Page 18 of The Wedding Menu

“No, Frank. I—this is crazy.” My fingers are in my hair, grasping it at the root. Thishasto be a shitty nightmare. There’s no way my boyfriend turned my dream into a weapon used to placate me so he can get his way. “What if I say no, huh? What happens then?”

He brings his arms out wide, a pinched expression on his face. “I don’t know, Ames. Then I’ll need to think about whether I really do want to commit to a marriage when I’ve never known anything else. We’ve been together for half our lives, and I want to spend the rest of it with you, but not if I know I’ll never stop wondering. It’ll ruin our marriage, too, eventually.” He joins his hands as if he’s praying. “Do you really want me to marry you when I’ll be doubting and pondering forever? Knowing that I could resent you for it?”

I let my hair go when my phone vibrates against the kitchen counter, loud in the otherwise silent apartment. I can’t be sure, but Iknowit’s Ian. Throwing a look at Frank, I strut toward the kitchen with a rolling heat in my stomach.

“Ames?”

I pick up my phone and hastily skim Ian’s texts.

Ian:

Fine. If you just ignore my messages, this friendship is never going to work.

I hope you can live with the awareness that a bakery somewhere is losing an order of a delicious raspberry-lemon-macadamia cake I intended to eat with a spoon.

Showing the screen to Frank, I warn, “You understand that if you can flirt and text and sleep with other women, I can do the same with other men?”

“Yes, I do,” he says, his eyes focusing on the screen for a few seconds before he looks back at me. “Text him back if you want to.”

“Oh, so it doesn’t bother you at all.” I shove the phone closer to his face. “Ian is a big guy. Tattooed arms. Handsome, fun. You don’t mind him wrapped around me and rocking my world?”

Shoulders sagging, he purses his lips. “I mean, I don’t exactly want to hear the details, but… I’m okay with it. I don’t just love you because I’m the only man you’ve ever slept with, Ames. That’s never been important to me, and it’s not now, as long as in six months you’re walking down the aisle, toward me, in your wedding dress.”

My heart aches at the awareness that it feels easier to accept this idiotic agreement than to let go of the man I’ve spent half my life with. I can’t lose Frank. I don’t know who or what I am without him at this point. Which, I guess, to some extent, is what he means. “I’ll think about it.”

His lips part, a small smile tugging at his lips. “Really?”

“Yeah,” I mumble. I don’t even feel in control of my mouth, my face numb as I speak. I figured today I’d spend the day with my preancé. That maybe we’d go out for dinner or watch the game on the couch. What I didn’t expect is his confessing to flirting with a stranger, then agreeing to marry me after an open relationship. How long has he been thinking about it? Are there other girls he flirted with before? And if I’d never met Ian, never asked for his number, would Frank have confessed to what he did and how much he liked it?

“Ames, thank you so much.” His arms envelop me, but they feel like a straitjacket instead of the usual comforting hold. “I swear itwon’t be so bad. In six months we’ll be promising each other forever, and we’ll mean it even more than now.”

Slipping away from his warm body, I smile stiffly. “Sure. Unless you fall in love with someone else. Or I do. But hey, should that happen, we can totally invite them into our marriage, huh?”

“Jesus, Ames…”

“Nah, sorry,” I say, holding up my phone with a fake smile. “I’m busy. Getting ready for my precious six months of freedom so I can find out what a cock ring feels like with Ian.”

He rolls his eyes. “Seriously, if you’re going to be this way—”

“Can’t hear you. Too busy texting.”

He stares at me with his arms folded across his chest and a look in his eyes that implies I’m being ridiculous. Petty. Childish. I know I’m being all of it and more, but the awareness does nothing to stop me from theatrically unlocking my phone and tapping on Ian’s contact. “I’m texting him.”

He sweeps his hand through the air. “Go ahead.”

“Great.” I look at the screen, then think for about two seconds. Then two more. Until eventually I’ve got nothing to say and I’m looking like a fool, so I type the first thing in my mind and send. “Done.”

“Okay.” We stare at each other in total silence for a while. Then my phone pings and I’m done with this game.

“I’m going out.”

“Ames—”

“Bye.” As I walk to the door, I look at my text conversation with Ian.

Amelie:

Unpopular opinion: the worst thing at weddings is the groom.