Marriage Matters

Forty-four

Sally’s face flushed pink with pleasure. “Bollocks,” she screeched. Everyone in the ice-cream shop turned toward their table. Sally gestured at Chloe, her voice at a fevered pitch. “She’s getting married. With her entire family!” As the other patrons went back to their sundaes, Sally beamed. “This is brilliant. Truly brilliant.”

Chloe selected a nut resting gently on top of the whipped cream and popped it into her mouth. “I thought you were going to say the opposite,” she admitted. Putting on her best British accent, she said, “You can’t be serious. You’re going to share a wedding with your mother and grandmother? Oh, and didn’t you just meet that guy?”

“Who cares when you met him?” Sally pounded the table in excitement. “If it’s love at first sight, why second-guess yourself? Honestly, I think it’s about time you did something crazy. All you do is work and study. This is great!”

“It is. Right?” Setting down her spoon, Chloe stared down at her ring. It sparkled like a suncatcher in the fluorescent light of the ice-cream shop. “I’m really glad to hear you say that. To be honest, I have been freaking out. Just a little bit.”

“Why?” Sally demanded.

“I don’t know . . .” Chloe hesitated. “It’s so sudden. Who gets engaged after two months of dating? It’s crazy. Who does this? I’m not the type of person who does this.”

“Don’t you dare try and ruin the romance.” Sally looked so much like a petulant doll with her blonde ringlet curls, round face and rosy cheeks that Chloe couldn’t help but smile. “You met your prince and he proposed. The end.”

“True.” Chloe touched the ring. The sharp edges felt new and strange against the pad of her thumb. “But you know what it is? It’s Ben.” Just saying his name made her stomach drop. “I’m freaking out about telling Ben.”

“Wait.” Sally stared at her. “You haven’t told Ben? He’s your best friend. You should have told him, like, right away.”

“I know.” Chloe dragged her spoon through the thick caramel at the bottom of her ice-cream dish. She hated to think what Ben was going to say when he found out. It was not going to be short and sweet, she knew that much. Every time she had the conversation with him in her head, she pictured him staring at her with a baffled look on his face. “Funny,” he’d say. “But did you seriously think I’d believe you’d do something so outrageously stupid?”

Sally licked a bit of ice cream off the spoon. “Right,” she said. “Well, he can hardly complain. Geoff clearly adores you, considering he proposed, and you obviously adore him, since you said yes.”

“Yes, but Ben will . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“He’ll have a hard time with it.” Sally nodded. “That you’re marrying someone else.”

“Huh?” Chloe was surprised. “No. He’ll be upset that he didn’t even get to meet the guy first. And that I’m rushing into things. The time line is going to be a major problem for Ben.”

“Oh.”

The two fell silent, and Chloe listened to the nearby clinks of the spoons hitting glass bowls. Through the window, she watched as weekend shoppers raced by. They moved as though trying to grab something just out of reach. Feeling slightly sick inside, probably from all the sugar, she said, “Please don’t tell me you are another person who truly thought I was going to marry Ben.”

“I always thought it was a possibility.” Flipping her spoon backwards, Sally spooned up some ice cream and put it in her mouth. Pulling it out, she said, “But who knows why people end up together? I didn’t think that I’d end up with someone like Norman, but he couldn’t be a better match for me. Holy hell, if I’d married that rocker guy from college . . . What was his name—”

“DeAndre.”

“Yes!” Sally squealed. “If I would have married that guy, who knows where I’d be. I’d probably be living in Vegas or something, in a one-bedroom apartment with bad lighting and flying cockroaches. It’s obvious that Geoff is really good for you. You look relaxed for the first time in, like, two years.”

“He is good for me,” Chloe agreed. “You know, the whole thing is good. Ben and I could never get married, anyway.” She smiled suddenly, imagining it. “Can you imagine? He’d want to design our own invitations and the placards on the table and have some weird, avant-garde band at the reception just to confuse people . . . No, no.” She shook her head. “Marrying Ben would be a lot of work.”

“Yup.” Sally nodded. “Geoff is exactly the type of man you need. Successful, loves his daughter . . . Wait. Does he—”

“Yes,” Chloe said. “He wants to have more kids, especially after seeing me with Mary Beth. The love’s there but the discipline is not.” Sometimes Mary Beth was good and, as the storybook said, sometimes she was simply horrid. “But I can change that. I’ll have her under control in six months.”

“I can’t wait to meet him.” Lifting up her sundae dish, Sally clinked it against hers. Chloe must have had a funny expression on her face, because Sally said, “Oh, no. What?”

“Nothing.” She grinned. “The clinking sound just made me think of hundreds of champagne glasses coming together in a toast.”

Sally laughed. “Spoken like a true bride to be.”