It's the summer break, and for the first time in his life, Mike would rather stay in the bloody classroom.<br><br>It's wedding season, and Mike is doomed to spend all summer sipping cheap champagne and pretending he likes tiny portions of posh food. From the passive-aggressive torment of Mike's mother-in-law to the insulting incredulity of his colleagues over what his mysterious husband actually looks like, Mike would voluntarily teach sex education to fourteen-year-olds for the rest of his life if it would only get him out of one more wedding. Even his husband in a kilt isn't going to save this one.<br><br>But there's nothing like watching someone else get hitched to remind him of where he's come from ... and where he's determined to go from here.

Married Ones

“If they were going for traditionally Scottish,” Mike said to Stephen over the sixth course—a globe of paste on an insipid bit of fish—in a confidential whisper, “then why not the dwarf-tossing?”


“I dunno, dwarf-tossing, we could chuck the father of the groom.”


Stephen snorted into his sleeve, but it was the first smile he’d cracked since the ceremony, and it smoothed away quickly.


He was very stiff and cold, and Mike hated it. Stephen could sulk for Scotland, no competition there, and it radiated outwards so that he didn’t sulk at a particular someone, he sulked at everyone. Mike’s instincts said he was in trouble, and ought to be putting in orders to the best curry house in town and cleaning the kitchen as penance, even as his brain pointed out he hadn’t done anything to pay penance for.


Chapter 11