Sebastian

It’s my wedding day.

I feel an excitement so acute it’s almost painful. My chest is too tight to breathe. I feel tense and feverish.

Yet, I’m happier than I’ve ever been.

I had my bachelor party last night with Nero, Jace, Giovanni, and Brody. Brody was my roommate in college, and the shooting guard on the basketball team. After graduation, he played a year in the Chinese league. Now he’s back in Chicago, flush with stories of how many girls in Beijing wanted to try out a 6’8 white dude, even with the ugly mug he’s carrying around.

Giovanni is one of my lieutenants, generally in charge of the high-roller poker ring. And of course Jace was both roommate and soldier, up until this week. After today, he’ll be living alone in the apartment in Hyde Park, while I move in with Yelena.

The thought of waking up to her every morning, seeing her every time I come home, makes me happier than I can express. I wouldn’t give a fuck if we were moving into a cardboard box if she was going to be there.

But I wanted to get her the most beautiful apartment imaginable. Something that had space and light, and most of all, belonged to her. I want her to pick the paint color, the furniture. I want her to feel that it’s all her own, not imposed on by anyone else, for once in her life.

Unfortunately we haven’t had time to pick out much of anything just yet, because of how rushed the wedding has been. But there’ll be plenty of time afterward. All the time in the world.

I told my groomsmen I had no interest in strippers, so instead we went drinking at the Blarney Stone. If I would have been getting married a year ago, I’m sure Nero would have fought me on that. But he’s been shockingly faithful to Camille, and seemed perfectly satisfied to slug down a few shots, then challenge Giovanni to a game of pool, without even bothering to check out the co-eds lined up at the bar, who kept throwing hopeful glances in his direction.

Jace leaned on the table with both elbows, glumly slugging down a beer.

“I can’t believe you two are in a committed relationship before me,” he said, casting a disbelieving look at me and then Nero.

“I’m still single!” Brody piped up from the pool table.

“Of course you are!” Jace shouted back. “Just look at you!”

Brody shrugged and grinned. He’s got a head the size and shape of an overgrown potato, and one of the scraggliest, patchiest beards I’ve ever seen, so he’s used to taking shit about his looks.

“And you . . .” Jace shook his head in disbelief. “You’re just walking down the street and you happen to bump into a Russian goddess. Some guys have all the luck.”

“Maybe Yelena has a cousin,” I told him, trying to cheer him up.

“Really?” Jace said, perking up a little. “Like, coming to the wedding tomorrow? Cause I’m gonna be lookin’ pretty fucking spiffy in my new suit.”

“I don’t know,” I laughed. “It’s going to be a tiny ceremony. Just a dinner after, no reception.”

Jace pouted at the idea of no reception where he could dance with the gorgeous Russian cousins of his imagination.

“What about the honeymoon?” he said. “You going back to her home country? You could take me with you . . . I could carry your suitcases . . .”

“We’re going to Switzerland,” I told him. “But not for a couple months. We want to backpack in the Alps, and we need more time to plan it all out.”

Despite the disappointments of my wedding and honeymoon plans, Jace cheered up pretty well once he got a couple more beers in him. He even snagged a phone number from one of the co-eds at the bar, after she realized that no amount of hair-tossing or lip-biting was going to get Nero to pay attention to her.

Brody likewise enjoyed himself, despite losing four games in a row to Nero. He managed to beat me at darts, and that seemed like more than enough victory for him, ignoring the fact that I’d never played darts before in my life and only had the shakiest understanding of the rules.

Nero was quiet, though not in his usual sullen, glowering way. He just seemed lost in thought.

When he stepped outside for a smoke I followed after him, wondering what he was thinking about.

He lit the cigarette, the flare of his lighter briefly illuminating the sharp planes of his face. His hair hung down over his eyes, casting them in shadow.

He took a long pull, then exhaled, the smoke forming a wreath around his face.

Without prodding, he said, “I wish Dante was here.”

“Me too,” I said. “It doesn’t feel right without him.”

“Have you talked to him?” Nero asked.

“Yeah. He said exactly what you’d expect. That this whole thing is a bad idea.”

I expected Nero to give an impatient snort. I thought he’d agree with me—he was always the most annoyed of anyone when Dante tried to exert his stodgy big-brother conservatism on the rest of us.

But to my surprise, Nero just took another long exhale and said, “I understand him better since he’s been gone.”

“What do you mean?”

“The weight of it. Of all of it. It’s heavy and it’s relentless.”

I nodded slowly.

I’ve been feeling it, too—the sheer mass of responsibility that Dante had been shouldering all that time, falling onto me and Nero instead. Nero covering the South Shore, me running the rest of our territory. Papa retreating further and further from all of it.

“Your mistakes aren’t your own,” Nero said. “They affect everyone. And that’s terrifying.”

I didn’t know if he was referring to me embroiling us with the Russians, or if he was talking about himself and the risk he’d taken in stealing that diamond. Either way, it shocked me to hear Nero admit that anything scared him.

“It’ll be alright,” I told him. “You and I can handle it, with or without Dante.”

“Yeah,” Nero said. “But it does make me appreciate him just a little bit more.”

“Who knew that he really was doing a fuck-ton of work, and not just complaining about it,” I said. We both laughed.

We already knew that, of course. Theoretically. But reality hits harder.

“How’s the shop?” I asked him.

Nero and Camille opened a custom car modification shop, over on Howe Street. They live above it, in a tiny apartment that always smells a little bit like fresh paint and gasoline fumes, which I think they like.

“Flourishing,” he said. “Camille’s brilliant. Some of the shit she can do with an engine . . . I hate to admit it, but she might be better than me.”

He said it like it shamed him, but I could hear the obvious pride in his voice.

“Think you’ll be following me down the church aisle?” I asked him.

“One hundred percent,” Nero said without hesitation. “Very soon. Her dad’s been sick—”

I nodded, remembering that her father had lung cancer.

“We’re waiting for him to be completely recovered. Or, recovered as much as you can be with that kind of thing.”

“I’m happy for you, man,” I told him.

“Likewise,” Nero said with a little half-smile.

Now my groomsmen are probably getting dressed just the same as I am, in pewter-colored suits. I hadn’t planned to have any groomsmen, since Yelena doesn’t have any bridesmaids, but she said she didn’t care —“Adrian will stand up with me.”