We sat next to each other in school when we were eight. He used to tear the crust off his sandwiches and slip it onto my plate when he thought the teacher wasn’t looking.
I used to lend him pencils because he never seemed to have one, though later I realized he was faking because he just liked talking to me.
By the time we were older, there was no dramatic beginning to us. No single moment when friendship turned into love.
It was more like stepping into a room you’d somehow always been walking toward.
When he asked me to marry him, we were sitting by the river near the old bridge.
He turned to me suddenly with a serious look.
“I’ve been thinking about the future, and I don’t want to build a life that doesn’t have you in it,” he said. “Eleanor, will you marry me?”
I remember staring at him, then laughing because I started crying at the same time.
“That’s a terrible proposal,” I told him.
“It’s honest.”
“Yes,” I said before he even got the ring box open. “Of course, yes.”
For six months, everything in my world pointed toward my wedding day.
My mother and I sewed my dress by hand. I chose the church with the stained-glass windows that turned the aisle blue and gold in the afternoon.
We argued over flowers, tasted cakes, and folded invitations.
