After I Do

“I don’t respond. I simply follow him as he moves farther and farther away from Lot C. Why he wants to go home is a mystery to me. None of this will be any better at home. It hasn’t been for months. He walks around in a long, wide circle, going up and down the hills of the Dodger Stadium parking lot. I follow close behind, waiting with him at the crosswalks, crossing at his pace. We don’t say anything.”

The description of Lauren and Ryan’s search for their car in the stadium lot becomes an ominous metaphor for their marital unrest. Lauren is following Ryan through the lot in the same way that she has been following his lead in their relationship. She has been looking to him to define their dynamic instead of seeking to understand the world on her own terms.

“I had never understood the concept of making love before. It seemed cheesy and dramatic. But I got it then. It isn’t just about the movement. It’s about the way your heart swells when he gets close. The way his breath feels like a warm fire. It’s about the fact that your brain shuts down and your heart takes over. I cared about nothing but the feel of him, the smell of him, the taste of him. I wanted more of him.”

The passionate tone that infuses this use of figurative and descriptive language captures the young Lauren’s emotional experience when she has sex with Ryan for the first time. She likens their physical connection to a fire, illustrating the passion between them when they first begin their relationship. Significantly, this initial intensity will soon provide a sharp contrast with the various ways in which their relationship has cooled and soured in subsequent years.

“It got bad enough that I started crying; he got upset enough that his face turned red. And then, before we knew it, we were at the part where we both admitted we were wrong and begged each other’s forgiveness with a passion unlike anything since the last time we’d fought. That was always the way it was with us. The I love yous and I’m sorrys, the I’ll never do that agains and the I don’t know what I’d do without yous always eclipsed the thing we were fighting about in that place.”

Lauren’s reflective tone illustrates her depth of character. She is processing her and Ryan’s specific manner of relating to one another, and she also acknowledges the emotional extremes and pivots that they often experience amidst their conflicts. This moment foreshadows the lessons that she will learn about the entanglement of love, hatred, disappointment, and joy during her separation from Ryan.