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Rob and Celia just told his parents, by phone, of their engagement. During the call Celia realized that another way to describe “engaged” is “planning a wedding.”
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Rob pulled back from Celia, feeling as if she had just asked if they could get married on the fifth moon of Jupiter during the Age of Aquarius.
“Elope?” he said. “Where did that come from?” He sat down on the sofa next to her. “Are you joking?”
“No, I’m not joking.”
Rob tried to figure out what to say next, so he fell back on some tried-and-true psychobabble they had learned from Carolyn.
“Can you say some more about that?” he asked sheepishly, afraid she might think he was mocking her.
“It just occurred to me that everyone thinks we’re going to have this big, church-and-bridesmaid wedding, and I’m not sure I want that, and I have no idea how to pay for that… and then there is my father. A wedding means he has to either be involved or excluded, and I just don’t want to deal with that.”
“You have to deal with your dad sometime, Celia.”
Celia glared at him for a good long moment. “Wrong thing to say, Rob.” Celia got up and went into the kitchen, raising her voice so he could hear her. “I’m trying to have a conversation about getting married, not one about my dad and all the ways you think I’m screwing up my relationship with him.”
Rob rolled his eyes and followed Celia into the kitchen. She slammed the freezer door, opened the quart of ice cream in her hand and, pulling a spoon from the drawer, began to eat it. Rob took another spoon from the open drawer and tried to join her.
“Don’t you even keep chocolate ice cream around, Rob? I mean, really – strawberry?” She took the container and spoon and left Rob alone with his spoon and no ice cream.
Rob wondered how many spoonfuls of Slummin’ Strawberry it would take to soothe her and thought about riding it out in the kitchen until she was calmer. Instead, he opened the fridge and grabbed the Hershey’s syrup.
“Everything’s chocolate when you keep this around,” he said as he reentered his living room. He sat next to her and made a wouldn’t-a-little-chocolate-syrup-go-a-long-way face as he waved the bottle before her.
How does Celia respond?
