Chapter Three
Chapter Three
All the emotion she had suppressed since Hannah’s shower came bubbling to the surface.
The anger and hurt to see how Ben had taken their breakup in stride, with a new girl on his arm, as easy-breezy and jokey with Iris as ever—no shame, no awkwardness, no remorse.
Their breakup had cost him nothing. Meanwhile Iris had spent the morning in a doctor’s office with her feet in cold stirrups, stuck with an ultrasound wand, about to spend thousands of dollars to pay for the years he wasted, if she could come up with the money, and even then it might not work.
Ben was an eligible bachelor, and she was damaged goods—the injustice.
And the betrayal. By Ben, obviously, whom she had trusted that they were building toward a family together, but now betrayed by her own body.
Iris had always felt at war with her physicality, which was always recalcitrantly too big, too wrongly shaped, or too hungry—and now to desert her in its most basic feminine function.
Iris had gone her whole childhood bereaved of a family, dreaming of the day she could start her own, only for her body to secretly and unilaterally decide she didn’t need those eggs after all.
Just like it did the night of the house fire, when Iris was terrified but her body froze instead of fled.
Why couldn’t she control her own body? Why couldn’t she count on her body to perform its most basic biological imperatives—to procreate and to survive?
And the absolute worst part was, Iris hadn’t seen any of this coming.
Blindsided. That was the word for it. And Iris hated surprises.
Ben’s proposal to Iris was never going to be a surprise, it was a sure thing.
They had been dating for five years total, living together in her apartment for three, and when a couple shares six hundred square feet for that long, surprises are the first to go.
Ben was the archetype of marriage material, the type of man who owned and used an iron before Iris even met him.
He was the youngest of four with three older sisters, his mother joked that his feet didn’t touch the ground until he was five, and he had the confidence and benign narcissism of a favored and only son.
But being raised by so many women, even indulgent ones, had also conferred on him emotional intelligence and a people-pleasing nature.
Ben basked in praise. He wanted to do the right thing, and he wanted people to see him doing it.
That sense of responsibility was something he and Iris had in common, although attention made her uncomfortable.
His family loved her, and the feeling was mutual.
At least part of the reason Iris fit so beautifully into Ben’s family was because she had none of her own to complicate her assimilation.
Although the Bergen clan could be overwhelming, Iris had fallen in love with their traditional, boisterous holidays: the Rockwell Thanksgivings, the matching PJs at Christmas, the giggly girl-energy that ran the household and encircled Ben and his dad, who pretended to be put-upon and outnumbered but were doted upon.
It was so unlike Iris’s family of origin—she was an only child, then an orphan, raised by grandparents on a Pennsylvania farm; her childhood had been happy, then tragic, then quiet.
Iris and Ben had discussed marriage, romantically, with tangled limbs and bedsheets, and also sensibly, fully dressed, over meals, even once with a lawyer, since Iris’s late parents’ and grandparents’ estates were a complicated merger, not that Ben needed any more family money.
They had designed the ring together, using the center stone from her mother’s engagement ring—Iris’s idea—plus two additional baguettes and a white gold band, so it would have their own unique touch and more wattage—Ben’s idea.
He didn’t let her see the finished product, but she saw the velvet box every time she put his shorts away in their top drawer, and she impressed herself by never peeking.
So she waited. And waited. As each holiday, birthday, getaway passed without a proposal, Iris began to dread the expectant questions from his family and her friends that would follow. But she wasn’t worried.
They had a plan.
Last winter’s holidays came and went, though she knew Ben wouldn’t propose over Christmas, he knew that that holiday had too much baggage for her to be rehabbed into a happy memory—but Ben’s Christmas gift to her was booking them a trip to Cabo San Lucas for a week in February including Valentine’s Day.
Iris was so excited, she preplanned whale watching, snorkeling, a cooking lesson, tequila tasting, except on Valentine’s Day itself—Ben had asked her to leave that day to him for a “surprise.”
Iris booked a manicure through the hotel for February 13, and Hannah had been sending her links to white bikinis and lingerie all month.
But one snowy night in late January, while Iris was in bed reading with Hugo snoozing over her blanketed feet, she noticed Ben open his top drawer and take the small box out of it.
Iris sat up a little taller in bed and her heart began to pound. Her long brown hair was in an alligator clip, no makeup, she was wearing her glasses. Her nails looked like shit.
Ben sat on the bed beside her, the box in his lap. He looked so nervous, she actually felt sorry for him.
“I know we were both thinking I was going to propose on this trip,” he began. “I had a huge thing planned for the beach, private dinner, drone photographer, but…”
Iris nodded. In an instant, she revised her vision of the proposal; it was better this way.
The beach on Valentine’s Day was too contrived.
A private proposal at home was truer to their life together.
Ben was the romantic, Iris the realist. She never needed anything fancy or Instagrammable. She only needed him.
Ben slid the ring box toward her and let it sit on the coverlet, closed. “I want you to have this, but I can’t give it to you.”
“What?” Iris genuinely didn’t understand.
Ben started to cry, and suddenly Iris knew: it was bad, and it was real.
“I’ve been feeling this…detachment, like I’m watching myself go through the motions of doing everything right, but it’s not me, or not real. I kept trying to psych myself up with things that would get me excited and make it feel like I always thought it would. The ring design, Cabo…”
Her heart raced as she listened to him name every action she had taken as proof of his love and certainty, only to learn they were…the opposite—manifestations of his lack thereof.
“I thought if I set up the perfect proposal, the feeling would come. But maybe that was always ass-backwards, I don’t know.
I know I love you, and I want to make you happy, the last thing I want to do is hurt you, but…
” He looked at her with red eyes full of tears.
“Iris, you deserve someone excited to marry you.”
Her face was so flushed with disappointment and shame, she could feel her pulse in her ears. She managed to choke out, “And you’re not?”
“Fuck, I’m so sorry.” His voice croaked in a snotty sob.
Iris rose to get him a tissue. She put a hand on his arm and rubbed his back, steadying herself by comforting him.
She could still fix things. “So you’re not ready to get married.
That’s okay. You know I never gave you an ultimatum.
I can be patient. Or maybe we never need to get married, there are no rules.
All that matters is that we’re together. It’s okay. We’re fine .”
Ben looked miserably at her. “If I’m not ready now, when will I be? I swear, I’m thinking of us both, I think. I care about you too much to sleepwalk into this huge decision or make you wait any longer just to be let down.”
“How long have you been feeling this way?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, I don’t remember.”
Her stomach flipped. Long enough you don’t remember.
“It’s not you. You’re everything I could ask for, you’re a perfect girlfriend, my family loves you, you did nothing wrong, you do everything right. I feel like we’re already married.”
“Is that so bad?”
“Nothing about us is bad, that’s how we’ve coasted for so long—”
Coasted?
“But is not-bad good enough for forever? Don’t we both deserve to feel something big, something powerful to move us to the next level? You know, that feeling when you want someone so much, you can’t get enough—”
“That’s not realistic. We’ve been together a long time, it doesn’t stay like that. Our love is stable and mature, and maybe that’s not the most exciting, but that’s the kind of love you can build a life on. Do you know how rare that is?”
Ben looked her straight in the eye for the first time since he sat down. “Can you really tell me that I make you feel enough to get married?”
Iris blinked, her eyes tearing. “Yes, of course I can. I love you. You make me feel comfortable and safe, and when I’m with you, I feel like I’m home. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
Ben was quiet for a moment, his face crumpled like the tissue in his hand. He wiped his eyes roughly, leaving his cheeks streaked with pink, and looked back at her with eyes full of apology. “I want more.”