“？‘Bought’？” She lets out a little cough—“white male privilege”—cough cough, but Josh isn’t listening.
He’s stopped in front of an enormous painting of a torturously corseted lady swooning at a foppish man in a wig. A small crowd is gathered around a heavyset man in a Nike baseball cap. He gets down on one knee and holds out a small box to a young woman in jeans and a Florida State sweatshirt.
It’s not that Ari begrudges anyone else the whole fantasy of “that moment.” But the trappings of weddings conjure up memories of terse phone calls with lawyers and an empty, silent apartment rather than flower girls and passages from Corinthians.
Endings like that have a way of overshadowing beginnings.
The woman tearfully nods and embraces Nike Hat. Josh continues watching, as people in the small crowd clap and take pictures of the newly engaged strangers. He turns and gives Ari a cryptic look, and she forces a sort-of smile, because that seems like the appropriate response to witnessing an engagement. But ten seconds later, she feels an urgent need to escape the imposing confines of the gallery, the fawning well-wishers, the smell of tourists sweating into their winter coats. Josh follows her out of the entrance hall, close enough that she catches the subtle botanical scent of his cologne.
“No commentary?” he asks as they exit into the cold early evening air of Seventieth Street.
“Well, for eighteen dollars I’m sure I could have written him a more memorable proposal.” Ari buttons her coat, thinking. “They’ll get married, have two kids, and Florida State will drag herself out of bed one morning, stare at the motivational word art on her desk, and realize that maybe she doesn’t want to be trapped in a domestic jail cell with Nike Hat for the next fifty years.”
“So, they’re yet another couple destined to meet an untimely demise,” he says, a shade of weariness in his voice.
“I mean, what’s really the point of being married?” They cross Fifth Avenue, taking a winding path into Central Park. It feels easier to keep walking, as if she can sidestep the entire conversation as long as they’re in transit. “It doesn’t have to be that or nothing.”
“So, you don’t want…that again.”
Her boots crunch on the fallen leaves. “Is this a trick question?”
“No.” He slows down in front of a large arch made of brick and stone. “It’s pretty straightforward.” Ari gazes at the bare tree branches that form impossibly complicated webs in front of the orange and pink watercolor sky. She’d rather not face him while he’s standing in front of something so photogenic, talking about marriage. “Technically, it was a statement.”
“Technically, that’s not what I said,” she clarifies. “Shoveling thousands of dollars into the wedding industrial complex has nothing to do with making a long-term relationship work.”
“Getting up in front of family and friends and saying, ‘I love this woman and I want her to be my wife’ doesn’t have to involve an ‘industrial complex.’？”
I want her to be my wife loops in her brain, only with Cass saying it. Then it morphs into something indecipherable.
Ari shakes it off and turns around, walking backward in front of him, passing under the arch. The cool, musty air fills her lungs. It feels like a different world for the nine seconds it takes to pass beneath it. “Since when do you want to attend any event with your ‘friends and family’？”
“Good point,” he concedes.
When they emerge on the other side, Ari nods toward a bench at the edge of the footpath. They sit on the weathered wood, leaving a healthy distance between them, like they’re each enclosed in their own protective force fields.
“With Cass, it was like…” She trails off, trying to remember why being married seemed necessary. “Getting that piece of paper would somehow validate that she chose me. Because without that, I was just part of someone’s midlife crisis.” She picks at the loose button on her coat. “Turns out, even with a government document, midlife crises end eventually.”
“You should light some candles before you say something so romantic.” She looks up at him. The sunset creates some distractingly beautiful golden hour lighting across his face. He crosses his arms tight across his chest. “I have a ring—a family heirloom from my dad’s side. When Sophie was in town, I’d carry it everywhere, just in case I felt this shining moment of certainty. I didn’t want to propose unless I was absolutely sure the answer would be ‘yes.’ But it never happened.”