You Deserve Each Other

by Sarah Hogle

“But you still haven’t said you love me.” “That’s not true.” “You haven’t.” “I say it all the time, I just say it very, very quietly. I tell you when you’re in another room, or right after we hang up the phone. I tell you when you’ve got headphones on. I say it after you shut the door behind you. I say it in my head every time you look at me.”

I love talking about wedding details. I love hearing Nicholas casually discuss spending the rest of his life with me. I don’t bother to hide my happy dance, and while I don’t look over at him I know my elation is contagious and he’s smiling.

“Hurry up!” he says. “I want to marry you.”

Nicholas thinks he doesn’t like bangs, which goes to show he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, since he keeps falling in love with me whenever I have bangs.

Nicholas could be standing in a storm, a desert, a vacuum. I wouldn’t know the difference, because he’s all I see.

The word love feels like Nicholas. It’s filled all the way up with him. One day that word will evolve, filling up with the people we bring into this world together. I can’t wait to see what kind of magic we spin with that word, how many shapes it will take. I can’t wait to see how many memories emerge from our decision to stand right here, right now, and take each other for better or worse. As far as that goes, I say: bring it on.

We’re going to have to choose each other, over and over, and be each other’s champion, never letting ourselves forget the good whenever we’re stuck in a patch of bad.

The thing about a wedding is: you don’t remember the vows. You forget them the second after your mouth utters the sacred words, because your brain needs the room to catalog every detail of your partner’s face. All of my concentration is on him. Everything is wonderful. Every day is the same. Every day is like our wedding day.

We met in a house called Ever After, the second time we were strangers. And I am one hundred percent in love with the transformation of us.