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I stopped at Neil’s call.
He hurried to me, concern deepening the lines on his face. “Are you all right?”
“No!” I couldn’t figure out if I was mad or just sad. “Why does it matter to you if Valerie isn’t at the wedding?”
I’m sure it took a herculean effort to not roll his eyes. We’d both been down the Valerie fight road enough times that we were tired of the commute. “It doesn’t matter to me. I was just confused, because she was on the final guest list.”
“I didn’t tell her not to come, okay?” I shouted. Yeah, defensiveness would convince him. Good job, self.
“I never suggested that you did. I wouldn’t think that would occur to you.” He pushed back his jacket and slipped his hands into his trouser pockets. “Besides, if
you didn’t want her to come, I assumed you would have told me when we were assembling the guest list.”
“Yeah, well…” I couldn’t think of anything else to say about it. But I blurted, “She’s still in love with you!” anyway, like it was an accusation of misconduct on his part.
He let out a long, frustrated sigh. “There isn’t anything I can do about that.”
“Is there anything you want to do about it?” What the fuck? Why was I flying off the handle like this? Especially on the street, in front of a restaurant where our families and friends were gathered and could pop out and check on us at any time? When I’d been feeling confident and sure of myself only moments before?
“Of course there is. I want to avoid the whole subject and get married to the woman whom I love.” His expression of angry confusion struck me to my heart. “What is this all about?”
“I don’t know!” I shouted and looked guiltily away from the couple who gave us strange looks as they passed. I lowered my voice. “I don’t know. I’m just… I’m scared.”
“You’re scared?” He pressed his hand against his forehead. “Thank god. I was worried you were picking a stupid fight with me to get out of the wedding.”
“Maybe I am.” What the fuck was I saying?
“What? Why wouldn’t you want to get married?”
My irrational thought process was only fueled further by the patient sympathy in his tone. I threw up my hands. “Because…if you get married, then you get divorced.”
“Sophie, we are not going to get divorced,” he said. His adorable half-smile told me I was being ridiculous, and deep down, I knew that if I just let myself be rational, for just a moment, I would realize that this was just a bad case of nerves.
Being rational wasn’t something my wildly out-of-control emotions would permit.
“You and Elizabeth got divorced, Emir is getting divorced, Ian and Gena are getting divorced.” I ticked them off on my fingers. “If one in three marriages end in divorce, that’s three. We’re doomed.”
“I don’t think that’s how statistics work, darling,” he said gently. “And, if they did, I’ve already been divorced, so surely I’m an outlier.”
I slumped against the brick of the building and closed my eyes. “I just feel like marriage is bound to fail, you know?”
He leaned against the wall next to me. “I want you to listen to me. Not as your fiancé, not as your friend. Just listen to me as the voice of someone older, wiser, and far less afraid than you are. Are there any problems between us right at this moment that have made you consider leaving me?”
“Of course not!”
“And are you actually considering walking away from me, right now, simply because you’re afraid that we might break up in the future?” When he put it that way, it did sound kind of silly.
I quirked my mouth to the side then looked down and scuffed the bottom of my shoe on the sidewalk. “When I think about the future, I can’t imagine you not being there.”
“I feel exactly the same.” He hooked a finger under my chin to lift my face.
My eyes watered, and I couldn’t help it. There was no holding back the jumble of emotions that needed to flee my body via my tear ducts.
He cupped my cheek and wiped a cascading drop from my jaw. “My darling. My Sophie. If you want to call this wedding off tonight, we can.”
I blinked up at him through my tears. “Would it be that easy for you?”
He laughed in surprise. “No. No, it wouldn’t be easy for me. I want to marry you, and I’ll be very disappointed. But, if getting married is going to ruin us, I’d rather have you and not be married than get married and not have you.”
