“I’ve Handled It”
Her phone rang halfway through our song. Her mother’s name lit the screen.
Mia’s hand tightened briefly around mine.
“One minute.”
She walked into the hall.
I stopped the music and moved a chair back beneath the table.
“We’ve already decided,” I heard her say.
When she returned, I asked, “Is Betty still worrying about tomorrow?”
“I’ve handled it.”
Her mother had questioned everything from furniture to traveling.
Once, while Mia was out of the room, she’d asked whether people made fun of her because of me.
That one hurt.
I’d asked Mia whether she’d heard that question, too.
“My mother worries about things she doesn’t understand,” she’d said. “She’ll be okay once she gets to know you better.”
I hoped she was right.
Mia and Betty were close. They talked every Sunday and baked together at Christmas.
I didn’t want to become the reason that stopped.
But during wedding planning, Betty had started discussing how the photographs should look “balanced.”
“The photographer can work with the people who are actually getting married,” I’d said.
Mia squeezed my hand beneath the table and changed the subject.
Later, she told me not to let her mother get to me.
I hadn’t wanted to be the groom who turned every awkward remark into a grievance. I’d spent too many years being told I was sensitive when I objected to something humiliating.
Now, in our kitchen, I took Mia’s hand again.
“Promise me that tomorrow we get to enjoy ourselves. No managing your mother.”
“I promise.”
I looked at our wedding shoes beside the door, hers in their box, mine freshly polished.
“I want to dance with my wife without people congratulating us for being brave enough to do it.”
Mia’s expression softened. “Then we’ll give them something else to discuss.”
“Your footwork?”
“Your terrible jokes.”
May you like
We finished practicing, her eyes on me as we found the steps.
I went to bed thinking the difficult conversations were behind us. The next day, she would be my wife.
