What If We’re Gonna Have Eight Kids

The Vows

I woke up and the dress was still on the closet door.

Four days hadn't changed it. White, floor-length, someone else's idea of pretty. The neckline Ethan's mom liked. The hem my mom approved. The fabric that was neither of their first choices, which meant it was something nobody wanted but everyone agreed on. Two hundred dollars in alterations I'd paid for with my student teaching stipend, one emergency at a time.

My mom was already in the kitchen. She'd been there since six — I heard her moving around, opening and closing cabinets, the particular quiet of a woman who wants to be helpful without waking anyone. By the time I walked out she had coffee made, toast on a plate, and a look on her face I couldn't quite name. Not worried. Not proud. Something in between. Something that knew things I didn't.

She put her hand on my arm. Just for a second. "You look like yourself."

I didn't know if that was good or bad. I took it as good.

Becca arrived at nine with a garment bag and a bottle of something that smelled like a spa. "Turn around," she said, and started on my hair. Pins went in one by one. The smell of hairspray filled the bathroom. Outside, the October morning was gray and gold, the leaves past their peak, the light already shorter than it had been a week ago.

"You're shaking," Becca said.

"I'm not."

"Your shoulders are."

She was right. I made them stop.

Halfway through the second pin she squeezed my hand. Just once. "You look beautiful."

I didn't say anything. I looked at myself in the mirror. The hair was half-done. No makeup yet. The bathroom was the same bathroom where I'd seen the ghost of the garden four days ago, the brick wall and the string lights and the version of this day that I'd wanted. But that was gone now. It had died somewhere between bookmarking and unbookmarking and "Booked through January" and "It's fine." The garden wasn't in the mirror anymore. It was just me, with pins in my hair, in a bathroom that wasn't a garden, about to stop being just Emma.

Becca finished the last pin. My mom appeared in the doorway with the coffee I hadn't touched. She looked at me for a long time. Then she nodded. One nod. That was it. That was all she was going to give me today.

I put on the dress.

---

St. Andrew's had pews. Real ones, dark wood, worn smooth by a hundred years of people sitting where I was about to sit. Someone had hung string lights from the exposed beams — white, not the warm yellow I would have picked if anyone had asked. Seventy-three people filled the first twelve rows. Ethan's mom was in the third pew, already crying, already arranging something in her lap. My mom was behind me, one hand on my shoulder.

The organ started.

I walked.

The aisle was longer than I expected. Twenty steps, maybe twenty-five. I didn't count. I counted Ethan. He was at the altar in the suit he'd bought on sale at the mall, the one that was slightly too big in the shoulders because he'd lost weight running on startup stress and hadn't thought to get it tailored. His hands were shaking. Not from cold. From the size of what he was about to do.

I thought: *There he is.*

Everything else went quiet. Not dramatically. Not like the movies. It just went quiet the way a room goes quiet when you stop paying attention to it and start paying attention to one person. His face did something when he saw me. Relief, maybe. Or the hit of something too large to hold. His eyes went wet and he blinked it back and his jaw tightened like he was holding on to something.

I reached the altar. He took my hands. His palms were damp.

"You're here," he said.

"I'm here."

"I thought maybe you wouldn't show up."

"Ethan."

"I know. I'm just—" He stopped. Swallowed. "I'm really glad you're here."

---

We'd written our own vows. The officiant — Father something, I couldn't remember his name — had said it was fine, more couples do it these days. Ethan went first.

He had a piece of paper. He unfolded it. Looked at it. Put it back in his pocket.

"I had something written down," he said. "But it sounds like someone else when I read it."

A few people laughed. His mom. Becca.

"So." He took a breath. "I forgot the ring when I proposed to you. On purpose — no. Not on purpose. I just forgot. I had the whole thing planned and I forgot the one thing that mattered because I was so nervous about getting the words right that I left the actual ring in my other jacket." He paused. "And you married me anyway. You said yes to a guy who showed up without a ring. That's—I don't know what that is. But I think about it every day. That you said yes to the messy version. Not the polished one."

His voice cracked on "messy." Not dramatically. Just a small fracture, like a window hit by a pebble. His eyes were wet. He wasn't trying to hide it anymore.

"I can't promise I'll get everything right. I can't promise I won't forget things — important things, the kinds of things a husband shouldn't forget. But I can promise I'll keep showing up. Even when it's hard. Even when I'm bad at it. I'll keep showing up, and I'll keep trying to be the kind of man who deserves you saying yes to the messy version."

He was crying. Not sobbing. Just crying the way men cry when they're trying not to and failing. Quiet. His jaw tight. One hand gripping mine harder than he realized.

I didn't cry. Not then. I saved them.

It was my turn.

I didn't have a piece of paper. I didn't have notes. I had something worse: a head full of things I wanted to say and no idea which ones were true and which ones were just what you're supposed to say.

"You showed up," I said. "That's the thing. You keep showing up. On the bench. At Julio's. At two in the morning when I couldn't sleep and you drove across town with gas station coffee. I don't need the polished version. I need the one who shows up."

I stopped. Not because I was done. Because I didn't know what came next.

"I love you," I said. "Not the idea of you. Not the plan. You. The one who boils noodles too long and reads entrepreneur books and can't find a towel."

He laughed. Wet. Broken. Real.

"I'm going to mess this up sometimes," I said. "I already do. I say 'it's fine' when it isn't. I agree to things I don't want. You know this about me."

"I do."

"I'm working on it."

"I know you are."

"Then I do. I promise to keep working on it. I promise to try to say the thing instead of the easy thing. I promise—"

My voice did something. Not a crack. A catch. Like my throat decided it was done being brave for a minute. I pushed through it.

"I promise I'll tell you when it isn't fine."

I didn't know yet that I wouldn't. Not for a long time.

---

The kiss was short. The applause was loud. Seventy-three people on their feet. Ethan's mom was openly crying. My mom was not openly crying, but her hand was pressed hard against her mouth. Becca was taking photos on her phone.

We walked back down the aisle. Husband and wife. The words felt strange and huge and exactly right.

---

The reception was in Ethan's parents' backyard. They'd set up folding tables and white tablecloths and more string lights. Someone had made a playlist — mostly songs I didn't recognize, a few I did. The Jordan almonds were in little bags on each table, five for fertility, five for wealth, twelve cents each. Seventy-three times twelve cents was eight dollars and seventy-six cents. I did the math without meaning to. Old habit.

Ethan's dad stood up after dinner. He was a big man, broad shoulders, the kind of hands that looked like they'd spent thirty years holding things that were heavier than toasts. He cleared his throat. The yard went quiet.

"I'm not good at this," he said. Which, given that it was three sentences, was already half of it. "Ethan. You're a good man. I'm proud of you." He looked at me. "Emma. Welcome to the family." He raised his glass. "A man provides for his family. That's all I've got."

He sat down.

Ethan nodded. One nod. Quick. The way you nod when someone says something you already believe.

I clapped. Everyone clapped.

Ethan's father stared at his plate. He hadn't looked at his wife — not once during the toast, not when he sat down, not when Ethan's mom reached across and adjusted his napkin like she'd done it ten thousand times. He was looking at his plate like the answers were on it.

Nobody noticed. Almost nobody.

---

The last guests left around eleven. The string lights were still on. The folding tables were sticky. Ethan's mom was stacking plates with the efficiency of a woman who had been stacking plates at other people's events for thirty years.

Ethan and I went back to the apartment. The one we were about to leave. The one that still smelled faintly of the prosecco from four days ago.

He fell asleep in ten minutes. Face-down on the bed, still in his shirt, one arm hanging off the side. He was smiling. The small, slack smile of someone who'd had the best day of his life and wasn't thinking about anything else.

I went to the bathroom.

I looked at myself in the mirror. The hair was falling apart. The makeup was smudged. The dress was bunched around my waist where I hadn't bothered to unzip it. I looked like someone who had just done something enormous.

The dress was the wrong dress. The venue was the wrong venue. Seventy-three people I hadn't invited, and I'd smiled through all of it, and the first thing my new father-in-law had said was *a man provides*. I didn't know what to do with that. I didn't know what it meant that Ethan had nodded.

I sat on the bathroom floor. The tile was cold. The light was harsh. I could hear Ethan breathing in the next room — slow, even, the breathing of someone at peace.

I cried. Not the way you cry in movies. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just — my face wet and my throat tight and the bathroom getting blurry and then clear and then blurry again. I cried because the day was enormous and I was twenty-two and I had just promised to tell Ethan when things weren't fine, and I already knew I wouldn't. Not tonight.

Ten minutes. Maybe less. Maybe more.

I got up. I washed my face. The water was cold. I looked at myself one more time in the mirror. The dress. The smudged eyes. The red nose. Ordinary. The kind of ordinary that nobody sees.

I went to bed next to my husband. He didn't wake up. I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling and thought about the garden, the one with the brick wall, the one I'd wanted, the one that was gone. It was the first time I'd thought about it all day. It would be the last time for a long time.

The ceiling had no tiles to count. Just white paint and a crack in the corner I'd never noticed before.

I closed my eyes.