just trying to take the time I need to make sure I did not misunderstand you,” Molly answered slowly.
“I apologize for not being totally clear,” Adam said. “What I meant to say was, let’s get married.”
He thought at first that the thud in his ear was his conscience trying to beat some sense into his skull.
A half moment later, he realized it was the loud echo of Molly’s abrupt disconnection.
Molly stared wide-eyed at the phone lying on the ground next to the wall, where she’d flung it as if it had spontaneously combusted next to her ear.
A second later, she scrambled over to snatch it off the floor and dialed Adam’s number. “Oops,” she said when he answered on the first half ring. “I, uh, I dropped the phone.” She shrugged one shoulder as if he could see it in his apartment twenty miles away.
“Of course.”
“So I missed the rest of your joke.”
“What joke?”
“You—you said, ‘Let’s get marr-marr—’” Molly cleared her throat. “You said—”
“Let’s get married.”
Hearing those words in Adam’s voice, did things as weird and foreign to her insides as the baby did. “Right, and then I hung up on the punch line.”
“There was no punch line.”
“Adam, can you cease and desist with the games right now? I had a hell of a day, and—”
“No games. I’m dead serious. We always said we’d marry each other anyway if we didn’t have better offers.”
Molly didn’t remind him that that agreement was supposed to go into effect when they turned thirty, and then in a semidrunken panic at his surprise party, they had mutually declared that pact null and void, at least until they hit forty.
What did it say about her that it was the closest she’d ever gotten to a marriage proposal? Well, until two minutes ago.
“Just for one year,” Adam went on. “The term of your job. What’s the big deal? Unless you have a boyfriend these days that I also have no idea about.”
“No.”
“Well, I don’t have a girlfriend at present. So I repeat, what’s the big deal? We’ll go to a justice of the peace, get married, you’ll get your great job, everyone’s happy.”
“What’ll you get out of it?”
He paused. “Helping you. We’re best friends. That’s my job.”
“This would have to be a serious secret,” Molly warned. “I mean, serious. I wouldn’t even tell my friends and neighbors the truth. I’m a terrible liar. If I tell one story to everyone, it’ll be easier.”
“Agreed.”
“Marry Adam Shibbs?” Molly mumbled. “Oh, that was meant to be internal dialogue,” she said, louder. “Sorry.”
“Hey,” he said, wounded. “I happen to know dozens of women who would love to marry me.”
“I’m sorry.” She paused. “I mean, we’d have to live together to keep this up. You’d have to live here.”
“You can come here, if you prefer.”
“No, there’s more room here and this is my—well, this is my house. I don’t want to be somewhere else. Especially while I’m pregnant.”
“Understood.”
“You’d be moving into my house,” she reiterated, and then she sank to the floor. She leaned her back against the wall and stretched her legs out in front of her. “We’re overlooking the small fact that we annoy the crap out of each other.”
“True. But I think this is important enough for us to compromise.”
“We can’t compromise our personalities, can we? For a whole year? We’re so different.” Which is why we’ve never even attempted to date, she added silently. Which is why we’re best friends.
Adam didn’t answer, and Molly realized he wouldn’t. He knew she could argue him into the ground on any point. So he’d rested his case, and it was now up to her.
Marry Adam?
It would be in name only. She knew he’d stick to the rules they set. But wasn’t marriage supposed to be something more, something about love?
She did love Adam. But not in the to-have-and-to-hold way. More like in the to-have-fun-and-to-hold-good-parties-with way. Right. She put a hand over her chest, felt the pounding of her heart. And that, that was merely because she was surprised.
It didn’t seem right to compromise on marriage. If she was ever going to bother taking this kind of step, it should be for the right, idealistic reasons.
“I can’t,” she finally said. “Adam, I can’t. Because you’re my friend, my real friend. Which you’re proving by offering to make this kind of sacrifice. And I will be grateful to you forever, but I just can’t.”
Adam still didn’t respond, and Molly thought for an impossible moment that she might have really hurt him, that he felt rejected. A little pain stabbed at her heart. Then he said, “All right. I thought it was a good idea, but it’s just as well. I’ve heard that you snore.”
It was a typical Adam comment, but the last word fell a tiny bit flat. “I’d better go,” Molly said. “I’m hungry again, which is not to be believed. And, Adam…thank you.”
“Don’t say thank you. Saying no to a marriage proposal is one thing. Saying ‘no, thanks’ to a marriage proposal is another.”
Molly said a hasty goodbye and hung up. She put her head in her hands, and didn’t realize she was crying again until she felt the tears leak out from between her fingers and drip down her wrist. Stupid hormones. If it hadn’t been for all her uncharacteristic boo-hooing, Adam wouldn’t have lost his mind and proposed, she wouldn’t have said no, and things wouldn’t be all strange between them now.
But she couldn’t do what he was suggesting. Even if it wasn’t really real. Adam was not the man she was supposed to marry. She was supposed to marry a man just like her—ambitious and career-oriented, someone who understood her goals not because she had to explain them, but because he had similar ones. That’s what her parents had in each other. That’s why Molly had been one of the only children in her small, elite private grade school with still-married parents. She’d emulated them in so many ways, so why not this important one?
“It’s worth waiting for,” she whispered to her baby, but why did it feel as if she were trying to convince herself? Her eyes overflowed again.
Plunk.
It was the sound of a large drop hitting the floor. A drop too heavy to be a tear.
Plunk.
