Chapter 8
8
Yes, I am.
Theo’s reeling from those three words and how easily they tumbled out of Evelyn’s mouth. How effortlessly she explained the situation, the timing, the urgency to his father. How she conveniently left out the tiny (major!) detail that they’re doing this because they love each other, not because they’re in love with each other. Key distinction. As Evelyn drives toward the government building that’s not city hall, he attempts to process it all from the back seat. Jacob is in the passenger seat, a spot he occupies without protest.
“I am positive that Lori is losing her shit up there,” Jacob says, the corners of his mouth lifting in a sad smile.
Theo’s positive he’s losing his shit back here .
“I wish she was here,” Evelyn says.
“She is,” Jacob says.
Theo feels the weight of the bamboo ring box in his pocket, his stomach doing somersaults as Evelyn merges onto Arroyo Seco Parkway. He leans against the window, presses his cheek to the glass, and closes his eyes, the only instant remedy for the carsickness he’s always dealt with on this roller coaster of a freeway. Focuses on breathing through the nausea and his quiet rage because Jacob doesn’t deserve to be here. Not just due to the physical absence from his life since Lori died. Even in the Before Cancer timeline, he’d never been present. But. He is now. Theo hates acknowledging the complicated truth that this, Jacob’s presence, his ability to willingly—no, enthusiastically —hand over the rings, matters to him. He doesn’t.
Instead, he observes Evelyn and Jacob’s dynamic, their easy back-and-forth, while fuming over the fact that he’s been relegated to the back seat, like a child, on his wedding day .
No.
On the day that he’s signing a legal document so he doesn’t lose his apartment and so his favorite person can pursue a dream career.
That’s a mouthful, though.
So wedding day it is.
Forty minutes later, Imogen greets them outside Not City Hall, a brick building in South LA so nondescript that Evelyn completely misses the parking lot and gets stuck in a fifteen-minute traffic jam trying to loop around one block.
“Genny Bloom!” Jacob says, then hugs her and it’s bizarre, seeing his father act like an actual person.
“Mr. Cohen?” Imogen says, then mouths, What the fuck? in Theo and Evelyn’s direction, still in Jacob’s embrace. Theo can only respond with a useless shrug. “Hi! It’s so wonderful to see you.”
Jacob snorts as he lets go of Gen, then goes to open the door. “It’s not because I was invited.”
Theo hears the edge in Jacob’s tone and chooses to move toward the blast of cool indoor air, to get in line. Chooses to ignore it even though there’s something hilarious about the idea that Theo owes him an invitation, that he owes his father anything at all.
Gen laughs, interpreting the dig as a lighthearted quip. “If it makes you feel better, I’m only invited because they needed a witness.”
“Eloping just felt right for us,” Evelyn says.
Is that what they’re calling it now? Theo can’t keep up.
“Did it?” Jacob asks.
“We wanted it to be a surprise,” she adds.
At this Jacob does laugh. “As if this is a shocking development!”
Then he beelines for the bathroom, still laughing. Even if Jacob’s assessment of his relationship with Evelyn is basic and boring and based on the outdated (not to mention heteronormative) assumption that two people of different genders cannot be friends, Theo has to swallow emotion that he doesn’t even know how to articulate because he can’t remember the last time he heard his dad laugh.
No one dares to speak until Jacob is gone.
“Okay. What’s happening?” Gen asks.
It’s the first time Jacob’s been out of earshot since Evelyn threw herself into Theo’s arms. “I’m just as clueless, Gen.”
Evelyn shrugs. “Theo wanted Lori’s rings. We got them. But now Jacob assumes that this, we are real.”
“And that’s necessary because…” Gen starts.
“No way would he have handed them over if he knew the truth,” Evelyn says.
Theo frowns. “You don’t know that.”
“Theodore.”
She’s right.
He knows she’s right.
“Also,” she continues, “if this makes him happy, would it be so bad to… I don’t know? Let him be happy?”
His heart cracks in half. “Evelyn. He’s going to tell everyone.”
“I know.”
“This is quite the pivot from only Gen and your grandparents needing to know.”
“I know.”
Theo isn’t sure Evelyn fully understands what she’s saying. It’s one thing to sign a paper that says they’re married and another thing to actively pretend to be married. And to do it for Jacob? To be an anchor for a man who has been emotionally unavailable for pretty much the entirety of his life? It feels all kinds of fucked-up to let Evelyn do that for him. For them . Theo knows he’s just as much the reason. Somehow, Evelyn still believes in the bullshit fantasy that Jacob Cohen is capable of being more than who he has always been.
Theo’s a realist.
But.
Jacob smiled.
Jacob laughed.
Jacob is still his dad.
Gen nods. “You’re in love. Got it! Will pivot accordingly.”
The line moves at a glacial pace and the attempts at small talk upon Jacob’s return from the bathroom are painful. Gen keeps Jacob engaged in conversation because if there’s one thing Imogen Bloom cannot handle, it’s an awkward silence. She asks him if he’s watched anything good lately, and Theo learns that Jacob is extremely into cooking competition shows. The more intense (read: abusive) the environment, the better. It’s so much easier for Jacob Cohen to show Gen the Instagram account he made to follow his favorite chefs than to ask his son a question as simple as How’s this school year going? But Theo supposes it’s also easier for him to let Gen entertain his dad than to ask him a question as simple as How’ve you been?
So.
Finally, they are summoned to fill out the paperwork. His pulse spikes with each signature required on the very official marriage license application. Is this the wedding, elopement, whatever that he pictured for himself? Not at all. He imagined an outdoor ceremony at the Huntington, a chuppah made of flowers, Lori seated in the front row during the ceremony.
So, really, it was never going to be what he imagined.
“Hey. You good?” Evelyn asks, her voice low.
It’s the first time he looks at her, really looks at her since she picked him up from school. He’s been fixated on everything but her—the rings, Jacob, not vomiting in her car, the paperwork. Eyes lined in metallic gold meet his and Theo blinks stupidly at the vision that is Evelyn Bloom. Her hair is tied back in a bun. Not a ballet bun, but a messy one, her too-long bangs swept to the side. He recognizes the earrings she chose, simple gold hoops that were a high school graduation gift from his mom. He blinks away the emotion, eyes shifting to full lips coated in clear gloss. Suddenly, Theo doesn’t know where to look—at her shoulders, where the tie straps of her dress are secured with two perfect bows, at the wildflower print with its plunging neckline and fabric that skims her hips, that accentuates the outline of her ass—
Theo swallows hard.
Fuck.
She’s his best friend. She is so gorgeous.
Both things can be— are —true.
“I’m good. You look beautiful,” Theo says. “Objectively.”
She laughs. “You look objectively beautiful, too.”
They return the paperwork, then wait to be called by a county clerk. Seated in the waiting room, Evelyn slides her hand into his. It’s confusing because it’s something she would do even if no one was watching, thanks to a friendship that blossomed out of a dance partnership. Meaning they’ve never shied away from physical touch. As friends. Her feet propped up on his lap. His head on her shoulder. Their hands, constantly entwined. Her freezing fingers squeeze his and… is she pretending? What is and isn’t okay in the name of pretending?
Theo isn’t sure.
He never planned on pretending.
He can’t pretend.
“Dad, I—”
Jacob cuts him off. “You don’t have to apologize. I get it. Your mom and me? We almost eloped, too.”
“What?”
“Nearly got married on a beach in Cabo, just Lor and me.”
“Seriously?”
Jacob nods. “I had to talk your mother out of uninviting Aunt Mae after a minor altercation over the menu. Wedding planning is a goddamn nightmare.”
Theo has no clue at what point during the last five years defined by grief Jacob started talking about Lori again, but it will never not be an electric shock to the system. Hearing him say Lor . Jacob still referring to them as a we . A unit. It breaks his brain, even though Theo knows—he knows —that letting Jacob Cohen back in, even a little bit, will be a massive disappointment. It always is. Because people don’t change.
But…
What if they do?
What if he can?
It’s the faintest whisper of a thought, just loud enough that Theo keeps his mouth shut while Jacob rambles and reminisces until a clerk calls their names.
“Cohen and Bloom?”
They stand.
Jacob clears his throat. “You know we’ve always thought of you as a daughter, Ev—”
Evelyn wraps her arms around Jacob’s neck and Theo feels some kind of way watching that embrace. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, quick, before his dad can see him emoting, before he can be told to stop . He knows that she has breakfast with Jacob every Sunday. But knowing that his dad is more of a presence in Evelyn’s life than his own and seeing it are two different things, and while this wall, this boundary, between father and son is more than necessary, it still really hurts.
He’ll never say that.
Or show it.
Evelyn wipes the single tear on her cheek with the pad of her thumb, then takes his hand and they follow the clerk, a short Black woman with a fade, pink cat-eye glasses, and matching lipstick who introduces herself as Tanya. She leads them into the ceremony room: four white walls, a wooden podium, and a single canvas hanging on the wall with the quote You have my whole heart for my whole life written in calligraphy. Theo wants to laugh. He wants to cry. He wants his mom.
“Good afternoon! We’re gathered here today—”
Once Tanya begins, everything moves so fast. Theo doesn’t hear a single word of the canned nonreligious ceremony they preselected, hyperfixated on Evelyn’s hands in his, squeezing so hard he’s positive her nails have left marks in his skin. He’s not the most devout Jew, but the customs matter to him and it’s a bummer that the ceremony options were either any sect of Christianity or nothing at all. He doesn’t know the Sheva Brachot from memory, so he says the Shema to himself because that blessing is at the top of the call sheet for pretty much any and every service.
Evelyn lets go of his hands and she has, in fact, imprinted on him.
“I didn’t prepare anything,” she says, and it takes him a moment to catch up with what’s happening, that Tanya must’ve asked if they wrote their own vows. “I’m, um, not the best when it comes to words or, like, feeling my feelings out loud. But. If there’s any time to speak in clichés, I’m pretty sure it’s when you’re marrying your best friend. How lucky am I?”
Theo denies, denies, denies the way those words make him feel.
Tells himself she’s just speaking facts.
He’s her best friend.
And she’s marrying him.
He attempts to match her fact for fact when it’s his turn to speak. “You’re my person, Evelyn. You have been since we were eight years old and you stepped foot into Miss Stella’s dance studio. I just… I had to know you. And every day, I am so glad I do. Know you. I’d do literally anything for you, and I’m so excited to keep doing life with you.”
Every word is a fact.
An objective truth.
Someone sniffles.
Fuck, why is Gen crying?
At least Evelyn isn’t. Her smile is wide and Theo is able to finally relax, just in time for the ring exchange. Evelyn’s eyes bulge, like this is the first time she considered that he, too, would need a ring. But Theo’s prepared for this. He pulls two boxes from his pocket, handing a cheap basic band he purchased online for himself to Evelyn, who visibly relaxes. He hangs on to the priceless one that he would’ve torn the house apart in search of, a vintage Victorian-style ring with intricate engraved botanical details around the delicate gold band.
Theo repeats every line of the ring exchange, from with this ring, I thee wed to until death do us part , then slides the ring onto her finger. It was Bubbe Ruth’s before it was Lori’s, and now it’s Evelyn’s, and he knows that she isn’t his forever in a romantic sense but she is in literally every other sense. He will always be doing life with her, so it just makes sense for her to be the one to hold on to it.
For that to be enough.
It’s then Evelyn’s turn to place a ring on his finger, and he doesn’t hate the way it feels.
“I now pronounce you husband and wife,” Tanya declares. “You may kiss your spouse.”
Their eyes meet. Theo’s expression is meant to convey that this doesn’t have to be a kiss because speaking from experience, kissing her is so damn dangerous. But before he can even process what’s happening, Evelyn presses her body flush against his, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling his lips to hers, initiating it.
Their third kiss.
The first time, they were thirteen, just children, awkward and anxious to get their firsts out of the way. It was too wet and so weird and both vowed to never do that again, a vow they kept for an entire decade. Until it happened again. Theo had just turned twenty-three, Lori had just died, and they were both so tangled up in each other’s grief that it sort of, oops, just happened.
Theo and Evelyn laugh about the first kiss.
They never mention the second one.
In the aftermath, both pretended that they were too intoxicated to remember—but of course Theo remembers. It’s more than muscle memory, it’s mastered choreography, the way his body reacts to hers, pulling her closer, despite his brain screaming at him to stop . He tells his brain to shut up, but then it reminds him that Jacob is here, and he honestly needed that reminder. Theo absolutely cannot go feral on his best friend in front of his estranged father .
But he doesn’t stop kissing her.
Why should he? It’s their third kiss. And just like the first two, it doesn’t count.
It’s not real.