Page 5 of Green
2
Theo
We were both twenty-two on the day we married. To say that I hadn’t planned to be married before turning thirty would be an understatement. I had bought Gemma two nice rings. I let her pick them out. They weren’t too expensive, because she wasn’t going to be wearing them very often—just for pictures and the meeting with the immigration officer. But the diamond was real. The platinum was real. The Visa bill was real.
Seeing my mom, Gemma’s parents, and Chloe and Ethan sitting together in the judge’s chambers at the Santa Barbara courthouse was making me feel surprisingly sentimental.I promised myself I wouldn’t cry…Just kidding. I didn’t cry. I figured I’d save that for my real wedding day. My father was not in attendance for this one. Officially, it was because he was at a conference in Prague. Obviously, it was because he wasn’t thrilled with the idea of me setting up shop in the U.S. instead of Canada. While he didn’t support it, he wasn’t a total dick about it either. I was happy that my Mom was there, and just hoped that on my real wedding day she would give me and my wife the same gifts she’d brought this time—a big box filled with bags of Old Dutch ketchup-flavored potato chips and Cadbury chocolate bars from Canada. Aside from the publicly-funded health care, relatively peaceful politics and colorful, aesthetically-pleasing currency, I missed these snacks the most as soon as I’d moved to the U.S. Having a big box of them made settling down with the old ball and chain totally worth it.
But I did have the strangest feeling, as the judge rambled on about love and marriage and commitment…I watched Gemma, as she listened to the judge politely. Her hair was so pretty with little sprigs of flowers stuck into a hairpin and she was wearing a white sundress and knee-high boots that gave her an extra few inches in height. I had this feeling—this is the person Ishouldbe marrying. Not now, for a green card. For real—someday.
What the fuck am I supposed to do about this?
When you’re a straight guy and you realize you’ve become best friends with an attractive woman, you start to live a good part of your life in denial. You get so used to convincing yourself that you aren’t attracted to her that you forget how attractive she is. You get used to ignoring that voice in your head that tells you the way you feel about her is the way you should be feeling about all those women you’re actually having sex with. But I’d been so busy with school and developing my app that there was no way I could have had a serious relationship with a girl, and once I was able to devote myself to my startup full-time it would be totally impossible. So I had no-strings sex when there was time for it, and the rest of the time I had Gemma.
I didn’t feel my heart stop or jump out of my chest when I saw her that morning, and my breath wasn’t taken away. It felt the same as when I always saw her. Warm. Comfortable. It felt like love.
But now I was getting this awful panicky sensation in my chest.
What if we’re making a huge mistake?
Or was this just cold feet? Everybody gets cold feet. But was this cold feet about getting married or was it cold feet about getting fake-married for a green card?
I needed a timeout. I needed to talk to the only person on earth that I could talk to about this.
The only person I could talk to about this glanced over at me and wrinkled her brow when she saw me staring at her. I probably looked like an idiot. Her eyes were a glassy sea green like the night we met, and for a second I felt totally naked again. Did she wolf down pot brownies in the car with Chloe and Ethan on the way up from LA? Or were those tears? She shook her head at me, almost imperceptibly. I knew this meant that she was annoyed with me for not being able to read her mind. Even though the fact that I knew this meant Icanread her mind.
I think it’s safe to say that the only reason we were best friends is because she couldn’t read mine. I found comfort in this. Usually. Right then it felt like she knew everything. She couldn’t possibly be feeling the same way. Could she?
She looked away and didn’t make eye contact with me again until we said our vows to each other. We wrote our own vows. We dared each other to write the cheesiest vows we could. We hadn’t shared them with each other yet. It was supposed to be a surprise. It was like a fun game to us. I wassogoing to win this marriage ceremony.
I had memorized my vows, but saw her tuck a folded piece of paper into her bra strap earlier. Such half-assery. I wondered if she’d take the time to memorize her vows to Andrew.
And other things that I need to stop thinking about at our nuptials.
It was go-time.
We faced each other and held both of each other’s hands. It was corny, but what are you gonna do?
“Gem…”
She giggled, nervously. I laughed, then cleared my throat.
“I can’t believe you finally get to marry me today.”
I paused, for laughter—which I got from the judge, his assistant, and our friends and family, and only after she heard them laughing did my bride register that she should laugh too.
“You’re so lucky you get to continue living and putting up with me for the rest of your life, because no matter what people say about how I’m a genius, that I’m gonna change the world with the technology that I develop because I’m such a genius…”
Another pause for laughter. Because I’m hilarious. Gemma just stared up at me and blinked. It was almost as if she knew I was doing the false arrogance thing to try to hide how much I genuinely loved her. Maybe.
“The truth is,myworld changed as soon as I met you, and the smartest thing I’ve ever done was show up today to marry you.”
“Awwws” from the moms and Chloe. A snort-laugh from Ethan. Still nothin’ from Gemma. I thought I could hear her humming. She had sort of a dazed look in her eyes. I would have sworn she was stoned. If she were, I wasn’t sure if it would invalidate the marriage. I squeezed her hands. Her eyes widened and she loosened her shoulders, gave me a little nod.All good.
“The truth is…I will do everything I can to show up every single day to be your husband. What does that mean, you might ask? I’ll tell you what it means…It means that when we go out to eat, I promise to always get a large order of fries, even though I myself eat sensible and healthy amounts of bad carbs, and I will pretend not to care or judge you when you steal two-thirds of them.”
She heard our friends and parents laugh, so she giggled too. It was like she’d suddenly stopped understanding English. What was wrong with her? Was she having second thoughts?
“It means that I will always tell you when your shoelaces are untied—and I have no idea why a grown woman always has shoelaces that are untied—but I will always tell you to tie your shoelaces because I don’t want you to trip and fall. It means that I will do whatever I can to keep you from tripping and falling. Because, despite how many times I’ve felt like I’ve been tripping over myself just to be with you, you’re the only person I’ve ever met who somehow manages to keep me on my toesandmake me feel balanced at the same time.”
