It’s Sunday morning,and I’m knocking on Zach’s parents’ front door for brunch and wedding planning. Cake tasting on Friday night wasn’t enough for the weekend, I guess. My parents are waiting behind me, excited to see their friends and start ironing out some details for the special day. Correction: My mom is excited to iron out the details. Dad is ready to watch some reruns of Seinfeld with Mike.
And me? I’m getting these weird, jittery feelings every time I think about the wedding. Reality is sinking in.
The door opens, and Julie’s bright, smiling face greets me. “Claire!” She wraps me in a huge hug. There’s such comfort in her familiar embrace.
I move out of the way so she can give Mom a sisterly hug, and a friendly one for Dad. We make our way through the entrance to the living room, where Mike and Zach wait for us. Mike stands and greets us, and Zach stays on the couch, typing something furiously on his phone.
“Hey,” I say, plopping down beside him.
He looks up at me with a grin. “Hey, babe. Sorry, just messaging Tyson about app stuff.”
“No worries.”
He kisses the side of my head and keeps going with his message. Our parents are engaged in their own conversation, and I take the opportunity to study Zach as he types. My emotions have been in such a jumble over the last week. I want to reassure myself that I’m doing the right thing.
After telling Shawna about my hesitation, I feel like I need to beextraaware of my words. But the problem isn’t just the words I say. It’s the feeling behind them. So I want to make sure I’m convinced about my decision.
So…why AM I marrying Zach?
Of course, there’s the familiarity and comfort of being with him. We grew up together. He’s seen me through my awkward teenage years, and I’ve seen him through his. We went through acne and braces together, and we still found romance after all of that.
There’s his family. I love his parents. They’re closer to me than my actual aunts and uncles.
Then there’s Zach himself. He’s stable. I know he’d never cheat on me. He’s reliable and steadfast. He’s handsome, too, with the classic all-American boy blond hair and blue eyes, set off by a jock stature.
And he cares about me. I know he does. Maybe he doesn’t show it all the time, but when we were kids and I fell off my bike, he’d go get my mom and then sit with me while she cleaned up my wounds. He loved reading the stories I would write. Sometimes he’d make pictures to go along with them, and we’d sit in his room for hours, creating the worlds that were only in my imagination.
Should I try telling him about the book I’m writing now? I’ve been so hesitant to tell anyone other than Ryan, worried they’d judge me for pursuing something other than my math career. But maybe I’m wrong. I’ve been supportive of all his business endeavors. Maybe he’d be more supportive than I thought.
I gather up my courage and smile, ready to finally share this piece of myself with him. “Hey,” I say, but Zach holds up a finger in aone minutegesture. I wait another moment until he’s done typing, then he locks his phone and gives me a grin.
“Hey,” he says.
I bump his shoulder with mine. “Remember that story I wrote when I was a little girl?”
“Which one? You wrote a lot of stories.”
I grin. “Yeah that’s true. I did love writing.”
“It was a cute hobby,” he says. “Especially the one you wrote about me saving the world in my pajamas.”
“And the villain was a telepathic cat.”
“That’s right!” He laughs out loud.
“I wanted to be an author so badly,” I say.
He nods. “It’s a good thing you gave that up though.”
I press my lips together. That’s not where I expected the conversation to go. “What…what do you mean?”
He gives me a self-deprecating smile. “It was cute when you were little, but it’s not like your stories were really good or anything.”
My insides twist at his words. I’m not saying my stories were any good back then, but I was seven years old. The most dramatic thing I had encountered was an argument with my friend about who had more Barbies.
He puts his hand on mine. “But it doesn’t matter, because you’re so smart at math. This way we’ll be all set when we get married.”
I don’t know what to say. The wind completely falls out of my sails. I want to say that those stories were practice, and the more I practiced, the better they’d get. But is it worth continuing this conversation?
