“Tracy’s a nice girl. She’s sweet and funny and…a good friend.”
“But…?”
“But…I don’t see this as the great love for either of you. Are you sure you’re getting married because you’re in love with her or just because you want to get married?”
Now he’d had enough. “Why is everyone so down on marriage?” Elliott snapped, storming across the small room. “I mean, maybe it’s not right for everyone, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t right for someone! For me! I don’t understand why everyone is on my case about this!”
“Elliott…”
“No! You need to understand where I’m coming from. I want to be married and I want to be married to Tracy! I believe in falling in love and starting a family and going through all the highs and lows that go along with that! I want to live with someone who loves me and gets me and who completes me! Is it wrong to want to sleep beside the perfect person for the rest of your life? Is it wrong to want to enjoy inane conversations at two in the morning over…over…I don’t know…whether or not there’s a sale on lawn mowers?”
“Elliott, you’re spiraling.”
“Can you blame me? We’re standing here, ten minutes before my wedding, arguing over whether or not I should be doing this! If this is how you felt, why would you wait until today to bring it up?”
He was about to say more when Skylar seemed to crash through the door. “Oh, my God! I’m sorry!” she said. “I…I…was doing final check and lost my balance at the door and…and…”
Her eyes went wide when they landed on him, and Elliott’s immediate thought was how adorable she looked when she was flustered. She was dressed in a very nondescript navy blue dress with her honey-blonde hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail. Very professional looking. And yet he still saw traces of the girl he grew up with. It was an odd observation, but…there it was. He was about to ask if she needed anything, but she seemed to realize she had interrupted something and took a step back.
Clearing her throat, she muttered another apology before leaving the room. It took all of three seconds for Tyler to start talking.
“Believe me, I wanted to say something sooner, but…I don’t know…there never seemed to be the right time!”
“And you suddenly thought this was it?”
“Okay, I get it. The timing sucks,” Tyler conceded. “It wasn’t intentional, I swear!” He paused and seemed to collect his thoughts. “No one’s saying anything bad about marriage, Elliott. This is about marrying the right person for the right reasons! Honestly, I think you love the idea of marriage so much that you’re a little blind to who you’re marrying!”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded, more than a little offended.
“It means,” he paused and let out a long breath. “I don’t think Tracy loves you. Not the way you love her.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he argued.
“El, I’ve been around you enough to know that you guys act more like people hanging out together than a real couple. She’s like a friend or…”
“Marrying someone you’re friends with is a good thing, Ty. At the end of the day, you should genuinely like the person you’re married to.”
“Oh, I agree, but there should be more. There should be...you know...all the other stuff. The romantic crap.”
“I am not taking relationship advice from someone who says romantic crap.” And before Tyler could object, he raked a hand through his hair and went on. “And what do you even know about this? Tracy and I do a ton of romantic stuff!”
“No, you do a lot of romantic stuff for Tracy.”
“That’s not…”
Wait…was that true?
Clearly Tyler caught his hesitation and decided to run with it. “Think about it, Elliott. All the romantic stuff that the two of you do is initiated by you.” He paused. “What did you do for her birthday?”
“Took her to Napa and did the hot air balloon ride with a champagne picnic afterwards. Why?”
“And what did she do for your birthday?”
“Um…you know…we did the uh…the thing,” he stammered vaguely.
“Dude, she bought you those custom car mats! And she didn’t even wrap the box!”
“But I wanted them so–if you think about it, it was a very thoughtful gift!”
“Fine, you wanted them. How about for your anniversary? What did you do?”
“I surprised her with a trip to Asheville where we went for that spa retreat. It was something for both of us.”
Tyler stared at him hard. “And what did she give you?”
Dammit.
“She uh…she forgot that it was our anniversary.”
“How are you not seeing a pattern here?!” Tyler cried. “For all your talk about wanting what your parents have and what your grandparents have and all that happy horseshit, you are clearly settling here!”
“I’m not!”
“Yes, you are! Because that girl is nothing even close to what you say you want! There are no shared hobbies, no cute trips or inside jokes…none of it! If anything, she just seems content to hang out and let you take her places! Why are you settling?”
“I get that you don’t agree with the way I think and that’s okay. You don’t have to.”
“Elliott, can you really stand here and tell me this relationship is perfect? That there isn’t anything about Tracy that you would change? Or anything about the relationship that doesn’t check all your boxes? Because I’m going to tell you, I can see that there are things that just don’t…I don’t know…fit.”
Letting out a long breath, he pinched the bridge of his nose and silently counted to ten because–sadly–Tyler had a point.
If he were being honest, there were some aspects of his relationship with Tracy that weren’t as romantic as he’d hoped. But that came with time, right? All the examples Tyler just gave were things he had brushed off as no big deal, but…maybe they were. He just attributed it to her laid-back attitude and was hopeful that once they were married, things would change.
“And what about this wedding?” Tyler asked, breaking into his thoughts.
“What about it?”
“Most women dream of and plan their wedding for years! This was sort of put together in a matter of months and…”
“And what?”
“And it just seems to me like it was treated as just an everyday kind of event rather than the biggest day of her life.”
“Since when do you know anything about planning a wedding?” he snapped.
“Since I have three sisters who I had to sit through wedding planning hell with! Trust me, each of those weddings took a minimum of a year to plan and they were all super obsessed with every little detail. Tracy just went on Pinterest and said, ‘Here. Do this.’ I mean, that’s not normal, Elliott.”
Okay, so maybe she didn’t show as much enthusiasm for the wedding as brides usually do, but maybe that was just nerves. Maybe…