The doorbell played its sing-song at bang on one, Sunday lunchtime. It was the first time I’d known Rowan to stick to a time schedule, which perhaps should have been my first clue that something wasn’t quite right. When I answered, he stood with his face hidden behind a suspiciously large bunch of white roses. It wasn’t our anniversary or my birthday, and we were well past the ‘just because’ phase of our relationship. Rowan had stopped with spontaneous romantic gestures in our second year of university. The fact that he looked to be making one now should have been my second clue. He waltzed in without a word and kissed me like he did when we were teenagers. I laughed as he pulled away.
‘What’s going on with you?’ I asked, backing away to let him further into the hall.
‘Can’t a man miss his woman?’ He winced. ‘Not that you’re mine, but … God, you know what I mean, right?’ He carried the flowers into the kitchen and rested them on the worksurface. I was already looking for a vase. He nodded to the bouquet. ‘There’s a card buried in there somewhere.’
I filled a square jug with water. ‘I mean, I’m pretty sure I know who they’re from.’
‘Well, maybe it isn’t the name of the sender.’ He nudged me softly. ‘Find the card?’
I pushed my way through soft petals and hard leaves until I found a small white rectangle. Rowan was shuffling in the background, the way he did when he was nervous, and it was taking the edge off whatever surprise this was. His anxiety had always been contagious. I lifted the lip and pulled out the note at a speed, more to halt his obvious worries than anything else. But as I eyed the card, I noticed my share of Rowan’s anxiety soon died down against the growing flames of my own. I scanned the message twice over before the realisation of its meaning fully landed on me: Save The Date. When I looked up at him, he was grinning like a schoolboy with good exam results.
‘I booked Tilbury Manor.’ He pulled me into another kiss before I could say anything, which was likely a good thing. He kissed away my nerves and protests and mild irritation. He’d decided the date; he’d decided the venue; he’d—
‘Rowan, what about the budget?’ I tried to force a laugh to take the edge out of my voice. ‘How did you rig this?’
He rubbed at the back of his neck. ‘Look, Mum and Dad really wanted to help out. They’ve promised they won’t do anything else, at all, for the wedding. But Dad kept pushing me to talk about the wedding and the plans, and then I found out because of the date it’s actually partially refundable, too …’ He noticed something in my face. ‘You’re annoyed.’
Yes. We hadn’t made grand plans for the wedding. But of the plans we had made, the first thing we’d agreed was that we’d pay for it ourselves. ‘I thought we’d already talked about the money situation, though.’
‘Did we?’ He sounded genuinely perplexed. Yes, I thought, and your bloody mother knew about our agreement, too. ‘I mean, I know we talked a little about venues and stuff before I went away. I didn’t think we’d … I mean, maybe I’m wrong, but I really didn’t think we’d decided on anything.’
I could remember the conversation. We’d been sitting across from each other in this same room with a laptop open between us and a castle on the screen. In the space of an hour we’d moved from howling with laughter at the prices, all the way through to a grown-up talk about finances and … How do you not remember this happening?
‘Okay,’ he started again, plugging the silence, and I waited for the memory of it all to fall out of him. ‘Babes, I really can’t place that conversation ever happening, I’m sorry. I can call the venue tomorrow, tell them we don’t want it booked? Mum and Dad were only trying to—’
‘There’s no need for that, honestly.’ I flashed a tight smile. It wasn’t worth the trouble it would cause. ‘It’s a surprise, that’s all.’ I kissed his cheek and then picked up the flowers. ‘How did you even decide on a date?’
‘Easy. I picked the date when you conquered gender inequality in the playground.’
My whole body softened. The day Rowan and I first met was when I’d nearly thumped a boy in the face for not letting Molly play tag. Unless you ask Rowan about it, in which case he saved me with a punch that never happened. I hadn’t even wanted to play the game myself; I only wanted the right to. In the end, Rowan and I had been huddled out of sight at the top of the field because neither of us could be arsed with running about in the heat. And that was when it all started. God, oh God, how can I be annoyed about this? I was facing away from him, trimming the toes of the roses. ‘Rowan, that’s unbelievably sweet. I – Christ, you’re a good egg, you really are. Two years away, too …’ Snip, snip. ‘That’s a really good amount of planning time.’
‘Yeah, there was kind of a motive to that, too.’
Snip. ‘Oh?’ I couldn’t keep track of my feelings. The nervous through to the delight through to – whatever was happening next. ‘Go on, then, let’s be having it.’
‘So, I was talking to Dad a lot over the week. Mum wasn’t around that much, which was nice. But Dad was asking whether I’d had any doubts or whether I thought you had any doubts, about the wedding.’ He forced a laugh. ‘What he actually said was, “Are the pair of you sure that you’re both thinking straight on this?” I told him I hadn’t had doubts but that other people maybe did. You know, how people are always asking how we can be so sure, whether we are so sure. Even the conversation with Dad felt like a rerun of that in loads of ways.’
Snip. ‘Right …’
‘Dad asked if we’d thought of a break at any point. Not like, not being together anymore, as such, but a break from being engaged or being – I don’t know, shit. I can’t remember the word he used. He might have said exclusive.’
I’d run out of flowers to cut. But I couldn’t look at him. I had a horrible feeling that whoever was sitting at my kitchen table wasn’t the person I would expect to see if I turned round. ‘I think you mean monogamous.’
There was a long pause before he said, ‘Yeah, that might have been the word. But it got me thinking about how we’ve never really known anyone else, have we, either of us?’ The thought made my stomach roll and I clung to the counter to steady myself. ‘And look, we’ve booked somewhere, we’re settled, we know we’re doing the right thing. But what if there are things we want to get out of our system?’ I assumed the question was rhetorical until I felt Rowan close in behind me; he set a hand on my back and craned round to see my face. ‘Edi?’
What is happening here? ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think I understand.’
‘Come on, let’s sit? I’ll explain better.’ He guided me through the flat to the sofa, and I let myself be led like a woman in shock. No, wait, I fact-checked, I am a woman in shock. He encouraged me onto the settee, then he perched on the edge of my coffee table so he could be opposite me. I hate it when he does that and he knows it. But I shook the thought away; it didn’t seem like the time. ‘We would still be together. And life would absolutely carry on as normal in lots of ways. But imagine, okay, imagine you’re on a night out with the girls and a man comes up to you and says, hey, can I get you a drink? If you wanted to say yes, you could! It wouldn’t matter, and I – well, I might be a bit jealous, but you’d still be coming home to me at the end of the night and—’
‘Oh,’ I interrupted, ‘as much as a bit?’
He sighed. ‘It’s a terrible idea.’
‘Besides—’ I ignored his comment and ploughed ahead ‘—I’d only be coming home to you if I weren’t going home with him.’
His eyebrows pulled together. ‘I don’t follow you.’
‘If we’re together but we’re not, I can go home with someone else. Is that what you’re saying?’ It looked like the thought had thrown him, and I wondered how well he’d thought this suggestion through. ‘And I guess, in that same scenario, or sort of the same anyway, if you were out with the guys and you saw a girl you liked and you wanted to buy her a drink, you’d just go right ahead and offer?’ He nodded instantly, as though that were a much easier question to answer. ‘Right. I – right.’
He lowered himself into my eyeline, forcing me to look at him. ‘Are you with me?’
‘Like, in the room, or with this idea?’
‘It’s a terrible idea?’ he said again.
Yes. But I’d become so accustomed to my role as the reassuring one that even this, even with this bloody terrible idea elbowing between us, I still said, ‘No, no it’s not that.’ I pulled in a greedy breath and steeled myself for his answer. ‘Do you think you’re missing out on something, Rowan? By being with me, I mean?’
‘Baby, not even.’ He dropped to his knees. The last time I’d seen him from that angle had been when he’d proposed, and the association stung. ‘I am so, so happy with you, Edi. But I guess Dad’s point was, what if we get to their age and wonder whether there was more? Do you know?’
No. No, I don’t know. ‘So, you don’t think you’re missing out on anything, but you just want to be sure you’re not?’
He took my hand. ‘I want us both to be sure.’
In those seconds while I looked at him, though, he was a stranger – and for the first time ever, I felt unsure. The man walked and talked like my boyfriend. But he bought flowers and made suggestions like the kind of men I told the girls to avoid. I’ll have to throw the roses out, I thought, but that would come later. In the lengthy silence that rolled out, I guessed he was likely waiting for enthusiasm or disgust. And I would have to be the one who made the final decision; I would have to be the person out of the two of us who made this an okay thing to do – or not. Because that was my role: The Reassurer. I sighed, realising that I sounded like the world’s shittest superhero.
I don’t know how much time had ticked by when Rowan excused himself to make tea. In truth, I thought he couldn’t hack the silence any longer and needed to be somewhere other than looking back at my catatonic stare. Does this count as an emergency? I wondered, while I tried to tally up how many months it had been since I’d last seen my counsellor. It would be short notice, but she’d always been good at fitting me in during a crisis. I was shaking my head again. And if this doesn’t count as an emergency, crisis, imminent existential dread, what does? I thought of asking Rowan what he wanted, then; whether this suggestion ignored what might be good for both of us, and instead only came down to him being able to buy a girl a drink and tell me about it, without me flipping a table. But I couldn’t get the question out and into the room. My counsellor had coached me: We’re not meant to ask things, if we’re not ready for the answers …