I take a deep breath and round the corner toward the gardens. Ethan is now in full view. I can see in his face that he thinks I look beautiful, and I can’t wait to hear him put his feelings into words later. No one can express himself as he can. I keep my eyes locked with his. I am finally beside him.
“Hi,” he whispers.
“Hi,” I whisper back as the minister begins to speak.
The ceremony is short, despite the hours Ethan and I spent crafting our vows. We kept some parts traditional, discarded the rest, but every word is imbued with our own meaning. At the end, Ethan’s eyes are damp and red-rimmed. He leans forward and brushes his lips against mine. I kiss my husband back, memorizing the moment, the feel of the sun on my skin, the scent of wildflowers in the arch around us, the sound of applause and snapping cameras and the jubilant notes of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”
I feel buoyant as Ethan and I turn, hand in hand, and face our guests. I see my mother first, dabbing at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. My dad sits beside her, holding Thomas and John. My parents are thrilled that I found true love, and that I found it with a Stanford-educated novelist, whose book about finding love in unexpected places is an international bestseller. I doubt if my parents will ever change—they will always care a lot about money and material things and image, but I also know that part of our rift was caused by worry and concern for a child. I understand these emotions now.
As Ethan and I walk down the garden path, we smile at our other guests. I see my brother and Lauren, who is newly pregnant…Ethan’s mother and father, who by all appearances were rekindling a romance at last night’s rehearsal dinner…Annalise, Greg, and sweet, little Hannah, who is about to turn three…Martin and his new girlfriend, Lucy…Phoebe, whom I have grown to appreciate, and almost like after a few cocktails…Charlotte and John with Natalie…Meg, Yossi, and their son, Lucas…Geoffrey and Sondrine, who, much to Ethan’s and my amusement, are recently engaged.
Then I spot them in the back row. Rachel and Dex with their baby daughter, Julia, a clone of her mother, but with Dexter’s dark, wavy hair. She is wearing the pink smocked dress I sent for her first birthday. As I pass them, I point to the blue silk trim from Thomas and John’s worn-out baby blankets, now a ribbon tied around my bouquet of white lilies. Rachel and I don’t talk often, but I did tell her about my plan to use the ribbon as my “something blue.” I could tell she was touched, pleased to play an indirect role in our day.
“You’re gorgeous!” she mouths to me now.
Dex smiles at me, almost fondly, and I acknowledge him with a pleasant nod. It is hard to believe we were together for seven years. He now seems to be nothing more than an acquaintance with exceptionally good hair.
As we come to the end of the path, I turn back to face Ethan. Then we scoop up Thomas and John, who have broken free of my dad and chased after us.
“Are we married yet, Mummy?” they ask in the British accent they did not learn at home.
“Yes!” I laugh.
“Yes! We are married!” Ethan says.
At last.
I think back to that autumn day when Ethan proposed. We were on a weekend trip to Edinburgh, celebrating my new job as a fundraiser for the Adopt-A-Minefield organization. After checking into our hotel, we decided to climb Arthur’s Seat, a small mountain overlooking the ancient city. As we rested on the hillside and admired the sweeping views below, Ethan presented me with a tiny slip of paper so worn it felt like velvet. Upon closer examination, I could see that it was the note I had given him in the fifth grade. The “Will you go out with me?” note, its yes box checked with a red-colored pencil.
“Where in the world did you find this?” I said, feeling giddy that he had preserved the oldest piece of our history together.
“I found it in a box of old papers,” he said, smiling. “I thought I had given it back to you, but I guess I never did?”
“No. You just told me yes at recess. Remember?”
“I guess so.” Ethan nodded and then said, “Turn it over.”
I did, and on the other side, I could see that he had written a question of his own.
Will you marry me?
I looked up, startled. Then I cried and said yes, yes! Ethan’s hands trembled slightly as he removed a small box from his jacket pocket, opened it, and slid a sparkling cushion-cut diamond ring onto my finger.
“It doesn’t take vows or genetics to be a family. We are one already,” Ethan said. “But I want to make it official. I want to make it forever.”
Then, always one to capture a moment on film, he extended his arm and snapped our engagement photo. I knew my hair was messy from the wind and that both of our noses were red and running from the cold, but I didn’t care. I had learned to let those surface issues go, to value content over form. I knew that every time I’d look at that picture of us on the mountain in Scotland, I would see no imperfections, and would only think of Ethan’s words. I want to make it official. I want to make it forever.
So on this joyful June day, below skies so blue they look airbrushed, we are just that: an official family, embarking on our forever.
Later, after we all have moved into the Belvedere for a champagne brunch, the toasts to Ethan and me begin. Some people joke about our fifth-grade romance. Others reference our hectic life as the parents of twins, marveling at how we do it all. Everyone says how happy they are for us.
Then, when I think that the last toast is over, Rachel stands tentatively and clears her throat. She seems nervous, but perhaps I just know how much she hates giving speeches.
“Nothing could make me prouder or happier than being here to witness the marriage of two such close friends,” she starts, looking up from an index card and glancing around the room. “I have known Darcy and Ethan for what feels like forever, and so I know what fine people they are. I also know that they are that much better together.” She pauses, her eyes meeting Ethan’s, then mine. “I guess that’s the power of true love and true friendship…. I guess that’s what it’s really all about.” She raises her glass, smiles, and says, “So here’s to Ethan and Darcy, true love and true friendship.”
As everyone applauds and sips champagne, I smile back at Rachel, thinking that she got it just right. Love and friendship. They are what make us who we are, and what can change us, if we let them.
Enjoy a sneak peak into the novels of Emily Giffin, and discover why millions of readers all over the world have fallen in love with them…
something borrowed
Now available from St. Martin’s Paperbacks
Emily Giffin’s debut novel about young Manhattan attorney Rachel White—always responsible, always the “good girl.” Until she does the unthinkable and falls in love with her best friend’s fiancé…
baby proof
Now available in trade paperback from St. Martin’s Griffin
First comes love, then comes marriage. Then comes…a baby carriage? Baby Proof is a thought-provoking and endlessly entertaining novel that explores the question of whether there is ever a deal-breaker when it comes to true love.
love the one you’re with
Now available in trade paperback from St. Martin’s Griffin
Emily Giffin’s powerful and emotionally compelling novel in which one woman finds herself at the crossroads of true love and real life, asking herself: how can I truly love the one I’m with when I can’t forget the one who got away?
something borrowed
I was in the fifth grade the first time I thought about turning thirty. My best friend Darcy and I came across a perpetual calendar in the back of the phone book, where you could look up any date in the future, and by using this little grid determine what the day of the week would be. So we located our birthdays in the following year, mine in May and hers in September. I got Wednesday, a school night. She got a Friday. A small victory, but typical. Darcy was always the lucky one. Her skin tanned more quickly, her hair feathered more easily, and she didn’t need braces. Her m
oonwalk was superior, as were her cartwheels and her front handsprings (I couldn’t do a hand-spring at all). She had a better sticker collection. More Michael Jackson pins. Forenza sweaters in turquoise, red, and peach (my mother allowed me none—said they were too trendy and expensive). And a pair of fifty-dollar Guess jeans with zippers at the ankles (ditto). Darcy had double-pierced ears and a sibling—even if it was just a brother, it was better than being an only child as I was.
But at least I was a few months older and she would never quite catch up. That’s when I decided to check out my thirtieth birthday—in a year so far away that it sounded like science fiction. It fell on a Sunday, which meant that my dashing husband and I would secure a responsible babysitter for our two (possibly three) children on that Saturday evening, dine at a fancy French restaurant with cloth napkins, and stay out past midnight, so technically we would be celebrating on my actual birthday. I would have just won a big case—somehow proven that an innocent man didn’t do it. And my husband would toast me: “To Rachel, my beautiful wife, the mother of my children, and the finest lawyer in Indy.” I shared my fantasy with Darcy as we discovered that her thirtieth birthday fell on a Monday. Bummer for her. I watched her purse her lips as she processed this information.
“You know, Rachel, who cares what day of the week we turn thirty?” she said, shrugging a smooth, olive shoulder. “We’ll be old by then. Birthdays don’t matter when you get that old.”
I thought of my parents, who were in their thirties, and their lackluster approach to their own birthdays. My dad had just given my mom a toaster for her birthday because ours broke the week before. The new one toasted four slices at a time instead of just two. It wasn’t much of a gift. But my mom had seemed pleased enough with her new appliance; nowhere did I detect the disappointment that I felt when my Christmas stash didn’t quite meet expectations. So Darcy was probably right. Fun stuff like birthdays wouldn’t matter as much by the time we reached thirty.
The next time I really thought about being thirty was our senior year in high school, when Darcy and I started watching the show Thirtysomething together. It wasn’t one of our favorites—we preferred cheerful sitcoms like Who’s the Boss? and Growing Pains—but we watched it anyway. My big problem with Thirtysomething was the whiny characters and their depressing issues that they seemed to bring upon themselves. I remember thinking that they should grow up, suck it up. Stop pondering the meaning of life and start making grocery lists. That was back when I thought my teenage years were dragging and my twenties would surely last forever.
Then I reached my twenties. And the early twenties did seem to last forever. When I heard acquaintances a few years older lament the end of their youth, I felt smug, not yet in the danger zone myself. I had plenty of time. Until about age twenty-seven, when the days of being carded were long gone and I began to marvel at the sudden acceleration of years (reminding myself of my mother’s annual monologue as she pulled out our Christmas decorations) and the accompanying lines and stray gray hairs. At twenty-nine the real dread set in, and I realized that in a lot of ways I might as well be thirty. But not quite. Because I could still say that I was in my twenties. I still had something in common with college seniors.
I realize thirty is just a number, that you’re only as old as you feel and all of that. I also realize that in the grand scheme of things, thirty is still young. But it’s not that young. It is past the most ripe, prime childbearing years, for example. It is too old to, say, start training for an Olympic medal. Even in the best die-of-old-age scenario, you are still about one-third of the way to the finish line. So I can’t help feeling uneasy as I perch on an overstuffed maroon couch in a dark lounge on the Upper West Side at my surprise birthday party, organized by Darcy, who is still my best friend.
Tomorrow is the Sunday that I first contemplated as a fifth-grader playing with our phone book. After tonight my twenties will be over, a chapter closed forever. The feeling I have reminds me of New Year’s Eve, when the countdown is coming and I’m not quite sure whether to grab my camera or just live in the moment. Usually I grab the camera and later regret it when the picture doesn’t turn out. Then I feel enormously let down and think to myself that the night would have been more fun if it didn’t mean quite so much, if I weren’t forced to analyze where I’ve been and where I’m going.
Like New Year’s Eve, tonight is an ending and a beginning. I don’t like endings and beginnings. I would always prefer to churn about in the middle. The worst thing about this particular end (of my youth) and beginning (of middle age) is that for the first time in my life, I realize that I don’t know where I’m going. My wants are simple: a job that I like and a guy whom I love. And on the eve of my thirtieth, I must face that I am 0 for 2.
First, I am an attorney at a large New York firm. By definition this means that I am miserable. Being a lawyer just isn’t what it’s cracked up to be—it’s nothing like L.A. Law, the show that caused applications to law schools to skyrocket in the early nineties. I work excruciating hours for a mean-spirited, anal-retentive partner, doing mostly tedious tasks, and that sort of hatred for what you do for a living begins to chip away at you. So I have memorized the mantra of the law-firm associate: I hate my job and will quit soon. Just as soon as I pay off my loans. Just as soon as I make next year’s bonus. Just as soon as I think of something else to do that will pay the rent. Or find someone who will pay it for me.
Which brings me to my second point: I am alone in a city of millions. I have plenty of friends, as proven by the solid turnout tonight. Friends to Rollerblade with. Friends to summer with in the Hamptons. Friends to meet on a Thursday night after work for a drink or two or three. And I have Darcy, my best friend from home, who is all of the above. But everybody knows that friends are not enough, although I often claim they are just to save face around my married and engaged girlfriends. I did not plan on being alone in my thirties, even my early thirties. I wanted a husband by now; I wanted to be a bride in my twenties. But I have learned that you can’t just create your own timetable and will it to come true. So here I am on the brink of a new decade, realizing that being alone makes my thirties daunting, and being thirty makes me feel more alone.
The situation seems all the more dismal because my oldest and best friend has a glamorous PR job and is freshly engaged. Darcy is still the lucky one. I watch her now, telling a story to a group of us, including her fiancé. Dex and Darcy are an exquisite couple, lean and tall with matching dark hair and green eyes. They are among New York’s beautiful people. The well-groomed couple registering for fine china and crystal on the sixth floor at Bloomingdale’s. You hate their smugness but can’t resist staring at them when you’re on the same floor searching for a not-too-expensive gift for the umpteenth wedding you’ve been invited to without a date. You strain to glimpse her ring, and are instantly sorry you did. She catches you staring and gives you a disdainful once-over. You wish you hadn’t worn your tennis shoes to Bloomingdale’s. She is probably thinking that the footwear may be part of your problem. You buy your Waterford vase and get the hell out of there.
“So the lesson here is: if you ask for a Brazilian bikini wax, make sure you specify. Tell them to leave a landing strip or else you can wind up hairless, like a ten-year-old!” Darcy finishes her bawdy tale, and everybody laughs. Except Dex, who shakes his head, as if to say, what a piece of work my fiancée is.
“Okay. I’ll be right back,” Darcy suddenly says. “Tequila shots for one and all!”
As she moves away from the group toward the bar, I think back to all of the birthdays we have celebrated together, all of the benchmarks we reached together, benchmarks that I always reached first. I got my driver’s license before she did, could drink legally before she could. Being older, if only by a few months, used to be a good thing. But now our fortunes have reversed. Darcy has an extra summer in her twenties—a perk of being born in the fall. Not that it matters as much for her: when you’re engaged or married, turning thirty ju
st isn’t the same thing.
Darcy is now leaning over the bar, flirting with the twenty-something, aspiring actor/bartender whom she has already told me she would “totally do” if she were single. As if Darcy would ever be single. She said once in high school, “I don’t break up, I trade up.” She kept her word on that, and she always did the dumping. Throughout our teenage years, college, and every day of our twenties, she has been attached to someone. Often she has more than one guy hanging around, hoping.
It occurs to me that I could hook up with the bartender. I am totally unencumbered—haven’t even been on a date in nearly two months. But it doesn’t seem like something one should do at age thirty. One-night stands are for girls in their twenties. Not that I would know. I have followed an orderly, Goody Two-shoes path with no deviations. I got straight As in high school, went to college, graduated magna cum laude, took the LSAT, went straight to law school and to a big law firm after that. No backpacking in Europe, no crazy stories, no unhealthy, lustful relationships. No secrets. No intrigue. And now it seems too late for any of that. Because that stuff would just further delay my goal of finding a husband, settling down, having children and a happy home with grass and a garage and a toaster that toasts four slices at once.
So I feel unsettled about my future and somewhat regretful about my past. I tell myself that there will be time to ponder tomorrow. Right now I will have fun. It is the sort of thing that a disciplined person can simply decide. And I am exceedingly disciplined—the kind of child who did her homework on Friday afternoons right after school, the kind of woman (as of tomorrow, I am no longer any part girl) who flosses every night and makes her bed every morning.