All Your Perfects

The minister will be here in two hours. You’re upstairs getting ready for our wedding as I write this letter. On our way here yesterday, we stopped at a bridal store and you made me wait in the car while you ran inside to pick out a wedding dress. When you got back to the car with the dress hidden inside of a garment bag, you couldn’t stop laughing. You said the ladies who were helping you thought you were insane, buying a dress just a day before your wedding. You said they gasped when you told them you’re a procrastinator and that you still haven’t picked out a groom.

I can’t wait to see what you look like walking down that aisle of sand. It’ll just be you in your dress on a beach with no decorations, no guests, no fanfare. And the entire ocean will be our backdrop. But let’s just pray none of your dream from last night comes true.

This morning when you woke up, I asked what I had missed while you were sleeping. You told me you had a dream that we were getting married on the beach, but right before we said I do, a tsunami came and washed us away. But we didn’t die. We both turned into aquatic killers. You were a shark and I was a whale, and we were still in love, even though you were a fish and I was a mammal. You said the rest of your dream was just us trying to love one another in an ocean full of creatures who didn’t approve of our interspecies relationship.

That’s probably my favorite dream of yours to date.

I’m sitting out here on the patio, writing the love letter I thought I had five more months to write. Part of me is a little nervous because, like I said, I’ve never been much of a writer. My imagination isn’t as wild as yours, as evidenced by the things you dream about. But writing a letter to you about how much I love you should come pretty easily, so hopefully this letter and this gift to you will serve its purpose.

Honestly, Quinn, I don’t even know where to start. I guess the beginning is the most obvious choice, right?

I could begin by talking about the day we met in the hallway. The day I realized that maybe my life was thrown off course because fate had something even better in store for me.

But instead, I’m going to talk about the day we didn’t meet. This will probably come as a surprise to you because you don’t remember it. Or maybe you do have a memory of it but you just didn’t realize it was me.

It was a few months before we met in the hallway. Ethan’s father held a Christmas party for their employees and I was Sasha’s date. You were Ethan’s date. And while I will admit I was still wrapped up in all things Sasha at the time, something about you was engraved in my memory after that night.

We hadn’t been formally introduced, but you were just a few feet away and I knew who you were because Sasha had pointed you and Ethan out a few minutes before. She said Ethan was in line to be her next boss and you were in line to be his wife.

You were wearing a black dress with black heels. Your hair was up in a tight bun and I overheard you joking with someone about how you looked just like the caterers. They all wore black and the girls had their hair styled the same way as yours. I don’t know if the catering team was shorthanded that night, but I remember seeing someone walk up to you and ask for a refill on his champagne. Rather than correct him, you just walked behind the bar and refilled his champagne. You then took the bottle and started refilling other people’s glasses. When you finally made it over to me and Sasha, Ethan walked up and asked what you were doing. You told him you were refilling drinks like it was no big deal, but he didn’t like it. I could tell by the look on his face that it embarrassed him. He told you to put down the champagne bottle because there was someone he wanted you to meet. He walked off and I’ll never forget what you did next.

You turned to me and you rolled your eyes with a laugh, then held up the champagne bottle and offered me a refill.

I smiled at you and held out my glass. You refilled Sasha’s glass and proceeded to offer refills to other guests until the bottle was finally empty.

I don’t remember much else about that night. It was a mundane party and Sasha was in a bad mood most of the time so we left early. And to be honest, I didn’t think about you much after that.

Not until the day I saw you again in the hallway. When you stepped off the elevator and walked toward Ethan’s door, I should have been filled with nothing but absolute dread and disgust over what was happening inside Ethan’s apartment. But for a brief moment, I felt myself wanting to smile when I laid eyes on you. Seeing you reminded me of the party and how easy-going you were. I liked how you didn’t care if people thought you were a caterer or the girlfriend of the Ethan Van Kemp. And it wasn’t until the moment you joined me in the hallway—when your presence somehow brought me to the brink of smiling during the worst moment of my life—that I knew everything would be fine. I knew that my inevitable breakup with Sasha wasn’t going to break me.

I don’t know why I never told you that. Maybe because I liked the idea of us meeting in a hallway under the same circumstances. Or maybe because I was worried you wouldn’t remember that night at the party or refilling my glass of champagne. Because why would you? That moment held no significance.

Until it did.

I would write more about our meeting in the hallway, but you know all about it. Or maybe I could write more about the first night we made love, or the fact that once we finally reconnected, we never wanted to spend a single second apart. Or I could write about the day I proposed to you and you so stupidly agreed to spend the rest of your life with a man who couldn’t possibly give you all that you deserve in this world.

But I don’t really want to talk about any of that. Because you were there for all of it. Besides, I’m almost positive your love letter to me details every minute of us falling in love, so I’d hate to waste my letter on repeating something you more than likely put into words more eloquently than I ever could.

I guess that means I’m left with talking about the future.

If all goes as planned, you’ll be reading this letter on our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. You might cry a few tears and smear the ink a little. Then you’ll lean over and kiss me and we’ll make love.

But . . . if for some reason, you’re opening this box because our marriage didn’t work out how we thought it would, let me first tell you how sorry I am. Because I know we wouldn’t read these letters early unless we did absolutely everything we could to prevent it.

I don’t know if you’ll remember this, but we had a conversation once. I think it was only the second night we spent together. You mentioned how all marriages have Category 5 moments, and how you didn’t think your previous relationship would have made it through those moments.

I think about that sometimes. About what could make one couple survive a Category 5 moment, but a different couple might not. I’ve thought about it enough to come up with a possible reason.

Hurricanes aren’t a constant threat to coastal towns. There are more days with great weather and perfect beach days than there are hurricanes.

Marriages are similar, in that there are a lot of great days with no arguments, when both people are filled with so much love for each other.

But then you have the threatening-weather days. There might only be a few a year, but they can do enough damage that it takes years to repair. Some of the coastal towns will be prepared for the bad-weather days. They’ll save their best resources and most of their energy so that they’ll be stocked up and prepared for the aftermath.

But some towns won’t be as prepared. They’ll put all their resources into the good weather days in hopes that the severe weather will never come. It’s the lazier choice and the choice with greater consequences.

I think that’s the difference in the marriages that survive and the marriages that don’t. Some people think the focus in a marriage should be put on all the perfect days. They love as much and as hard as they can when everything is going right. But if a person gives all of themselves in the good times, hoping the bad times never come, there may not be enough resources or energy left to withstand those Category 5 moments.