Rebecca Serle - In Five Years

“I ordered a bottle of Brunello,” he says. “We liked it the last time we were here.”

David keeps a spreadsheet of really great meals we’ve had — what we drank and what we ate — for future reference. He keeps it accessible on his phone for such situations.

“David—” I start. I exhale. “The florist ordered us three thousand gardenias.”

“What for?”

“The wedding,” I say.

“I’m aware of that,” he tells me. “But why?”

“I don’t know. Some mix-up at the florist. They’re all going to be brown by the time we take any photos. They last for like two hours.”

“Well if it’s their mistake, they should cover the cost. Did you speak with them?”

I take my napkin and fold it over my pants. “I was on the phone with them but had to hang up to deal with work.”

David takes a sip of water. “I’ll handle it,” he says.

“Thanks.” I clear my throat. “David,” I say. “Before I say this, you can’t get mad at me.”

“That’s impossible to guarantee, but okay.”

“I’m serious.”

“Just say it,” he says.

I exhale. “Maybe we should postpone the wedding.”

He looks at me in confusion but something else, too. In the back of his eyes, behind the pupils and the firing optic nerve, is relief. Confirmation. Because he’s known, hasn’t he? He’s suspected that I’d let him down.

“Why do you say that?” he asks, measured.

“Bella is sick,” I say. “I don’t think she’ll be able to make it. I don’t want to get married without her.”

David nods. “So what are you saying? You want more time?” He shakes his head.

“That we postpone till the summer. Maybe even get the venue we want.”

“We don’t want this venue?” David sits back. He’s irritated. It’s not an emotion he wears often. “Dannie,” he says. “I need to ask you something.”

I stay perfectly still. I hear the wind outside howling. Ushering in the impending freeze.

“Do you really want to get married?”

Relief sputters and then floods my veins like a faucet after a water outage. “Yes,” I say. “Yes, of course.”

Our wine comes then. We busy ourselves with witnessing and then participating: the uncorking and tasting and pouring and toasting. David congratulates me on Yahtzee.

“Are you sure?” he says, picking the thread back up. “Because sometimes I don’t…” He shakes his head. “Sometimes I’m not so sure.”

“Forget about my suggestion,” I say. “It was dumb. I shouldn’t have brought it up. Everything is already set.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

We order, but we barely touch our food. We both know the truth of what sits now between us. And I should be scared, I should be terrified, but the thing I keep thinking, the thing that makes me answer affirmative, is that he didn’t ask the other question, the one I cannot conceive.

What happens if she doesn’t make it?

The chemo is brutal. Far, far worse than the last round. Standing up is hard for Bella now, and she doesn’t leave the apartment except for treatment. She sits in bed, emailing with the gallery, looking over digital exhibits. I visit her in the mornings sometimes. Svedka lets me in, and I sit on the edge of the bed, even as she’s sleeping.

She starts to lose her hair.

My wedding dress arrives. It fits. It even looks good. The saleslady was right, the neckline isn’t as bad as I thought it was.

David does not mention the wedding to me for a week. For a week, I leave emails from the planner unanswered, dodge calls, hold off on writing checks. And then I come home from work to find him at the dining room table, a bowl of pasta and two salads set out in front of him.

“Hey,” he says. “Come sit.” Hey. Come sit.

Aldridge said I have a good gut, but I always thought the concept of intuition was bullshit. All you are feeling is an absorption of the facts. You are assessing all the information you have: words, body language, environment, the proximity of your human form to a moving vehicle, and deriving a conclusion. It is not my gut that leads me to sit down at that table knowing what it coming. It is the truth of what is.

I sit.

The pasta looks cold. It’s been out a long time.

“I’m sorry I’m late.”

“You’re not late,” he says. He’s right. We didn’t schedule anything tonight, and it’s only eight-thirty. This is the time I’m usually home.

“This looks good,” I say.

David exhales. At least he’s not going to make me wait for it.

“Look,” he says. “We need to talk.”

I turn to face him. He looks tired, withdrawn, the same temperature as the food before us.

“Okay,” I say.

“I—” He shakes his head. “I can’t believe I’m the one who has to do this.” His tone sounds just a little bit bitter.

“I’m sorry.”

He ignores me. “Do you know what this feels like?”

“No,” I admit. “I don’t.”

“I love you,” he says.

“I love you, too.”

He shakes his head. “I love you, but I’m sick of being the person who fits in your life but not your… fuck it, your heart.”

I feel it in my body. It punches me right there, right on the tender underside.

“David,” I say. My stomach clenches. “You do.”

He shakes his head. “You may love me, but I think we both know you don’t want to marry me.”

I hear Bella’s words echoed, here, with David. You’re not in love with him.

“How can you say that? We’re engaged, we’re planning a wedding. We’ve been together for seven and a half years.”

“And we’ve been engaged for five. If you wanted to marry me, you would have already.”

“But Bella—”

“It’s not about Bella!” he says. He raises his voice, another thing he never does. “It’s not. If it were. God, Dannie, I feel horrible about all of this. I know what she means to you. I love her, too. But what I’m saying is… it’s not the issue. This isn’t happening because she got sick. You were dragging your heels way before that.”

“We were busy,” I say. “We were working. Life. That was both of us.”

“I asked the question!” David says. “You knew where I stood. I was trying to be patient. How long am I supposed to wait?”

“Until the summer,” I say. I smooth a napkin down in my lap. Focus on the plan. “What is the big deal with six months?”

“Because it’s not just six months,” he says. “In the summer, there will be something else, some other reason.”

“There won’t!” I say.

“There will! Because you don’t really want to marry me.”

My shoulders shake. I can feel myself crying. Tears run down my face in cool, icy tracks. “Yes I do.”

“No,” he says. “You don’t.” But he’s looking at me, and I can tell he’s not convinced of his own argument, not entirely.

He’s asking me to prove him wrong. And I could. I can tell that if I wanted to, I could convince him. I could keep crying. I could reach for him. I could say all the things I know he needs to hear. I could lay out the evidence. That I dream about marrying him. That every time he walks into a room my stomach tightens. I could tell him the things I love about him: the curl of his hair and how warm his torso is, and how I feel at home in his heart.

But I can’t. It would be a lie. And he deserves more than that — he deserves everything. This is the thing, the only thing, I have to offer him. The truth. Finally.

“David,” I say. Start. “I don’t know why. You’re perfect for me. I love our life together. But—”

He sits back. He tosses his napkin onto the table. The proverbial towel.

We sit in silence for what feels like minutes. The clock on the wall ticks forward. I want to throw it out the window. Stop. Stop moving. Stop marching us forward. Everything terrible lies ahead.

The moment stretches so far it threatens to break. Finally, I speak. “What now?” I ask.

David pushes back his chair. “Now you leave,” he says.

He goes into the bedroom and closes the door. I take the food and put it, mindlessly, into containers. I wash the dishes. I put them away.

Then I go to sit on the couch. I know I can’t be here in the morning. I take out my phone.

“Dannie?” Her voice is sleepy but strong when she answers. “What’s up?”

“Can I come over?” I ask her.

“Of course.”

I travel the twenty blocks south. She’s on the couch when I get there, not in bed. She has a colorful bandana on her head and the TV is on, an old rerun of Seinfeld. Comfort food.

I drop my bag down. I go to her. And then I’m crying. Big, hiccupping sobs.

“Shh,” she says. “It’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s okay.”

She’s wrong, of course. Nothing is okay. But it feels so good to be comforted by her now. She runs her hands through my hair, rubs circles over my back. She hushes and soothes and consoles in the way only she can.

I have held her so many times. After so many breakups and parental disappointments, but here, now, I feel like I’ve had it backward. I thought I was her protector. That she was flighty and irresponsible and frivolous. That it was my job to protect her. That I was the strong one, counterbalancing her weakness, her whimsy. But I was wrong. I wasn’t the strong one, she was. Because this is what it feels like — to take a risk, to step out of line, to make decisions not based on fact but on feeling. And it hurts. It feels like a tornado raging inside my soul. It feels like I may not survive it.

“You will,” she tells me. “You already have.”

And it’s not until she says it that I realize I’ve spoken the words out loud. We stay like this, me in a ball in her lap, her curled over me, for what feels like hours. We stay long enough to try and capture it, bottle it, and tuck it away. Save enough of it to last, enough of it for a lifetime.