We had a July wedding. It was outdoors on the wide lawn of a hotel just outside of Los Angeles. I wore a white dress. I threw my bouquet. We danced all night, Lauren spinning me around, holding me close, and showing me off.
The morning after the festivities were over, we got into the car and headed out for our honeymoon. We had considered places like Costa Rica or Paris, maybe a cruise through the Italian Riviera. But the truth was, we didn't have that kind of money. We decided to take it easy. We'd drive up to Big Sur and stay in a cabin in the woods, where no one could find us for a week. A fireplace and a beautiful view seemed like all the luxury we needed in the world.
We got on the road early in the morning, hoping to make good time by beating midday traffic. We stopped for breakfast and again later for lunch. We played Twenty One Questions, and I fiddled with the radio, tuning in to local stations as we passed through towns. We were in love, high on the novelty of marriage. The words husband and wife felt as if they had a shine to them. They were simply move fun to say than all the other words we knew.
We were two hours outside of Big Sur when the tire blew. The loud bang scared us both out of our newlywed daze. Lauren quickly pulled over to the side of the road. I hopped out first; Lauren was a second behind me.
"Fuck!" she said.
"Calm down," I told her. "It's going to be okay. We just have to call Triple A. They will come out here and solve the whole thing."
"We can't call Triple A," she said. "Sure we can," I told her. "I have the card in my wallet. Let me get it."
"No," she said, shaking her head and pulling her hands up onto the back of her neck in a resigned position. "I forgot to pay the renewal fee."
"Oh," I said. The disappointment was clear in my voice. "It came last month, and it said on it that we had to pay it by the fifteenth, and... with the wedding and everything going on at work, I just... " She shrugged, and her voice got defensive. " I forgot, okay? I'm sorry. I forgot.."
I wasn't mad at her. She made a mistake. But I was very concerned with what we were going to do about it. I was frustrated that I was in this position. If you do not have the ability to call Triple A, how do you fix a tire? We were not the sort of people who knew how to d that on their own. We were the sort of people who needed Triple A. I didn't like about us at the very moment. In fact, I was starting to think we were two useless idiots on the side of the road.
"You don't know how to fix a tire, right? I asked her. I knew she didn't. I shouldn't have asked. "No," she said. "I don't. Thankyou for highlighting that."
"Well, shit," I said, the polite cushion around my voice fading and exposing my irritation. "What should we do?"
"I don't know!" she said. "I mean, it was an accident."
"Yeah, okay, so what do we do? We're on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. How are we going to get to the cabin?"
"I don't know, okay? I don't know what we're gonna do. I think there is a spare tire in the trunk." she said, walking back there to confirm it. "Yeah," she said as she lifted the bottom out. "But there's no jack, so I don't know what we would even do."
"Well, we have to think of something."
"You could think of something too, you know," she said to me. "This isn't only up to me."
"I never said it was, all right?" Geez."
"Well? What's your bright idea then?"
"You know what?" I said. "I... Why are we even fighting right now? We're on our honeymoon."
"I know!" she said. "I know that! Do you have any idea how upset I am that this is happening on our honeymoon? Do you have any idea how heartbroken I am that I fucked up this thing that we have been looking forward to for months?"
I found it completely impossible to be angry with Lauren when she was angry at herself. I melted like a popsicle the minute I suspected she might blame herself for anything. I would fight until she admitted she's done nothing wrong, and then I'd spend the entire rest of the night trying to take it all away, trying to convince her she was nothing short of perfect.
"Baby, no," I said. "No, you didn't mess anything up. This is going to be fine. I swear. Totally fine." I hugged her, burying my head into her chest and holding her hand by the side of the road. "I'm sorry," she said, meaning it.
"No!" I said. "Don't be sorry. It's not just your job to pay the Triple A bill. It could have happened to either of us. We had so much stuff going on with the wedding. C'mon," I said, lifting her chin. "We're not gonna let this get us down."
Lauren started laughing. "We aren't?"
"Hell no!" I said, trying to cheer her up. "Are you kidding? I, for one, am having a great time. As far as I'm concerned the honeymoon has already started."
"It has?" "Yep," I said. "We'll make it a game. I'll try to flag down the next car that comes down the road, okay? If they stop and they have a jack and they let us borrow it, I win. Next car, you go. Whoever gets the jack wins." Lauren laughed again. It was so nice to see her laugh. "Neither of us knows how to use a jack," she pointed out. "Well, we'll figure it out! How hard could it be? I'm sure we can Google it." "Okay, you're on, sweetheart," she said.
But she never got a chance. I flagged down the first car that came down the road, and they let us use their jack. They even taught us what to do and helped us get the donut on. We were back on the road in no time, no trace of anger or frustration. I buried my head in her shoulder, my back bent awkwardly over the center console. I just wanted to be near her, touching her. It didn't matter if it wasn't comfortable.
The donut got us all the way to the lodge in Bug Sur. Trees surrounding us to our right, massive cliffs dropping off into the Pacific to out left. The sky above us was just turning from blue to a rosy orange. We checked in, yet another honeymooning couple in the cabins of Big Sur. The woman at the front desk looked as if she'd seen it all before. There was nothing new about us to her, and yet everything about this was new to us. Our hotel room was small and cozy, with a gas fireplace on the far wall. When we put our bags down, Lauren joked that our bed at home was bigger than the bed in the cabin. But everything felt so intimate. She was mine. I was hers. The hard part was over: the wedding, the details, the planning, the families. Now it was just us, starting our life together.
We were on the bed before our bags were unpacked. Lauren slid on top of me. Her weight pressed against me, weighing me down, pushing me further into the mattress. I had chosen a strong woman, that's for sure. "Baby, I'm so sorry," she said to me. "I'll renew the Triple A membership as soon as we get home. Now, even! I can do it now."
"No," I said. "Don't do it now. I don't want you to do it now. I don't want to ever leave this spot." "No?" "No," I said, shaking my head. "Well, what should we do, then?" Lauren asked. She used to ask me this when she wanted to have sex. It was her way of making me say it. She always loved making me say the things she wanted to say.
"I don't know," I teased her. "What should we do?" "You look like you have something on your mind," she said, kissing me. "I have nothing on my mind. My mind is blank," I said, smiling wide, both of us knowing everything that wasn't being said.
"No," she said. "You're thinking about having sex with me, you perv." I laughed loudly, so it filled the tiny room, and Lauren kissed my collarbone. She kissed it tenderly at first and then started to lick further up my neck. By the time she reached my earlobe nothing seemed funny anymore.
Authors note// Okay so I know a lot of people are gonna want smut. But I've never wrote it before. I'm willing to try if you guys want me to. Otherwise I'm not gonna write it, because I suck at writing that stuff. Thanks for reading!
