Page 69 - In Five Years

He looks at me. “Right. When do you want to do it?”
“Soon,” I say. “We’ve waited so long already. Next month?”
David laughs. It’s a sincere laugh, guttural—the kind I love from him.
“You’re funny,” he says.

I put down my phone and roll to him. “What?”
“Oh, you’re serious? Dannie, you’re not serious.”

“Of course I am.”
He shakes his head. “Not even you could plan and execute a wedding in a
month.”
“Who says we have to have a wedding?”

He raises his eyebrows at me, then squints them together. “Your mother,
mine. Come on, Dannie. This is ridiculous. We’ve waited four and a half years,

we can’t just elope now. Are you kidding? Because I really can’t tell.”
“I just want to get it done.”
“How romantic,” he deadpans.

“You know what I mean.”
David sets his phone down. He looks to me. “I don’t, actually. You love
planning. That’s like . . . your whole thing. You once planned a Thanksgiving

down to pee breaks.”
“Yeah, well . . .”
“Dannie, I want to get married, too. But let’s do it the right way. Let’s do it

our way. Okay?”
He looks at me, waiting for an answer. But I can’t give him one, not the one
he wants. I don’t have time for our way. I don’t have time to plan. We have five

months. Five months until I’m living in an apartment my best friend wants to
buy, with the boyfriend she wants to buy it with. I need to stop this. I need to do
whatever I can to make sure it never comes true.

“I’ll be a planning machine,” I say. “It’s all I’m going to focus on. How does
December sound? We can have a holiday wedding to match our holiday
proposal. It’ll be festive.”

“We’re Jews,” David says. He’s back on his phone.
“Maybe it will snow,” I say, ignoring him. “David? December? I don’t want
to wait.”