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“Yeah. We’d be the odd couple out.”
“Well, even though our local couples seem like they really love each other, they’re friends too. We’ve got that going for us. In fact, several times when we’ve been at the diner in the summer, tourists have come up and asked us if we were newlyweds, I guess because we were having such a good time together.”
“And didn’t look like a couple who’d been married for thirty years or anything,” he said, irony in his voice. After all, the assumption was that only newlyweds could actually enjoy each other’s company. People who had been married for a long time were almost bound to be unhappy as the universal thought went.
He honestly found himself not appalled by the idea of marriage to Pam, which totally surprised him. In fact, he kind of...liked it in a way. Pam was a good friend, and nothing in his life would have to change. They’d just get married, there’d be a piece of paper between them, and they would file joint taxes. Or they could still file separately. The only thing that they’d have to do would be to make sure that they knew who was going to inherit what if one of them died.
“I guess nothing would really have to change,” he said thoughtfully, shocked beyond words that he was actually considering this idea.
“Yeah. That’s kind of what I was thinking. We’ll just...keep things the way they are, and instead of not being married, we’ll be married. But nothing needs to change.”
“Yeah. That is actually kind of nice. I... I can’t really think of a downside.”
“Me, either. I mean, you might need to use me as a shield if your sister and Stacy stop in, but that’s fine. I would’ve done it whether we were married or not.”
“I know. But putting my best friend in front of me and telling my sister that her friend can’t stay is a little bit different than putting my wife in front of me.” Mark emphasized the word “wife,” and Pam laughed.
“Exactly. It just makes a whole world of difference to everyone else, but it doesn’t have to change anything between the two of us.”
“I don’t think we should rush into anything rashly. Let’s take a day and think about it, but I’m actually getting excited about the idea. I think this could turn out to be a really beneficial thing, with no downsides. Whenever do you get a chance to do something like that?”
“Exactly.”
“But you were just lamenting the idea that you thought something was God’s will, and then you did something that you wanted to do instead of what God wanted you to do... Although... Maybe you were wrong. Maybe God really did want you to quit your job, because we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation if you hadn’t.”
“We definitely wouldn’t have been, and wow. That’s an idea. I hadn’t considered it at all. Maybe God did want me to make not just one change in my life, but a bunch.”
They were quiet for a bit while Mark thought about that. It was funny how one decision could snowball and affect so many other lives, but that seemed to be what was happening, and he had to admit that when he thought about marrying Pam, he didn’t get any feeling in his heart but a sense of peace and rightness.
Whether that was because of the way Pam was, whether that was because of the way God was, he wasn’t sure. But if he was looking for a peace when making a decision, he definitely had it for this one.
“All right. Let’s take a day. We’ll think about it, pray about it, and maybe get some advice from some people.”
“Who in the world could begin to give advice about that? This is...unprecedented. I’m sure other people have done it, getting married for some kind of convenience, but I don’t really know anyone.” He tried to think of anyone who had gotten married for anything other than saying that they were in love. It just wasn’t done.
But he could kind of see the wisdom in it. Actually, the more he thought about it, the more wisdom he felt was there. Love, such as it was, came and went. People fell in it, and people fell out of it. But friendship... A friendship especially like the one that Pam and he had, where they’d been friends for more than a decade. Their friendship had weathered a lot of storms, and while they hadn’t exactly been living together, they lived side by side and learned to not just like each other but to really care for each other.
He kind of figured that if there was a relationship that could survive a marriage, it would be the one that Pam and he had. He tried hard to think of reasons to not go through with it, but he seriously couldn’t think of any other than the fact that it might destroy their friendship. He’d heard of other people saying that once two friends tried to get romantic, their friendship never was the same.
“I think the most important thing is that we just make sure that we stay friends. We don’t want to actually try to do anything more than that. That has a tendency to blow up friendships.”
“That’s what I’ve heard. I agree with you completely. I’ve heard that too. And as much as I would love to go through with this, to have the money to be able to rebuild the inn, to see you escape from Stacy, I don’t want to lose your friendship over it. That’s the most important thing to me.”
They nodded to each other, smiling a little, but their eyes were serious. He loved that she was on board with securing their friendship. That it was important to her, and she didn’t want to see anything happen to it.
“All right then. We pray about it, and potentially we’ll try, but that’s the rule. No romance.”
She nodded decisively but didn’t say anything. He supposed he appreciated that. He didn’t want to hear her say that she wasn’t the slightest bit romantically interested in him, that he was not attractive, and she knew she wouldn’t be tempted in that direction.
He didn’t know why that was so disappointing to him. He should wish that she would say it, maybe even prompt her to. Maybe he should have said something like that himself about her, but...it wasn’t entirely true. He found himself looking at the curve of Pam’s neck, seeing her fingers in his mind as they shaped pie crust in a pan or her cute pink toes as she walked out on the porch in the summer in her bare feet.
He couldn’t deny that as a man, the sight stirred him.
But he never acted on those feelings, and while once in a while the idea of kissing Pam had crossed his mind, he never acted on that either. He didn’t figure that it would be such a hardship to push those feelings aside and continue as friends. They’d done it for the last ten years, it should be something that they could continue to do for years on end.
Still, he would definitely be praying about this. Marriage was forever. And he didn’t want to make a decision like that without making sure that God was in it.
Just the fact that Pam felt the same way gave him peace about the whole situation.
