The Long Term Plan (With Short Term Fixes)

Prologue

I wanted to be married at twenty-five. I'd laid out this whole plan with clippings and pastings on a blackboard in my childhood bedroom as if I was charting stars instead of mapping out my future. Everything, and I mean everything, that would weigh in on meeting my soulmate was taken into account on that blackboard: old flames, failing advanced anatomy in nursing school, missing a bus, tripping on a shoelace, whatever! Like I said, it was all on the board, laid out piece by piece, paper over paper, with detailed instructions for future reference.

I guess you could say I went a bit off the books, looking at where I ended up. No, I didn't flunk out. In fact, I'm an NP: neurology. Still, I wanted to be married at 25.

Then I found myself alone in Blue Note on Third with a bottle of Dom on my twenty-fifth birthday, and my mind settled into a zone of panic. That's when I saw him: Noah Stahl.

He'd never been kind to anyone but himself, carrying more baggage than a 1950's train conductor, from his MIA father to a passionate hatred for the date of April twenty-seventh. From across the bar we made eyes. He continued his conversation with the tender even after he'd captured my undivided attention with his pale blue beauties, voice flowing like a smooth river running deep in a forest of fantasies I'd never utter aloud, not until the moment he sauntered over to me, eyes set low under his brow, and poured his own flute of my coveted champagne.

"Evangeline," he hummed after he'd dragged about half the champagne from his glass. He went to pour more. Oh, God. My grandmother would have been happy I was finally praying, if only she knew what I was praying for.

"'S been what? Eight years?" His breath washed over me like a wave of winter fresh mint despite his half full Manhattan.

"Almost," I corrected him. "Seven and a half."

"Numbers aren't really my thing, Evan. Never have been."

"I remember."

"You look as beautiful as ever, you know?" He took a step closer to me.

"As do you." Noah laughed.

We finished three bottles of Dom, and after, he bought me two apple martinis. "My pleasure," he'd said, so I accepted them: my pleasure. Why not? I had thought. He's got me on lock. Halfway through the second martini, he had my hand in his, eventually tugging me along by my wrist.

He held onto me in the street, as we practically danced to his armored car, where a driver had awaited his arrival. He never let go of me in any fashion, whether his arms were wrapped around me, keeping me in a tight embrace, or my hands were nestled safely within his, the entire ride over to an underground smoking club.

He said he had to pick someone up: "A very good friend."

Already nearly intoxicated, the smoke that hung above my head once we were inside club lifted me onto a comfy cloud nine. I relaxed more and more as Noah reintroduced to me Jacob Pons, who was dumped on graduation day for going naked under the robe.

Jacob had kept a steady 3.5 in high school only because of his innate charms and naturally sharp style. Every outfit had matched, every hair had been soaked in the perfect dollop of gel, every movement had purpose. He could talk his way out of anything with equivocations and contradictions, and his smirk from the driver's seat of his old, black jeep could knock out a driver fifty miles ahead of him.

He studied law, practically perfecting it until he had become the youngest professor at NYU Law. However, he'd double minored in literature and the practice of poetry, and now here he was, reading slam in a smoking club.

"How could I forget her, Noah? She sang Bon Jovi over the loudspeaker senior year to stall while they printed the announcements next door." How could he forget?

I sat between Noah and Jacob back in the car, blanking staring ahead at a yellow diamond set between several more diamonds, a little thin silver band beside it. The two rings lay one atop the other in the palm of Noah's hand. His lips brushed over the shell of my ear, and after placing a single kiss to the curve of my jaw he whispered to me words that changed my life.

His father had never been a righteous man. Naturally, he himself was far from that standard. Growing up, he'd never known what a "normal" marriage was supposed to be: how he was supposed to fit into the mold of a "normal" husband. In fact, he had never even found a woman "normal" enough to be his wife anyway.

His ideas about the entire umbrella of marriage were upside down. He explained it all to me in the back seat of the car: everything he wanted and how I and everyone else would fit into his plan for his future. I had the rings right in front of me to prove it. The GPS was screeching out directions to New York City Hall and the numbers on the clock changed to midnight, New Year's Day.

My dress was ironically black, my heels were tragically red, and my hair had been worn, unfortunately, down. Jacob wore to the club a white dress shirt. As the three of us climbed the narrow steps up to the stone, columned building, he unbuttoned it and slung it over my shoulders, humming "Tradition" from Fiddler on the Roof.

Echo by echo in that huge building, we charged after a lingering judge. Jacob had produced a document, one with both mine and Noah's signature.

With a down payment of $100,000, plus another $50,000 to come in installments for the next year, the judge pronounced the deed legal and true to the state of New York. The hall was not empty, not nearly, because along with Jacob, there were a few more familiar faces that lurked nearby, bearing witness.

On New Year's Day, I committed to Noah in front of the state of New York and a brotherhood of men. I married Noah, not because I loved him, or because he was a particularly wonderful person, but because I wanted to be married at 25.