Something Borrowed
1449 Words
The dress was on the closet door when I woke up. White, floor-length, not the one I'd circled in the magazine at my mom's kitchen table. That one had off-the-shoulder sleeves and a shorter hem you could actually walk in. This one had been picked by committee. Ethan's mom liked the neckline. My mom approved the length. I'd said "That could work" because that was the sound I made now when I meant something else.
Mom's text was still on my phone from two days ago. *You know what you want. It's okay to want it.* I'd read it four times. I still hadn't replied.
Outside, someone raked leaves. The apartment smelled like Jordan almonds — two hundred of them in a box on the counter, twelve cents each, next to the closed binder and the seating chart and a casserole dish nobody had asked for. The binder was closed. That was new. For two months it had been open on the table like a second roommate, tabs fanned out, decisions pending. Now it was shut, which meant the decisions were made, which meant the wedding was real, which meant Saturday was four days away and I was lying in bed staring at a dress I hadn't picked.
---
Ethan came out of the bedroom with his hair sticking up on one side, wearing the t-shirt he'd worn to every final in college. Gray, soft, one small hole near the collar. I'd told him to throw it away three times. He said it was good luck.
"Coffee?"
"Already made."
"Good beans?"
"I always use the good beans."
"Then what are the bad beans for?"
"Emergencies."
He poured a cup. Black, no sugar. He'd read somewhere that entrepreneurs drank black coffee and somewhere around month two I'd stopped being able to tell if he actually liked it.
"Four days," he said.
"Four days."
"I can't wait to marry you."
He said it simply, looking right at me — not the glance-over-the-laptop kind of looking. This was the Ethan I'd fallen for. The one who showed up when it mattered.
His phone buzzed on the counter. He glanced at the screen. I watched him decide. He silenced it and set it face-down.
Progress.
---
Becca showed up at noon with prosecco and a cardboard box.
"Open it."
Inside: a photo strip from freshman year. A photo booth at the campus carnival. Me with short hair, Becca with the nose ring she'd since removed, both of us squinting into the flash like we'd never seen light before.
"Your something borrowed. You're taking it."
"You kept this for four years?"
"I keep everything." She was already in the kitchen, opening the prosecco. "Where are your glasses?"
"Second cabinet."
"Your apartment hasn't changed."
"It's been four years."
"I know. It still smells the same."
We sat on the couch. She told me about teaching third grade in the city — the kids who asked her if she was married, the one who bit another kid during recess, the parent-teacher conferences where she had to sit across from adults and pretend she was one of them. She told me about the guy she was seeing who collected vintage maps and couldn't cook eggs. I told her about the binder, the spiral binding, the Jordan almonds.
"The almonds are a tradition," I said. "Five for fertility, five for wealth—"
"Twelve cents each."
"Twelve cents each."
"So," she said. "The venue."
"St. Andrew's."
"The church on Birch?"
"On Birch."
"I thought you wanted the garden. The one with the brick wall."
"Booked through January."
Becca looked at me. Not the way my mom looked — not diagnostic, not worried. Just curious, the way you look at someone when something doesn't add up.
"I have a friend who does event coordination. She might've been able to—"
"It's fine."
She stopped mid-sip. I knew that look. She'd given it to me sophomore year when I said "It's fine" after Jake Morrison showed up at my dorm with flowers for my roommate. She put her glass down. Filed it somewhere.
The afternoon turned golden. October light, the kind that makes a room feel like it's already a memory. Becca laughed at something I said about freshman year, and I laughed too, and for a while I was the Emma from the photo strip — short hair, no filter, whatever came into my head. Not the Emma who managed two mothers and a seating chart and nine tabs. Just Emma.
My phone buzzed. Ethan's mom. A question about the centerpieces. I typed "That could work" and sent it on autopilot.
Becca was watching me.
"You just did it again."
"Did what?"
"That thing. You agree and your face does—" she made a tiny expression, something between a wince and a smile. "I've seen it a lot today."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Okay."
She picked up her glass. The subject changed. We talked about her neighbor who played violin at two in the morning. The light in her bathroom she still hadn't replaced. Easy things.
Later, after the prosecco was gone and we were sitting on the living room floor, she said it.
"Promise me you won't disappear."
I laughed. "What does that mean?"
She didn't answer. The look was long and quiet, like she was memorizing something.
"Becca."
"I'm serious."
"I'm not going anywhere."
"I know you're not." She picked at the label on the empty bottle. "That's the thing."
She didn't explain. I didn't ask.
---
After Becca left I tried on the dress. It fit. Two hundred dollars in alterations I couldn't afford. The neckline was Ethan's mom's suggestion. The length was a compromise. The fabric was something neither of my moms would have picked alone, which meant it was something nobody really wanted.
In the bathroom mirror I looked like a bride. Someone about to do something enormous.
For a second — just one — I saw something else. A shorter hem, off-the-shoulder sleeves, a brick wall behind me with string lights already hung. Autumn leaves on the ground, the smell of woodsmoke. The Ivy Wall Garden. The image came and went like a blink. Then it was just me again in a bathroom that wasn't a garden, in a dress I hadn't picked, in an apartment I was about to leave. I turned away from the mirror.
---
That night Ethan made pasta. The good olive oil, the one in the glass bottle with the Italian label. He boiled the noodles too long, the way he always did.
"Should've done rehearsal dinner at Julio's," he said, stirring. "Burritos for everyone."
"That would've been perfect."
"Too late now."
"I can't believe we're getting married."
He looked up. "You stole my line."
"Four days. Someone had to say it."
His phone was on the counter. Silent. Face-down. He'd silenced it that morning and hadn't turned the sound back on. Monday the supplier emails would start again, and the pitch deck would need updating, and "just a few more months" would creep back into his sentences. But for now it was just pasta and olive oil and two people in an apartment that still smelled like prosecco.
After dinner he went to shower. I sat on the couch. The binder was closed on the table. The photo strip was next to it. The dress was back on the closet door. I thought about two warnings: my mom's *don't lose yourself* and Becca's *don't disappear*. Two people saying the same thing in different words. Me not asking what either of them meant, because asking would mean admitting there was something to ask about.
I thought about the girl in the photo strip. The one who said what she wanted. The one who walked across campus in the spring and thought, *I'm going to marry that man.* I still believed it. I believed it less.
The shower turned off.
"There's no towels."
"Behind the door."
"How do you live like this?"
I found the towel and handed it through the door. "Thanks." "You're welcome." Ordinary. The kind of ordinary that was the whole point, or used to be.
I went back to the couch. The windows were dark. October light gone. The sprinklers weren't running. The grass was brown in patches. Four days until Saturday, and then Wednesday, and then Thursday, and then Friday, and then I would walk into St. Andrew's in a dress I hadn't picked and stand in front of seventy-three people and say the things you say when you're twenty-two and you still believe love is enough.
I was still Emma. I closed my eyes and held onto that.
- Writer
