Fourth Comings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [41]
“I can’t believe it!” Bridget burbled. “You’re getting married!”
“Well, I didn’t say yes.”
“Why didn’t you say yes?” she said, biting off a piece of bacon. Before I could open my mouth, she offered her own hypothesis. “I bet you feel too young to be married,” she said, gesturing with the half-eaten piece of pork. “I know! I kind of went through that, too. Everyone is like, ‘Bridget? What is this? Utah? In the 1950s?’”
“Well…”
“Manhattan is probably the toughest city in the world for marrying young. It’s got a lower number of married couples than almost anywhere else in the United States. And those who do get married do so later than the average, more like twenty-seven instead of twenty-five.” She paused to take a breath. “But there seems to be a bit of a reversal lately. In yesterday’s Styles section there was a twenty-three-year-old bride marrying a twenty-four-year-old groom—”
“It sounds like you’ve done your research.”
“I had to!” Her hands and fingers were flying like a whole flock of doves now. “Because, like, not a day goes by that someone doesn’t look at my engagement ring and tell me I’m too young, that marriage is a dying institution borne out of patriarchal oppression, that couples used to get married to have sex, and since the age of sexual liberation, of the Pill and Roe v. Wade, single women can have as much sex as they want without getting married….”
I imagine that Bridget’s fellow NYU undergrads have made these arguments many times over. For as many well-wishers as there are, there are just as many, if not more, naysayers. My predisposition is to be in the latter camp, but it was my obligation as maid of honor and best friend to stifle those natural instincts and put a smile on my face and a dress on my body that no alterations could turn into something I’d ever wear again.
Honestly, I could never understand how Bridget—an only child fought over in a nasty divorce—could have planned to get married at twenty-three. It didn’t matter whether they exchanged vows on the marble altar of St. Patrick’s Cathedral or on the soft white sands of Montego Bay, I loved Bridget and Percy so much that I didn’t want to see them walk down the aisle to their doom.
So their decision to defer marriage comes as a relief. Sort of. What if all those naysayers have made Bridget reconsider, and this marriage-for-everyone argument is just a clever cover-up, a noble way to drag one’s feet indefinitely, and avoid taking the relationship to the next level without having to break it off? Or are they really so confident about the depth of their love that they don’t need all the wedding hoopla, nor the crashing, crushing banality that follows? An unconventional life. Together.
“Let’s say you wait until Marcus graduates,” Bridget continued, making mental calculations. “That’s four years from now, which would make him twenty-seven and you twenty-six. That’s, like, right around the national averages, and not at all abnormal even by, like, New York City standards.”
Again, I opened my mouth, but Bridget kept right on going.
“And if you’re thinking about having kids, you can get them out of the way early,” she said. “And you’re still young enough to embark on a career after your kids are in school….”
“Bridget,” I said, tearing