.

What an ass.

Seriously.

I wanna rip that little beard right off his face. We’re all adults here. Surely, we can discuss sex.

Sex is what keeps a marriage good.

I would assume.

“Sex is a good conflict-solver though, right?” I ask because I’m trying to be a good student. Plus, I love asking questions when I know the right answer.

“Actually, no,” Pastor John says, “I don’t think it is. Why don’t you tell me about the fight.”

I start because I’m going to prove him wrong, “I went shopping right after work because there was a great shoe sale. The saleslady who always helps me called me and told me that they’d just marked down a bunch of shoes but that the sale didn’t officially start until the next day, so I should come in and get, like, first pick. And I did. It was awesome. I found three great pairs of shoes for what I would normally spend on only one. I wear an eight or an eight and a half. Although, sometimes, for a really good shoe, I can squeeze into a seven and a half. I don’t think either one of you appreciates what a triumph that is. Like, if I were a size five or a ten, it’d be easy to replace shoes on sale, but I’m the most common size, so that makes replaceing great shoes on sale really hard. And one of the pairs I got was a designer pair, and, oh my gosh, they’re these adorable orange suede platform wedges. I mean, I don’t actually have anything to wear with them yet, but they’re, like, a statement shoe. They’ll make a basic outfit look amazing.”

Phillip rolls his eyes.

“Phillip, I see you rolling your eyes,” Pastor John says to him. “Why did you get upset about her shoe purchase?”

“I wasn’t upset at that point. I just thought it was really stupid to buy more shoes when her closet is already jammed with them.”

“Phillip, orange suede platforms are something you don’t replace that often. You have to buy that kind of shoe when you see it. When you really need a pair of orange platforms, they’re impossible to replace. Plus, you have no room to talk. Do you know how many pairs of tennis shoes you have? A pair for running, a pair for softball, a special pair for lifting weights, a pair for mowing, a pair of red Adidas just for football games. You also have about five pairs of Sperrys, vintage Air Jordans …”

“See?” Phillip says to the pastor. “This is why you can’t fight with her. You can’t get a word in edgewise.”

Pastor John says slowly, clearly taking Phillip’s side, “Why don’t you tell us what did make you mad, Phillip?”

Phillip’s pissing me off.

“This is why you can’t fight with her.”

He should know better than to fight with me.

I always win!

He shouldn’t even try.

He should just let me have my way. Our life would go very smoothly, and there’d be no fights.

There. Problem solved. Counseling session over.

I should counsel people.

I laugh to myself. Ha!

I’d be a horrible counselor. I’d tell them to suck it up, quit whining like a baby, and shut up about it. Deal with it. Move on. Stop talking about it. All this is doing is pissing people off.

Namely, me.

Plus, Neil and Joey just texted me and said they’re at Taco Tuesday at the bar and asked if I would please let Phillip come out and play.

I stealthily hide my phone under my purse and reply.

Me: Screw you both. I’m coming to play, too.

Phillip goes on, “Well, then she started going through my wallet and looking at my receipts.”

“And that made you mad?” Pastor John asks him.

I butt in and tell the pastor, “I think you need to tell Phillip that what comes around goes around. I’m pretty sure that’s in the Bible somewhere. Or maybe it’s, like, the Golden Rule. Treat others like you want to be treated yourself. Because, clearly, Phillip did not follow this simple rule. He wanted to talk about my purchases, so he should be prepared to discuss his, too. Don’t you think?”

Pastor John squints his eyes at me. “I suppose that would be considered fair, yes.”

“Right, and he got mad because—what did I replace in your wallet, Phillip? What did you buy?”

Phillip stiffens up his back and sits up straighter in his chair. “I bought wheels for my car.”

“Which I thought was hilarious! I asked him why he bought new wheels for his car when she already had a perfectly good pair. Get it? Like the shoes. It was awesome.”

Pastor John shakes his head at me. “Phillip, how did that make you feel?”

Oh. My. Gosh.

Who cares how it made him feel?

It wasn’t like I was being mean. I was just proving my point. And, clearly, I made my point, which was what pissed him off. He wasn’t mad about the shoes. He was mad he’d gotten caught being like a double agent.

Or what’s that word when you say one thing, but you do something else? Like, when you’re in high school and your parents tell you not to smoke pot, but then, one night, you replace them getting high in the hot tub? I know; it’s hypocritical. Basically, bullshit.

Phillip tells the pastor, “It made me feel mad. I didn’t think it was any of her business what I’d spent. Plus, she was mocking me.”

“I was mocking him because not only did he buy the wheels, but he also ordered the horsepower chip. The four-thousand-dollar horsepower chip. He’s complaining I spent like two hundred dollars on shoes he thought I didn’t need when he’d just spent six thousand dollars on things his car didn’t need!”

Pastor John folds his hands on the desk. I see him glance at the sky. Probably saying a prayer for Phillip. “So, why did that make you mad, Phillip?”

“I got mad when she started going on and on about how I don’t pay rent, but I live with her. How we don’t share our money yet. It was all bullshit.”

“Phillip! It wasn’t bullshit, and you know it. It was true.”

“Whatever,” Phillip says.

“Okay,” Pastor John interrupts, “so you were both mad. You’re both mad now, just talking about it. How did you solve the conflict? What happened next?”

“I wasn’t mad, Pastor. I thought it was freaking funny. He got all pissed off, stormed out of the house, said he was leaving. I was standing there, holding his wallet, and his keys were sitting on the counter. I knew he couldn’t go anywhere, which I thought was even funnier.”

Phillip gives me an evil glare. I can tell he’s sticking his tongue out at me in his mind.

“So, what did you do?” Pastor John asks again.

“I waved the keys out the door at him, and then I ran in the bedroom.”

I glance at Phillip. He’s trying hard not to smile, but the corners of his mouth are betraying him.

“That’s it? You hid the keys in the bedroom?”

Phillip now has a full-on grin. “No, she stripped down to some sexy lingerie, lay on the bed, and held my keys hostage.”

I raise my eyebrows at Phillip. He’s not telling the exact truth. “I did not hold the keys hostage. You told me I don’t play fair, and then you took them from me.”

I sorta forget where we are. I stare at Phillip’s adorable face and look deep into his eyes.

He grins at me, grabs my hand, and says, “You don’t play fair. You never have.”

I wrap a strand of hair around my finger, lick my lips, and think about how he threw me on the bed, how hot it was. “You didn’t seem to mind, Phillip.”

He slowly runs a finger up the side of my thigh. “Yeah, you’re right.”

God, he’s sexy.

Oh, wait. Speaking of God, we’re in church with a pastor staring at us.

Um, awkward much?

Pastor John coughs. “So, you solved the conflict with sex. Here’s the problem: you didn’t solve the conflict. You just temporarily forgot about it. You solved nothing. Sex solves nothing. Phillip, you got mad again, just discussing it. That’s what happens when you don’t deal with problems. They sit in your mind and fester. When you do that enough, they eventually grow into an infection. They infect your marriage with doubt, and you stop respecting each other. You have to take each other’s concerns seriously, or that infection will ruin your marriage.”

I really wanna know where this man did his training. Is he even qualified to do couples counseling? He’s comparing marriage to a disease!

Who does that?

He really doesn’t make marriage sound all that fun. I’m just saying.

Pastor John continues, “It’s really not about the shoes, in this instance, or about the money. It’s about control. Who wears the proverbial pants in the family. Think about that, and we’ll discuss it more next time. Our time is up. See you in a few weeks.”

We get in the car, and I say, “Marriage counseling is bullshit. He hasn’t taught us anything. Sure, he told us we did it wrong, but he didn’t say how to fix it. Talking about it didn’t fix it.”

“Well, it’s something to think about, and there’s some validity to what he’s saying. There’s a gal at work who’s going through a divorce, and I heard her talking in the lunchroom about her husband. She was bringing up stuff from the past eight years. I’m thinking she didn’t talk to him about their problems, or he didn’t listen. Whichever it was, they didn’t fix it at the time, and she’s held it against him for a long time.”

“Phillip, eight years from now, we’re going to laugh about the shoe fight. I laugh about the shoe fight now. It was funny.”

“Yeah, it was. Plus, you’re sexy.”

“Really? Like, do you really think I’m sexy, Phillip?”

“Yeah, wanna go home now, and I’ll shoe you?”

“Shoe me?”

“I mean, show you. I just said shoe because shoe, the shoes, you know.”

“It wasn’t that funny,” I say, but then I start laughing again. “Okay, it was really funny. I’d like to take you home, but Neil and Joey just texted me. They’re at the bar, and they want you to come out and play. They said they’d counsel you.”

“That’d be a joke. Do you wanna go?”

“Yeah, for a bit. I’m pretty sure I’m gonna need to go to the bar after every couples counseling session. Plus, it’s Taco Tuesday. Margaritas are half-price, and tequila shots are only a buck.”

We went to the bar, had some tacos, and a couple of tequila shots. For obvious reasons, Phillip is usually the designated driver, so I maybe had one more shot than he did, and when we get home, I am ready for some fun.

I’m stripping my clothes off in the bedroom when Phillip walks in.

He grins at my nakedness and says, “Just so we’re clear, I’m the man. I wear the pants in the family.” He points down to his pants. “See?”

I tilt my head, grin, and slowly walk my naked ass over toward him. I grab the front of his jeans and unbutton them. “Not if I can take them off you.”