“No!” he said. “I’m just . . . maybe we shouldn’t be doing this right now.”
“I cannot believe you.” I thought I was going to leave it at that, but the words kept coming out of my mouth. “I didn’t make you propose to me. I wasn’t the one who suggested we get married in the first place. This was all your doing! I have been telling you for months to tell your mother! So how the fuck do I end up two hours outside of Las Vegas jilted in a Burger King, huh? Explain that to me.”
“You don’t understand!” He was starting to get animated and upset.
“Why don’t I understand? What part of this don’t I understand? You asked me to marry you. I said yes. I suggested we elope. You said yes. We got in the car. We’re halfway to Nevada and you’re calling it off while you’re eating a fucking Whopper.”
Ben shook his head. “I can’t expect you to understand, Elsie.” Our voices were starting to attract attention, so Ben got up from the table and I followed him outside.
“What does that mean?” I yelled at him, pushing the door out of my way like it was the one doing this to me.
“It means you don’t have a family!” He turned to face me. “You don’t even try to get along with your parents. You don’t understand how I feel about my mom.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” I couldn’t believe he’d said that. I wished I could have time-traveled back to five seconds before so I could have stopped him from saying that and we could have continued on with our lives without him ever having said that to me.
“No! I’m not kidding. You don’t get it.”
“Oh, I get it, Ben. I get it. I get that you’re a coward who hasn’t had the balls to tell his mom he’s even dating someone and now, and now I’m getting screwed for it. That’s what I get.”
“It’s not like that,” he said, but his voice was resigned. It wasn’t passionate.
“What is it then?”
“Can we just get in the car?”
“I’m not getting in the car with you,” I said as I crossed my arms. It was colder outside than I would have liked and my jacket was lying on the front seat, but I didn’t want to go near that car, even if I had to suffer for it.
“Please? Don’t make a scene out here. I’m not saying we shouldn’t get married. I want to marry you. I just . . . want to tell my mom first. There’s no need for us to rush this.”
“You’ve had six months to tell your mom! And you always come up with a reason why not. How many times have I heard ‘Now I’m really going to tell my mom’? But you know what? She’s not a part of this relationship. This is about you and me. It’s about what you want and what I want. And what I want is to be with the kind of man that wants to marry me so bad, nothing will stop him. I want to be loved by someone who loves me so much he can’t think straight. I want you to love me in a way that makes you stupid and impractical. I want to rush into this. Rushing into it is romantic. It makes me feel alive. It makes me feel like I am jumping off a cliff and I know I’ll be fine because that is how much I trust you. And I deserve you jumping off a cliff for me because I am prepared to do it for you. You think I don’t know anything about family because I don’t get along with my parents? Ana is my family. I love her more than I could possibly love another person, other than you. And I thought about her and I thought, No, I don’t need her here for this. I just need Ben. So fuck you, I don’t know family. That’s not what’s happening here at all. What’s happening here is that I am ready to risk everything for you. And you are not ready to do it for me.”
Ben was quiet for a long time. He had started to cry. I thought that it was a manly cry and couldn’t help wanting to hold him despite my furor.
“How do things get fucked up so quickly?” he said. His voice was quiet. It wasn’t a whisper. It was just sad. It lacked the confidence I was used to hearing in him.