"Are you seriously about to do this?" Theo asks.
I'm standing in front of a mirror, adjusting my tie. Theo is sitting on the couch, attempting to convince me to let him read my vows before the wedding. "I'm not reading them to you."
"You're going to embarrass yourself," he says.
"I'm not. They're good."
"Atlas. Come on. I'm trying to help you. For all I know, you probably end them with something like, It is my wish for you to be my fish."
I laugh. I don't know how he still comes up with these lines after two years of this. "Do you practice your insults when you lie awake at night?"
"No, they come naturally."
Someone knocks on the door and opens it a crack. "Five minutes."
I give myself one more glance in the mirror before turning to Theo. "Where's Josh? I need to make sure he's ready."
"I'm not supposed to tell you."
I tilt my head. "Where is he, Theo?"
"Last time I saw him, he was in the gazebo with his tongue down some girl's throat. He's gonna make you a grandad soon."
"I'm his brother. I'd be an uncle, not a grandad." I look out the window, but the gazebo is empty. "Go find him, please."
Josh and I are a lot alike, but he's a little bit more confident with girls than I was at that age. He just turned fifteen, and so far, this is my least-favorite age. I'm sure when he's old enough to drive next year, it's going to age me an entire decade.
I need to think about something else. I'm already nervous. Maybe Theo is right, and I should look over my vows again to make sure there's nothing I want to change or add.
I pull the page out of my pocket and unfold it, and then grab a pen in case I want to make any very last-minute changes.
Dear Lily,
I'm used to writing you letters that no one else will ever read, which may be why I had a difficult time when I first attempted to write these vows. The idea that they were going to be read out loud to you in front of other people was a little bit terrifying.
But vows aren't meant to be something you make in private. The purpose of a vow is to make an intentional promise that is witnessed, whether it's witnessed by God, or friends and family.
It has to make you wonder, though, or at least it made me wonder what the purpose is behind the need for a public vow. I couldn't stop my mind from questioning what must have happened in the past to create the necessity for love to be witnessed.
Does it mean that somewhere along the way, a promise was broken? A heart was shattered?
It's disappointing if you really sit and think about why vows even exist. If we trusted everyone to keep their word, vows wouldn't be necessary. People would fall in love, and they'd stay in love, faithfully, forever, the end.
But that's the issue, I guess. We're people. We're human. And humans can sometimes be disappointing.
That realization led me down another path in my thought process while writing these vows. I began to wonder, if humans are so often disappointing and so rarely successful at love, what can we do to ensure ours is a love that will stand the test of time? If half of all marriages end in divorce, that would mean half of every set of vows ever made have ended up broken. How do we ensure we're not one of the couples who becomes a statistic?
Unfortunately, Lily, we can't. We can only hope, but we can't guarantee that the words we stand here and promise one another today won't end up in the file of a divorce lawyer a few years down the road.
I apologize. I realize these vows are making marriage sound like an extremely depressing cycle that only ends happily half the time.
But for someone like me, that's actually kind of exciting.
Half the time?
Fifty-fifty?
One out of two?
If someone would have told me when I was a teenager that I would have a fifty-fifty chance of living my entire life with you, I would have felt like the luckiest human on the planet.
If someone would have told me that I had a 50 percent chance of being loved by you, I would have wondered what the hell I did to get so lucky.
If someone would have told me that we'd get married one day, and I'd get to give you your dream honeymoon in Europe, and that our marriage would have a 50 percent chance of being successful, I would have immediately asked what size your ring finger was so that we could get started.
Maybe the idea of love ending being a negative thing is simply a matter of perspective. Because to me, the idea that a love came to an end means that, at some point, there was love that existed. And there was a time in my life, before you, when I was completely untouched by it.
The teenage version of me wouldn't have seen potential heartbreak as a bad thing. I was jealous of anyone who had ever loved something enough to experience losing it. Before you, I had never met love at all.
But then you came along, and you changed that. Not only did I get the opportunity to be the first person to ever fall in love with you, but I also got to experience a shared heartbreak with you. And then, like a miracle, I was given the opportunity to fall in love with you all over again.
Two times in one life.
How can one man be so lucky?
All things considered, the fact that I made it here, that we made it here, to our wedding day, is quite frankly more than I ever dreamed I would get out of life. One breath, one kiss, one day, one year, one lifetime. I'll take whatever you'll give me, and I vow that I will cherish every second I'm lucky enough to spend with you from this moment on, just as I've cherished every second I've ever spent with you before this moment.
Optimistically speaking, we could live our entire lives together, happily, until we're old and frail and it takes an entire day for me just to reach your lips to kiss you goodnight. If that happens, I vow that I will be immensely grateful for the love that carried us through our life together.
Pessimistically speaking, we could break each other's hearts again tomorrow—I know we won't, but even if we did, I vow that I will be immensely grateful for the love that led to that heartbreak until the day that I die. If it's my destiny to end up a statistic, there's no one else I'd rather become a statistic with than you.
But you once told me I was a realist, so I want to end my vows realistically. In my heart, I believe we're going to leave here today and face a journey together that's full of hills, valleys, peaks, and canyons. Sometimes you're going to need me to hold your hand down the hills, and sometimes I'll need you to lead me up the mountain, but everything, from this point forward, we're going to face together. It's you and me, Lily. In good times and bad, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, in the past and for forever, you are my favorite person. Always have been. Always will be. I love you. Everything that you are.
Atlas
I exhale, the page trembling in my hand. They're exactly how I want them, so I start to fold the paper when Josh walks into the room. He's joined by Darin, Brad, Theo, and Marshall.
Marshall is holding open the door. "You ready? It's time."
I nod, more than ready, but before I stuff my vows back into my pocket, I decide to make one small change. I don't touch anything already written, but I do add a line to the very end.
P.S. It is my wish for you to be my fish.