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OUR ENGAGEMENT WAS short, both because I didn’t want a big wedding and because I worried that if it were long, one of us might call the other’s bluff, point out that for as long as we had known each other, we didn’t know each other well enough to get married. After all, we’d been together less than a year, all of it long distance, our time together feeling more like a vacation than normal, everyday life. Despite the horrible thing we had been through so long ago, our relationship itself had never been tested. We’d never even had a major argument. Yet not once did I express any of these reservations to Nolan, which I think said a lot, in and of itself.
The only time I discussed my fears at all was with Josie, the weekend she and my mom flew to New York to help me find a wedding dress.
“I really don’t know if I should have said yes,” I blurted out, standing in my underwear, staring at my ring in a posh dressing room at Mika Inatome as the salesgirl left to retrieve another dress. It was the one appointment my mom missed, as she was back at my apartment with another migraine.
“To Nolan?” my sister said, looking appalled.
I nodded.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No,” I said softly. “I think I’m having second thoughts.”
She furrowed her brow, then reassured me that it was just a little case of cold feet.
“I think it might be more than that,” I told her.
“C’mon, Mere,” she said, launching into a pep talk that I could tell she believed completely. “You’re marrying Nolan Brady. He’s gorgeous. He’s loaded. He’s funny. And he’s a really nice guy.”
“I know,” I said, feeling guilty and ungrateful.
“I mean…look at that rock.” She took my left hand in her right and shook it.
“I know,” I said, gazing back down at my ring. “But it’s not really me. Neither are these gowns.”
“So what? Those things don’t matter….You’re marrying a great guy. Are you seriously finding something to be unhappy about here?” she said in the tone of voice I often took with her.
I sighed and tried to explain. “It’s just…sometimes I feel like we rushed into this…that the ring was a bit of an impulse purchase. That I might be an impulse purchase.”
“C’mon, Mere. You act like you just met at a bar….You’ve known each other forever,” Josie said. “For your whole life.”
“I know, but we haven’t been together for very long at all. And I don’t want him to regret it,” I said.
“That’s ridiculous,” Josie said. “He adores you. He worships you.”
“Maybe,” I said, because I did get the feeling that Nolan admired a lot of things about me. He was proud of my career and how smart I was. Special was the word he always used. He made me feel special.
I took a deep breath and said, “But is he in love with me? Or the idea of me?”
“The idea of you?” Josie said. “You’re not Julia Roberts. What do you mean, the idea of you?”
“I don’t know,” I said, frustrated that I couldn’t describe the way I was feeling to my own sister, though I knew it had something to do with Daniel, and the reasons I had said yes.
“Do you love him?” she asked.
I told her yes, because I did, wishing I could put my finger on the thing that felt missing. I thought of Lewis, not for the first time in recent months. I was way over him, but longed for the intense way I’d once felt. But then I asked myself whether that kind of passion was necessarily a good thing—or a feeling that would always, inevitably fade. I was so confused.
“Look, Meredith,” Josie said gently. “You’re looking for something that doesn’t exist. And if you break up with Nolan, you’ll regret it forever. Like I’m regretting Will…” Her voice shook a little, then trailed off. She still hadn’t told me all the details of their breakup, and clearly was never going to, but I knew that Will had already moved on with another serious relationship.
I nodded, having always been motivated by fear of regret, and agreed that she was probably right. “Thanks, Josie,” I whispered.
“Of course.” She smiled, putting her arm around me, then pulling me into a full-on hug. “Now, come on. Let’s do this.”
I hugged her back, feeling a tiny bit better, just as our salesgirl bustled in with a new gown—this one more embellished than the others, lacy with extensive beadwork along the bodice.
“Oh, I love it,” Josie said, turning to me. “What do you think, Mere?”
“Too fancy,” I said, shaking my head.
“Just try it,” she insisted.
I sighed, letting the two of them help me into it, then zip me up and arrange the train at my feet.
“Wow,” Josie said as she spun me toward the mirror.
I looked at my reflection and couldn’t resist a small smile.
“See?” she said. “I told you.”
“It is pretty good, isn’t it?” I asked my sister.