Our first date was at a cheap Mexican restaurant with plastic tablecloths and margaritas too sweet to be dignified. I told him I wanted a calm life. Not rich. Not dramatic. Not impressive. Calm.
He raised his glass and said, “To boring in a good way.”
I believed him so completely that the belief itself felt like relief.
For years, we seemed to build exactly that. We rented a small apartment near German Village, worked too much, saved carefully, fought mostly about laundry and where to spend Thanksgiving. We got married in Cincinnati on a warm September afternoon, under a rented arch in a garden behind an old brick inn. Caleb cried when I walked down the aisle. He did. I have the pictures. His face crumpled in a way that looked so tender even my skeptical aunt whispered, “Well, he loves you, doesn’t he?”
I thought so.
We bought the house on Marigold Lane two years after the wedding.