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Lucius almost screams when he sees the name “Izzy Hands” pop up in his email inbox. It’s been a little over four years since the last time he set eyes on Izzy, the day Ed got married and Izzy… Lucius supposes he just had enough.
It still hurts to think about that day. He knew there was something deeper going on between Izzy and Ed – it was impossible not to after spending more than ten minutes with them – but the looks on their faces that morning told him it was so, so much more than an unrequited crush. They were two people who loved each other catastrophically, in an all-consuming and life-ruining way. He never understood what people meant when they said something was like watching a car crash until that wedding.
When the ceremony was over and the wedding parties had walked back down the aisle and out of the chapel, he’d found Izzy pale and shaking in a corner. He’d looked up at Lucius with huge, wounded eyes, and whispered, “Can you get me out of here?”
Lucius hustled him to a side door far away from where Ed and Stede were being sent off in their limo. He wished he’d said something. He wished he’d hugged him, at the very least. But he did the best he could in the moment, getting Izzy a clear path out and squeezing his shoulder in what he hoped was some sort of comfort.
He texted him later to ask if he got home alright, then again the next day to ask how he was doing. He heard nothing for four and a half years.
Lucius knows he has no right to feel hurt, but it stung. They had become something approaching friends during the wedding planning process. Friendly acquaintances, at least, heading towards being real friends.
Izzy started offering him rides to and from the various wedding appointments once he learned that Lucius didn’t have a car. It was weird, considering the first time they met, Izzy had been a complete asshole about everything. But that first morning in the car, Izzy had apologized for all the things he’d said. In fairness, Lucius hadn’t exactly been a ray of fucking sunshine that day, so he apologized too.
It was incredibly awkward for all of one minute before Lucius burst out, “I fucking hate the color scheme, what the fuck is this rich white people nonsense?” and Izzy had yelled, “I know,” and then they were off: two working class, service industry allies against the world. He learned that Izzy could be bitchy, yes, but he also saw glimpses of how deeply Izzy cared about Ed, and how underneath it all, he was trying to do right by his friend as best he could. Looking back later, it all made a lot of sense.
And then he was gone.
Lucius reads the email again. It is, of all things, a fucking wedding invitation. Izzy’s getting married. His fiancée’s name is Elizabeth, and from the two photos included in the invitation, he’s over the moon for her.
The first is a candid shot of the two of them walking side by side in a park. Izzy has his arm looped around her waist, and their heads are tipped together as they talk. The way Izzy looks at her makes Lucius blush – he can almost feel how much he loves her.
The second photo is one of those awkwardly posed family photos of Izzy, his fiancée, and her two tween daughters. (Children! Fuck’s sake, Izzy’s going to be a stepfather.) It’s obvious that one of the girls just cracked a joke, though, and the photographer managed to catch the split second of surprise as they all cracked up. It’s sweet. Izzy looks so happy.
There’s a phone number at the bottom of the email. Lucius tries to do the time zone math, decides he doesn’t care, and dials it anyway.
“Hello?” Lucius had only spoken to Izzy for a handful of hours, but that voice is so distinctive that he recognizes it immediately.
“You fucking asshole!” Lucius wasn’t planning to shout at him, but he’s relieved that Izzy’s not dead, a little hurt, and still a little angry. “You’re not fucking dead!”
Izzy, of all things, laughs. “Hi, Lucius. I take it you got the invitation?”
“Did I get – of course I got the fucking invitation, you dick! Is this where you’ve been all this time? I was worried you fucking died!”
Once he starts, he can’t stop. He unloads his worries and regrets and anger on Izzy, without letting him get a word in edgewise, for nearly an hour. Izzy listens patiently. Occasionally Lucius hears a noise coming through the phone – the thump of a cabinet door closing, a pair of running footsteps, the distant meow of a cat.
Then, “Hi, love,” he hears Izzy murmur away from the phone.
The tone of his voice… Lucius never imagined Izzy could be so soft, so sweet. He can tell that Izzy adores her.
“Is that her? Your fiancée?” he asks.
“It is. Beth, do you want to talk to Lucius?”
He hears a woman say, “Oh God yes, I absolutely do, give me the phone!” She laughs, then her voice comes through much clearer. “Hello, Lucius darling. I’m Beth.” She has a charming Irish accent and he can hear the smile on her face.
Lucius falls head over heels in love with her (platonically, at least) within two minutes. She has a cheerful, sunny disposition, giggling as she tells him a little bit about herself and her daughters (twin girls named Ruby and Opal, Lucius thinks that’s the cutest fucking thing), and promises that if he comes to the wedding, she’ll tell him embarrassing stories about Izzy. That last one prompts Izzy to say, “Alright, that’s enough,” and steal the phone back.
“So are you coming?” Izzy asks.
“Of course I am! I need to meet this woman. I’ll bring Pete, they’ll love each other.”
“Oh, are you still with Pete?” Izzy asks. They had talked about him once or twice, mostly on the way back from that awful diner brunch, when Lucius realized something was terribly wrong and Izzy kept changing the subject. “That’s good. I know he made you happy.”
“Yeah, he does.” He weighs his words for a moment, then decides to fucking go for it. “I’m really glad you’re alright. And that you’ve found someone.”
“Yeah,” he says, and Lucius can picture his smile. “Me too.”
He texts Pete (“You’ll never fucking guess where we’re going in June”) and books their flights and hotel within an hour. There’s no fucking way he’s going to miss this.
It turns out that Beth is twice as delightful as he ever imagined. When he rocks up to the wedding with Pete, he hugs Izzy so hard it nearly crushes him, because he’s been so fucking worried about him. Then there’s Beth, petite and red haired and smiling ear to ear, and she hugs him though they’ve never met. “I’ve heard so much shit about you,” she declares, which makes all of them laugh.
The wedding is humble, simple, and sweet. The ceremony is in a park under the shade of a grove of trees, with Izzy and Beth standing in a gazebo with a civil officiant. Her two daughters, who are about twelve or thirteen years old, stand by them. One is in a gray suit with a sapphire waistcoat, the other in a royal blue dress that doesn’t quite match. Beth wears a tea length cobalt blue dress that sets off her red hair.
Izzy’s so nervous that Lucius can see his hands shaking. He stumbles through the vows he wrote himself while Beth looks at him like he hung the moon. When the officiant tells them to kiss, she throws herself into his arms and he lifts her right off her feet.
If Lucius cries a little, no one needs to know.
The reception takes place in a local restaurant. Lucius hardly eats the food, though it’s really good – he can’t take his eyes off Izzy. He couldn’t be more different than the sad, prickly man he met five years ago, who he later realized was lashing out from a broken heart. The man sitting at the head table, dancing with his wife, and chatting happily with his guests, seems to be a different man entirely.
Lucius discreetly snaps a few pictures of their first dance. She has her arms around his neck, and he has one hand on her waist. Lucius gets a picture at the exact moment he reaches up to brush a loose curl from her face. It’s such a simple, sweet moment that Lucius almost cries all over again.
When it’s time to cut the cake, he has his phone at the ready. He sees the gleam in Beth’s eye and starts snapping just before she turns and tries to smash a bite of cake into Izzy’s face. He yelps and dodges out of the way and she gives chase, both of them and all the guests laughing. He stops her by wrapping his arms around her as tightly as he can, pinning her hands to her sides and getting cake all over their clothes.
“Are you done?” he asks her, and she nods and says she is, laughing.
He gets another photo only seconds later when Izzy dabs icing on the tip of her nose, making her shriek with laughter and jump in to kiss him, getting it all over his face, too.
For a horrible, vicious moment that he’s not proud of, he’s tempted to send a picture to Ed. He still has Ed’s number, if only so he knows which texts and calls to ignore. They only spoke a few times after the wedding, when Ed desperately tried to find out if he knew where Izzy went. Lucius answered a few times until he and a few of Ed’s friends put some of the details together. After that, he couldn’t bear to speak to him.
Something in him – a mean, petty part of him – wants to send a photo of Izzy, blissfully happy and deeply in love with his new wife. He even flips through his pictures to see which of them is most obviously taken at a wedding.
It’s a terrible idea. Izzy has clearly worked hard to build a new life without Ed, as far away as he could get. He cut all ties in the most dramatic way possible, and he did it for a fucking reason. And he knows, because he’d do it too, that Ed wouldn’t rest until he tracked Izzy down. A moment of spite could turn into a bomb that ruins what Izzy has now.
So instead, he puts down his phone, grabs Pete’s hand, and pulls him out onto the dance floor. It’s time to celebrate – Izzy’s new love, and his family, and their rekindled friendship, and the beautiful life Izzy has built for himself.
Izzy and Beth see him and Pete off in the morning – they’re taking a few extra days at a local B&B to relax and wander around the countryside. Beth hugs them both with surprising strength and Lucius squeezes her right back.
“Take care of him,” he murmurs as he lets her go.
“Come visit and help me take care of him,” she offers back. She glances over to where Izzy is talking with Pete. When she’s sure they won’t be overheard, she adds, “He missed you. He’d never admit it, but he did. So.” She squares her shoulders and jabs a finger into his chest. “Come visit. I insist. I know where you live.”
He gives her a flat look, but catches the twinkle in her eye. “You don’t, actually.”
“You have a distinctive name, I will find you,” she insists, but then she softens. “I mean it, though. Please come visit us.”
“We will.”
Izzy finishes his goodbye to Pete, clapping him on the shoulder one last time. As he turns, he catches Beth’s eye. Lucius marvels at the way his expression softens into a sweet smile, like Beth is the most important thing in the world to him. It’s a look he rarely sees on even the most besotted of newlyweds. They nearly forget that he and Pete are standing there until they say their goodbyes.
“I didn’t think he could smile that much,” Pete says once they’re on the road in their rental car, fiddling with radio stations as always.
Lucius chuckles. “I know. It’s like he became a different person. Like the old Izzy split open like a pod and out came an actual human.”
Pete chuckles, then takes one hand off the wheel to give Lucius’s hand a squeeze. “Are you glad you saw him again?”
“I am.”
“You going to tell Ed?”
“Absolutely not.” He shakes his head definitively, taking his phone out of his pocket to skim through the pictures he took during the reception: several of Pete looking rather dashing in his suit, of course, then Izzy and Beth dancing, cutting the cake, and fighting with icing. There are a few particularly good photos of Izzy dancing with his stepdaughters. “He doesn’t get to fuck this up.”
He sends Izzy the photos that night, along with the message, “Congratulations again. I really am happy for you. See you at Christmas?”
He wakes up in the morning to a reply, and when he reads it, he laughs so hard he wakes Pete.
“I knew inviting you was a mistake.”
He sends back a long line of nonsensical emojis, then plugs a reminder into his calendar to bother him about Christmas.