“Okay, what little things? And why is this news to me that you even care about getting married? You have always been a staunch supporter of living in sin because of your parents. Why the sudden change of heart?”

This is where I feel stupid. Does it sound dumb that my change of heart came from being jealous of her and Jim? That seeing them so happy and pledging their love to one another has made me realize how much I want that for myself?

“I know that’s what I’ve always said, and I guess part of me really believed that. I mean come on, my parents don’t exactly have the best track record. What makes me think I would be any good at that kind of thing?” I ask.

“Sweetie, no one knows if they will be good at that kind of thing. It’s not like you’re born with a marriage gene. It all just depends on the person you’re with. If you can look at that person and know without a doubt that you want to spend the rest of your life kissing them goodnight and waking up next to them, marriage is for you,” she tells me.

I start crying again and put my head in my hands.

“When I caught the bouquet at your reception, you should have seen the look of horror on Carter’s face. He seriously looked petrified that the old wives’ tale would come true,” I explain as I wipe the tears from my cheeks and take a deep breath.

Liz stares at me while we sit at a red light.

“What?” I ask.

“You mean that’s it? That’s where all of this doubt and sadness is coming from? He looked at you a little funny when you caught a bouquet at a wedding? That doesn’t exactly scream ‘I hate marriage’ you know. He could have just been a little surprised. Did he actually say he was freaked out that you caught the bouquet?”

I huff and my sadness is immediately replaced with irritation.

“No, he didn’t come right out and say it, but I could tell. And I don’t know, there’s been a bunch of other little things here and there. He was all weird at your rehearsal dinner, smacking the champagne out of my hand and he’s made these comments about how he won’t be dragging me to the altar and how he’s glad he’ll never have to worry about asking my dad for permission because my dad still scares the shit out of him,” I tell her.

“Um, not to butt in here or anything, but do you think maybe he’s saying stuff like that because he knows how you feel about the whole subject? Maybe he really does want to marry you but he doesn’t want to freak you out about the whole thing since you’ve made it clear your parents left a lasting impression on you in that area,” Jenny says from the back seat with a surprising amount of insight.

“Shockingly, I agree with Jenny. Until you sit down and talk to him about this, you’re just going to keep jumping to conclusions and making yourself miserable. I love you, Claire, but you’re acting like an asshole,” Liz says as she pulled into the Adult Mart parking lot. “You know what happens when you assume things.”

I let out a sigh. “You make an ass out of you and me.”

She maneuvers the car into a spot right next to the guys and shuts off the car but makes no move to get out.

“No, you just make an ass out of you. Me, I would never be this assy,” she replies. “You love Carter and it is obvious how much he adores you. Stop being a dick, man up, and talk to him. Sit him down and tell him that you don’t really have a late night p**n addiction but you’ve been secretly watching wedding shows and sneaking into the magazine aisle at the grocery store in sweats, slippers, sunglasses, and a trench coat to scan the bridal magazines like some deprived housewife needing a Playgirl fix,” Liz tells me firmly.

“Ooooh, I love Playgirl!” Jenny said. “I have a prescription to it. I learned how to deep throat while hanging my head off of the end of the bed last month. You know how in the movie ‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin’ Steve Carell screams out Kelly Clarkson’s name when he’s getting waxed? Drew screamed out Willie Nelson’s name when he came. It was so hot.”

“Oh my God, Jenny. Too much information,” I tell her with a grimace as I cover my mouth with my hand and swallow back a little bit of vomit I burped up at the thought of that moment in time in Jenny and Drew’s bedroom.

“Hey, are you feeling okay? You look a little green,” Liz states as we opened our car doors and step out into the night air.

I take a few deep breaths and will my stomach to calm and not bring up dinner.

“And what the hell was wrong with you tonight drinking pop at Lorenzo’s? That’s like blasphemy,” Liz tells me as she clicks the automatic door lock on her keys and the car horn beeps once. “You’re not pregnant are you?!”

She and Jenny start cackling with laughter as they walk ahead of me to meet up with the guys who stand holding the door to the store open for us.

I trail behind them a few steps, the smile dying from my lips as I start doing calculations in my head. I stop in my tracks a few feet from the front door and stare in horror at Carter.

He gives me a heart-stopping smile and in response, I throw my hand over my mouth and run to the bushes on the edge of the sidewalk, depositing two slices of pizza, two glasses of pop, and my dignity onto the front lawn.

18. Benjamin’s Balls

As we walk up and down the aisles of Adult Mart, I keep a close eye on Claire. She looks better after throwing up her dinner, but I'm still worried. I’ve never seen her sick before, unless you counted hangovers, and it puts me on edge. I hate that she's coming down with the flu and there is nothing I can do to make her feel better.

“This has burnt nut sac written all over it,” Drew yells from the end of the aisle, interrupting me from my thoughts as he holds up a candle that doubles as massage oil when it's melted.

I reach for Claire’s hand and give it a squeeze as we make our way down one aisle, glancing at things as we walk. I watch her carefully out of the corner of my eye, looking for warning signs on her face in case I need to rush her out of the store to defile more shrubbery.

“I’m fine, stop staring at me,” she says without looking at me.

“Sorry, I’m just making sure you aren’t going to throw up on the carpet. Out of all the fluids that are stained on this floor, I’m guessing vomit isn’t one of them.”

“Oh that’s disgusting,” she says with a laugh.

Seeing her smile puts me at ease a little bit. If she can still laugh, she isn’t dying from some horrible, unnamed disease.

Claire suddenly stops and moves in front of me with a serious look on her face.

“You see?” she whispers conspiratorially. “This is why I have never set foot in one of these places,” she states, looking over her shoulder and then back to me. “Look at that creepy, old guy over there in front of the ‘Buy One, Get One Free’ bin. He is about one ‘Shaving Ryan’s Privates’ away from whipping his dick out in the middle of the store and throwing his goo at us like in ‘Silence of the Lambs’,” she complains.

She gives one last nervous look over her shoulder at him and lets go of my hand to go down a different aisle, clearly needing to distance herself from the guy who now has both of his hands in his baggy pants pockets and is jerking them at an alarming speed. The guy obviously hadn’t read the sign hanging above the movies that said, “Please do not jerk off in our store. Thank you!” There is even a smiley face on the sign. It's oddly disturbing, yet comforting all at the same time.

I turn to follow Claire, stopping at a random display and grabbing the first bottle I see and read the back of it to see what it does. I read a few words when the sound of Claire’s whispering brings my head up. I see her talking animatedly to Jenny a few feet away, most likely sharing her views about the DVD section and its inhabitants. I stand there for a few minutes just watching her when she suddenly throws her head back and laughs. It's one of those deep, full belly laughs that is impossible to stifle and it gives me goose bumps hearing it. It feels like someone punched me in the stomach and my heart starts pounding faster.

I love her so f**king much.

This isn’t a revelation, but all of a sudden in the middle of Adult Mart I feel like nothing else matters but the fact that I love Claire. She is my dream come true, my life, and my everything. Does it really matter if I plan the best proposal in the world and spend weeks trying to come up with just the right words? She isn’t the type of girl who cares about that stuff and I know it. I want everything to be outlandish because it’s what I think is expected, not because it’s what I think will be perfect for her. Asking her to be my wife and to grow old with me – that’s what matters, not the amount of money I spend renting a jumbotron, or the meetings I have with the manager of a restaurant, or the stupid three-page speech I memorize. Waking up every morning next to this woman and tucking my son into bed every night is all that I care about. Claire and Gavin are my whole world, and I don’t want to wait one more second to ask her to make it official in the eyes of God and everyone we know.

Spur of the moment. Isn’t that the way you were supposed to do these f**king things anyway?

I swallow the knot that forms in my throat, suddenly nervous that the moment is here. The one I have been planning for and rehearsing – it's here and it's right f**king now.

I tear my gaze away from Claire for a moment and glance around me. Porn, dildos of all shapes, sizes and colors, and a shelf full of anal lube.

Jesus, does that say cinnamon-flavored anal lube? I don’t even want to think about a situation that requires flavored anal lube. I must be insane that I am actually contemplating this right now.

I stand there with my hands sweating, heart pounding, and a bottle of Lickity Stiff Arousing Cream clutched to my chest.

Fuck it.

I take a deep breath, my decision made. With determination, I walk over to where Claire is still chatting with Jenny. She turns to face me just as I reach her and takes the bottle I'm holding out of my hand to read its contents.

“Lickity Stiff Arousing Cream? I’m pretty sure you don’t need this,” Claire says with a laugh.

She turns around to place it back on a shelf, and I take a deep breath for good measure, reach into my pocket, and wrap my fingers around the velvet box that I still carry around with me just in case. With Claire’s back to me, I pull out the box and start to kneel.

“Holy shit!”

The exclamation interrupts my descent to the floor, and I pause with both of my knees slightly bent, looking like I'm getting ready to take off sprinting in a race. Claire turns around just as a hand clamps around my bicep and dragged me backwards.

“Liz, what are you doing?” Claire asks.

“Just need to talk to Carter for a second. Need a guy’s opinion about porn, no worries!”

I stumble and shove the ring box back in my pocket as I try to turn around and keep up with Liz. Despite my protests, she continues to hold onto my arm and walk faster.

“Liz! What the fuck?! I was kind of in the middle of something,” I complain as we get further away from Claire who stares at us with confusion on her face.

“Oh I know what the f**k you were in the middle of, dumbass!” Liz whispers loudly.

She finally stops when we are on the opposite side of the store from Claire and turns to face me.

“You’re proposing to Claire?” she asks with her hands on her h*ps and a mixture of awe and anger on her face

“Well, I was trying to until I was rudely interrupted,” I tell her, putting my hands on my h*ps and staring her down. She is small and feisty, but I have cocks on my side. Hundreds of them I can fling at her and then flee in the other direction when she attacks.

“You’re proposing to Claire.”

This time it's a statement rather than a question.

“Um, I think we already covered this. Let me guess, you think it’s too soon. Or you’re afraid I’m going to hurt her. Go ahead, give it to me. Wait, shit! Did she say something to you about not wanting to marry me? Fuck! She’s been acting weird since your wedding, and I know she’s talked a good game about not wanting to get married, but I figured it was just talk. What girl doesn’t want to get married? Oh fuck, Claire is the type of girl who doesn’t want to get married. Oh my God she doesn’t want to marry me,” I ramble as I pace back and forth in front of a display of chocolate body paint.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, calm down, Nancy. I swear the two of you are the stupidest people I have ever met. You live together and you never talk. How is that f**king possible?” Liz asks in irritation.

“What are you talking about?”

Liz sighs. “YOU. ARE. STUPID,” Liz repeats, enunciating each word and making up random hand gestures to go with each one so it looked like she was using sign language. Except I’m pretty sure the sign for “stupid” isn’t a middle finger.

“I shouldn’t be telling you this because Claire is my best friend and this seriously violates the best friend code of honor between girls, but we have a situation on our hands. I am willing to take a kick to the va**na for you when she finds out about this so you better clean out your ears and listen the f**k up!” she says with a poke to my chest with her finger. “Claire has been freaking out lately that you don’t want to marry her because she has this idea in her head that you’re a typical guy and the idea of marriage makes you want to puke, which could explain the purging she did in the landscaping out front. She doesn’t have a p**n fetish. She just didn’t want you to know that ever since my wedding she’s done nothing but think about marrying you, and she’s scared to death it’s going scare you away.”