The Shippers(8)

Who talks like that? Right?

I agree that it doesn’t seem to add up. Why would a winsome young mathematician like myself embark on what turned into a seven-year relationship that started with such a whimper?

Because of my fraught relationship with my absentee father, obviously. Pearce turned out to be the perfect man for all my unresolved issues.

And when I say “perfect,” what I mean is: He was the perfect ratio of interested to disinterested. He liked me enough to make me chase him, but not enough to let me catch him.

And that’s the whole trick to dating me, it turns out: Make me want you, but don’t let me have you.

As soon as you’re mine, I will lose interest. Guaranteed.

It’s a problem.

I’d dumped every boyfriend I’d ever had—except for Pearce. I was always the dumper, never the dumpee. But then Pearce came along. And he was so minimally interested in me that I had no choice but to get obsessed with him.

At dinner, he’d check his phone. At movies, he’d fall asleep. Texts were responded to sporadically. Invitations were deferred. Frequency was infrequent—because, for Pearce, seeing each other once a week was more than enough.

If he stayed over, he was out the door by six AM.

I hated it, but it worked. You can’t argue with the results.

Not getting enough made me want more. Being with Pearce was the emotional equivalent of being ravenously hungry and then eating one Pringle.

I knew the pattern. I knew the only way to stay interested was to stay unsatisfied.

But I still wanted to get … satisfied.

But he wouldn’t satisfy me. Or couldn’t.

It was the worst relationship of my life. And the longest.

I stayed in a state of suspended dissatisfaction for three long years until finally, one day not long before we graduated, as I was bemoaning my fate to my mom on a video call—she just … solved it.

“I’m terrified that if he ever really gives me what I want, I’ll lose interest,” I said.

My mother looked at me over her readers. “Well,” she said. “You know what the answer to that is.”

There was an answer to that? “What?”

“Get married,” she said. Like Simple.

I frowned. “Get married?”

My mom nodded, like Obviously. “Put yourself in a position where you can’t lose interest.”

“I don’t think Pearce wants to get married.”

“Never underestimate the value of a good threat,” my mom said.

“But what if he says no?”

“Then you’re no worse off than you are right now.”

It was sneaky, and it was brilliant. And it worked.

One night, over dinner, I said, in the most pleasant, disinterested, robotic way possible, “Pearce, I’d like to get married. And if that’s not of interest to you, we should probably break up so I can find someone else.”

Pearce frowned a little, turned the idea over in his mind. And then he said, “Great idea. Let’s get married.”

And that was that. A week later, I had Grandmother Richmond’s two-carat engagement ring on my finger.

It felt like a triumph—until we stayed that way for four years.

Engaged—but not married—for four years.

We graduated college. He went into quantitative finance, and I decided, after much soul-searching, that I wanted to become a middle school math teacher and illustrate math concepts with fun activities like origami. He decided to use his math major to make money, and I decided to use my math major to make art.

A choice that Pearce did not understand, personally or financially.

We still didn’t live together. He still answered only 50 percent of my texts.

He stalled and stalled, until one night his parents sat him down and told him they would like some grandchildren.

And now here I was, walking the plank.

I mean aisle.

Once we set a date, I was happy at first. But the truth was, as the wedding plans became more solid, I started to feel less happy. Things that hadn’t bothered me before, like how he smacked when he ate pasta, and how his earlobes were too small, and how he checked his phone every three minutes, started to loom larger.

And larger.

He never used his parking brake. He couldn’t roll his rs. One side of his nose was a different shape from the other.

Not to mention: His favorite ice cream was Rocky Road. Maybe I was a little judgy from that high school job at Baskin-Robbins, but Rocky Road? That was old people ice cream! What was this—a retirement home?

It was as predictable as geometry. I could have written it like a proof.

Now that I had him, I didn’t want him anymore.

It was like a curse.

But curses were made to be broken.

Today, in the church, I reminded myself what my mother had said: The only way to stop running away is to stop running away.

So here I was: not running away.

Heroically.

Itching like hell—but doing it anyway.

Up by the altar, Pearce looked a little itchy himself. If I’m honest.

But Grandma Dodie kept walking, and so did I.

This was happening. This was nonnegotiable. This was the best solution I could think of—and I’d be marrying Pearce Richmond tonight if it was the dumbest thing I ever did.