I can’t do this. “Please don’t. You win, okay? It’s over. I’ll end it so you don’t have to.”
He sits down next to me, car creaking under his weight. He balances the box carefully on his lap, and just having it this close makes the splinters of my heart prick my chest walls. We’ll never sit down and address them together. Our loved ones will never open them and smile, and say, They’re really getting married, then. They’re really going to do it. We’ll never face each other across a flower-strewn aisle and promise ourselves to each other forever.
“What do you mean, ‘over’?” Nicholas asks, quiet and throaty. “Don’t tell me you’re trying to break up with me after all we’ve been through. That’s not happening.”
“Isn’t that what you want?”
“No.” His fingers slide under my chin, raising me to eye level with him. His gaze radiates an emotion I’m convinced he doesn’t feel, and it’s agony. “Sweetheart …”
My eyes cut to the box on his lap and I want to throw it. “Stop. I don’t want to hear anything else. It’s not necessary.”
“Oh, I think it’s very necessary.”
“It’s over. Just leave me alone.”
His eyes are smoldering. “Naomi, if you say one more time that we’re over, I’m going to lose my mind. I’ve been going crazy all day, not knowing where you went. You didn’t answer your phone, and when you drove away your driving was jerky and all over the place. Do you have any idea what that did to me? I was on the verge of calling up hospitals when I saw the credit card charge.”
It’s ridiculous that I feel guilty for worrying him. “I want you to go away. Please.”
“Because of this?” He taps the blue box, and I flinch.
“Because I’ve had a change of heart.”
I’m off the car before I know what’s happened, caged between the cold metal of the hood and Nicholas. There’s no room to dodge around him, nowhere to go. My senses reel, overpowered by him, collapsing into his touch to meld us perfectly together. His dark stare glitters with fear and fury, and something else that takes me another half second to translate. Need. Deep and burning. If I weren’t pinned, my knees would buckle.
He places his hand over my thumping, traitorous heart, commanding every nerve ending, every desire. I am wide, wide awake. He shudders an exhale and his face descends so close that I think it must end with a kiss, which is why I close my eyes.
“Your heart is mine,” he says.
Nicholas opens the box and removes an invitation. An RSVP card falls out and tears away, pinwheeling across the parking lot. “I’ve kept one of these folded up in my wallet for months,” he tells me. “I’d take it out and look at it sometimes, and I’d smile because I was so excited to marry you. But then I stopped being happy when I looked at them.”
“Because you stopped wanting to marry me.”
He hands me the invitation. “How do you feel when you hold this?”
“Sad,” I reply truthfully.
“Read it. Tell me then what you feel.”
I’m so empty, you could hear the wind blow through me. But I sit back down on the car, Nicholas hopping up beside me, and have to read the fancy curling script twice before it digests.
I haven’t given these invitations a second glance since they arrived in the mail, and my response is the same flare of annoyance. Nicholas observes my reaction and nods. “Exactly. Do those look like they should be our invitations? Are those our words? Does any of that feel representative of our marriage? Your middle name isn’t even on here.”
“It’s not what I would have picked,” I admit, hearing the bitter notes in my voice. “But I didn’t pay for them, so. Didn’t get the final say.”
“Isn’t that insane, though? That you didn’t get the final say?” He examines the invitation. “Never decided on a picture to put in these, either. It’s just as well, since those pictures memorialize an unhappy day. I remember you weren’t feeling well, and I didn’t like my outfit. We were annoyed with each other, standing in front of the photographer with fake head-over-heels smiles.”
“True.”
“And these ribbons?” He touches one of the ivory silk bows on the invitation. There are tons of them, with faux pearls in the centers. “Does this resemble our taste at all? I’ve had a good long time to think about this, and when I look at these invitations they don’t feel like ours.”
“They’re not. They’re your mother’s.” I look him right in the eye. “If you didn’t like the decisions she made, you should have spoken up.”
“I know. I’m sorry I let her take over everything … I knew how it was making you feel and I just let her do it because at the time it was easier for you to be upset with me than to have Mom upset with me. Which is screwed up.”
“Yes, it is.” There’s no point rubbing his nose in it, so I add, “You’re getting better, though. You’ve been defending me. You haven’t let any of her insults slide. And for your own sake, I’m glad you haven’t been going over there every day and taking all of her calls.”
“It helps that I have you beside me, encouraging me.” He rests his head on my shoulder. “You make it easier.”
“I haven’t always made it easier.”
He takes my hand and squeezes. “I was sorting through things to throw away this morning, and found the boxes. It was the most natural thing in the world to toss them.”
“Wow,” I remark hollowly. “Don’t bother to soften the blow or anything.”
“Sweetheart, why would we have a wedding in St. Mary’s? Why would we use a stuffy banquet hall for our reception? Do either of those places hold any personal significance for us?”
“No, but—”
“It should be about us,” he continues urgently, taking both of my hands in his and turning us fully to face each other. “And the guest list! It’s a mile long. I don’t know most of the names on there. Why would we crowd all of these strangers around us for the most special moment of our lives?” He crushes an invitation into a ball, and I wheeze out a gasp. “These are for a fake wedding. I threw away the invitations because I don’t want any of those people there.”
My eyes are saucers. “None of them?”
“Why would I? This isn’t about anybody but me and you. The only people I care to have at our wedding are those who have treated both of us well. That rules out just about everybody I know, including the person who designed these invitations.”
I can’t conceive of a wedding between us in which Deborah isn’t the grand marshal. She’d never let us get away with excluding her. For Deborah, our wedding is a social event at which she can preen and trot around her son like a pageant mom. She can’t wait for all the other moms in her circle to congratulate her. “What about our families?”
“Fuck our families. Fuck everybody.” He throws the crumpled invitation at a dumpster. It bounces off the rim.
I burst out laughing. I know he doesn’t mean that, but maybe for one day, he’s right. On a sacred day that signifies putting each other above all else, celebrating a deeply personal commitment, maybe we shouldn’t have to accommodate the wants or opinions of others. We should do what feels right for us and no one else.