Twelve Years Ago
“My hands are full,” Caleb says as we reach the front door, holding up the bottle of wine and flowers he’s bringing to his parents. He called them softening-up gifts. When we are let inside, Caleb’s dad is on a call and Chellie invites us to sit with her in the lounge.
We do not lounge. We sit straight and rigid, Caleb’s hand covering my left hand from his mom’s view until the time is right.
When Cyrus graces us with his presence, I stay perfectly quiet while Caleb begins giving context for the news we’re about to share. Justifications about the timing, my mother’s illness, financial and taxation benefits. Hell, he even throws some vaguely conservative and/or religious reasoning behind it about it being the proper thing to do.
So, so romantic.
Then, after what feels like a business proposition and less of a love confession, Caleb holds up my newly adorned left hand.
His parents both go wide-eyed and nod, plastered polite smiles falling rapidly into place. Cyrus is the first to speak, as he usually is. He pointedly congratulates me, and not his own son. As if I’d outsmarted him—tricked him. As if this life—his parents’ life—would ever be what I wanted.
We sit through an awkward lunch while Chellie imagines a wedding that I could never afford, and his dad asks who will walk me down the aisle two times before I have to excuse myself to go cool off in their wall-to-wall Italian-marble powder room.
I can see it in both of their faces. Cyrus and Chellie both want to scream at the top of their lungs: You do not belong here.
I want to yell back: I know, I told him that too. Too fucking bad. He chose me.