Page 36 of Friends with Benefits

Jacob nods. “I had to talk your mother out of uninviting Aunt Mae after a minor altercation over the menu. Wedding planning is a goddamn nightmare.”

Theo has no clue at what point during the last five years defined by grief Jacob started talking about Lori again, but it will never not be an electric shock to the system. Hearing him sayLor. Jacob still referring to them as awe. A unit. It breaks his brain, even though Theo knows—heknows—that letting Jacob Cohen back in, even a little bit, will be a massive disappointment. It always is. Because people don’t change.

But…

What if they do?

What if he can?

It’s the faintest whisper of a thought, just loud enough that Theo keeps his mouth shut while Jacob rambles and reminisces until a clerk calls their names.

“Cohen and Bloom?”

They stand.

Jacob clears his throat. “You know we’ve always thought of you as a daughter, Ev—”

Evelyn wraps her arms around Jacob’s neck and Theo feels some kind of way watching that embrace. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, quick, before his dad can see him emoting, before he can be told tostop. He knows that she has breakfast with Jacob every Sunday. But knowing that his dad is more of a presence in Evelyn’s life than his own and seeing it are two different things, and while this wall, this boundary, between father and son is more than necessary, it still really hurts.

He’ll never say that.

Or show it.

Evelyn wipes the single tear on her cheek with the pad of her thumb, then takes his hand and they follow the clerk, a short Black woman with a fade, pink cat-eye glasses, and matching lipstick who introduces herself as Tanya. She leads them into the ceremony room: four white walls, a wooden podium, and a single canvas hanging on the wall with the quoteYou have my whole heart for my whole lifewritten in calligraphy. Theo wants to laugh. He wants to cry.He wants his mom.

“Good afternoon! We’re gathered here today—”

Once Tanya begins, everything moves so fast. Theo doesn’t hear a single word of the canned nonreligious ceremony they preselected, hyperfixated on Evelyn’s hands in his, squeezingso hard he’s positive her nails have left marks in his skin. He’s not the most devout Jew, but the customs matter to him and it’s a bummer that the ceremony options were either any sect of Christianity or nothing at all. He doesn’t know the Sheva Brachot from memory, so he says the Shema to himself because that blessing is at the top of the call sheet for pretty much any and every service.

Evelyn lets go of his hands and she has, in fact, imprinted on him.

“I didn’t prepare anything,” she says, and it takes him a moment to catch up with what’s happening, that Tanya must’ve asked if they wrote their own vows. “I’m, um, not the best when it comes to words or, like, feeling my feelings out loud. But. If there’s any time to speak in clichés, I’m pretty sure it’s when you’re marrying your best friend. How lucky am I?”

Theo denies, denies, denies the way those words make him feel.

Tells himself she’s just speaking facts.

He’s her best friend.

And she’s marrying him.

He attempts to match her fact for fact when it’s his turn to speak. “You’re my person, Evelyn. You have been since we were eight years old and you stepped foot into Miss Stella’s dance studio. I just… I had to know you. And every day, I am so glad I do. Know you. I’d do literally anything for you, and I’m so excited to keep doing life with you.”

Every word is a fact.

An objective truth.

Someone sniffles.

Fuck, why isGencrying?

At least Evelyn isn’t. Her smile is wide and Theo is able to finally relax, just in time for the ring exchange. Evelyn’s eyesbulge, like this is the first time she considered that he, too, would need a ring. But Theo’s prepared for this. He pulls two boxes from his pocket, handing a cheap basic band he purchased online for himself to Evelyn, who visibly relaxes. He hangs on to the priceless one that he would’ve torn the house apart in search of, a vintage Victorian-style ring with intricate engraved botanical details around the delicate gold band.

Theo repeats every line of the ring exchange, fromwith this ring, I thee wedtountil death do us part, then slides the ring onto her finger. It was Bubbe Ruth’s before it was Lori’s, and now it’s Evelyn’s, and he knows that she isn’t his forever in a romantic sense but she is in literally every other sense. He will always be doing life with her, so it just makes sense for her to be the one to hold on to it.

For that to be enough.

It’s then Evelyn’s turn to place a ring on his finger, and he doesn’t hate the way it feels.

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