He didn’t know me well, but he saw me enough times that I’d thought he would intuit marriage wasn’t likely for someone like me, someone who can barely talk to unfamiliar people, whose words come out blunt and sharp with the people I do know and love, who avoids unfamiliar touch and rarely hugs and disappears when rooms grow loud, no matter how happy the occasion, because it’s just too much. I’ve tried not to be resentful. But right now I am. That inheritance could really come in handy. And I have to get married in order to access it.
