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“I don’t remember how.”
“Girl. I got you.” With what appeared to be muscle memory, Jonathan scrawled MASH across the top of a piece of paper, then titled different sections things like Spouse, Job, # of kids, City, Pet, Car.
He passed the paper to her, but she pushed it back.
“You go first.” Phoebe sipped her drink. “I’m dying to see if you end up living in a shack.”
Jonathan filled in all the sections, then handed the pen and paper to Phoebe.
“Tell me when to stop.” Phoebe made tally marks on the paper, and Jonathan waited a beat, then said stop. “Lucky number seven.”
Phoebe counted her way through Jonathan’s lists, crossing off each seventh item, going fast enough that she barely read his options until she paused to cross one off.
“Sorry, no Porsche for you. No gerbil—that’s probably for the best.”
“Darn,” Jonathan joked.
“Looks like you’re not marrying me.” Phoebe crossed her name off the Spouse list and kept going.
Jonathan said nothing.
Phoebe whooped with laughter as she circled school janitor for his job. A minute later, she had circled the final answer for every section. Spouse was the last one left. She counted her way through until there was only one option left, and she circled it: PK.
“Wait…”
She looked up at Jonathan, confused, then read the Spouse section more closely.
For his options, Jonathan had written,
Phoebe
Tater Tot
PK
No one
She put the pen down, because her hand had started to shake.
“What…” She attempted a laugh, because this was a silly kids’ game. It wasn’t like he had gotten down on one knee and asked her to marry him.
“Um…” She pushed her hair behind one ear, hand still trembling. “I don’t know if you remember, but you’re supposed to put, like, Orlando Bloom. Or, in your case, Natalie Portman or whoever. As your dream spouse.”
“Or whoever you have a crush on.” Jonathan eyed her with a deadpan look on his face.
“Well, yeah, but…” Phoebe was at a loss. “You don’t have a crush on me. And you can’t put ‘No one.’”
“Phoebe.” Jonathan just looked at her. Phoebe’s breath hitched. “Read me the answers. This is my future we’re talking about here.”
With a deep breath, Phoebe pulled the paper closer to her.
“You’re going to live in a mansion. With… me. And our eleven kids. You work as a school janitor. We live in Honolulu. Our pet is a goldfish, and our car is a golf cart.”
Jonathan sipped his beer and said, “I don’t know how we’re affording that mansion on my janitor salary.”
“Or fitting eleven kids in a golf cart.” Phoebe stared at him. She didn’t know how to turn the conversation back to the fact that he had written that he only wanted to marry her or no one. She was starting to get annoyed, actually.
“You want to play?”