Getting Married Read Free

are things that bother you before you get married and you can’t even discuss them, can’t even talk about how to change or deal with whatever issues are going on, run. It was an exercise in Chinese water torture for me.”

    I emailed him back. “Interesting. Except what’s Chinese water torture? ”

    “When you get the Chinese water torture treatment, you are strapped to a table or whatever, and a steady drip of water hits your forehead from overhead. The first few drops aren’t a big deal—as were the issues my ex and I faced prewedding. Eventually, though, the inescapable, relentless drips are maddening to the point they can simply drive you insane. Drip, drip, drip. You know it’s going to come again and again and again, and there is not a damn thing you can do about it.”

    When Will and I finally met in person at a bar for drinks, it was—I’m sorry to be sappy and dramatic here—magical. When I first saw him, my pulse surged and I couldn’t keep a smile off my face. The very first words out of his mouth were, “Wow, you are really pretty. I thought you looked cute in your picture, but now I realize that picture really didn’t do you justice.”

    Our date was completely free of the usual first date awkwardness because we’d already gotten to know each other so well through email. We didn’t stop talking or laughing for six hours straight. At the end of the night, he walked me to my car and gave me a kiss that was soft, and warm, and wonderful.

    Will had no time for games. The morning after our first date he wrote me that the previous evening had been one of the best dates of his life, and he couldn’t wait to see me again. Oh how that put a smile on my face. And I felt the exact same way and told him so.

    We went out again the next day, which was a Saturday. It was another whirlwind deal of us talking without pause, laughing so hard it hurt, and having a general blast together. We came home after a romantic dinner and started kissing and then groping and then sort of accidentally had sex for the better part of the night (oops! I didn’t mean to sleep with him on our second date!), and, much to my relief, he was great in bed, so he aced the Fun-to-Have-Sex-With test.

    My search, at long last, was over.

    Now, the only thing standing between me and happily-ever-after is, well, me. I wish I could stop obsessing, but I hate that he loved his first wife and doesn’t regret marrying her. He never says anything disparaging about her. It’s so annoying. It’s really his worst quality.

    I inspect my face in the bathroom mirror, decide I look passably decent, and go downstairs where I join Will at the table.

    “Is everything okay, babe?” he asks.

    “Yeah. I was just writing down some thoughts for my meeting with Woodruff Pharmaceuticals. That’s why I took so long.”

    He smiles and together we watch the band play.

    I take a sip of my beer and try to shake my feelings of self-doubt, attempting to enjoy the music. Then a flurry of activity to my right catches my eye and I turn to look at what’s going on. The older couple who had been sitting there is leaving, and three young women are snapping up the table. The women are wearing tight, cropped shirts that fall off the shoulders and are loosely draped on, held in place by a couple well-placed knots. I suspect that one overly enthusiastic laugh would cause the blouses to disintegrate. The girls are very pretty: Their hair, their smiles, their laughs, the confident way they move. They are decidedly alluring. I look over at Will. His eyes are resolutely focused on the band, straight ahead.

    X. It’s X’s doing. X trained him not to look at pretty, half-dressed women making a ruckus getting to their table. Men stare shamelessly at women until their girlfriends or wives train them through negative reinforcement that if they stare at other women while in her company, they do so at their peril, setting themselves up for hours-long tirades in the