I was folding my laundry when Steven knocked on my door later that night. As usual he only gave me a couple of seconds before opening it; he never waited for me to say “come in.” He came into the room and shut the door behind him. Steven stood in my room awkwardly, leaning against the wall, his arms folded against his chest.
“What?” I said. Although I already knew.
“Sooo… are you and Jere serious about this?”
I stacked some T-shirts into a pile. “Yes.”
Steven crossed the room and sat at my desk, absorbing my answer for a minute. Then he faced me, straddling the chair, and said, “You realize that’s insane, right? We’re not living in the foothills of West Virginia. There’s no reason you have to get married so young.”
“What do you know about West Virginia?” I scoffed. “You’ve never even been there.”
“That’s besides the point.”
“What is your point?”
“My point is, you guys are too young.”
“Did Mom send you up here to talk to me?”
“No,” he said, and I knew he was lying. “I’m just worried about you.”
I stared him down.
“Okay, yeah, she did,” he admitted. “But I would have come up anyway.”
“You’re not going to change my mind.”
“Listen, nobody knows you two better than me.” He stopped, weighing his words. “I love Jere—he’s like a brother to me. But you’re my little sister. You come first. This whole marriage idea—I’m sorry, but I think it’s stupid. If you guys love each other that much, you can wait a couple of years to be together. And if you can’t, you for sure shouldn’t be getting married.”
I felt both touched and annoyed. Steven never said things like “You come first.” But then he called me stupid, which was more like him.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” I said. I folded then refolded another T-shirt. “Jeremiah wants you and Conrad to be his best men.”
Steven’s face broke into a smile. “He does?”
“Yeah,” I said.
Steven looked really happy, but then he caught me looking at him, and he wiped his smile away. “I don’t think Mom will let me be in the wedding.”
“Steven, you’re twenty-one years old. You can decide that for yourself.”
He frowned. I could tell I’d injured his pride. He said, “Well, I still don’t think it’s your smartest move.”
“Noted,” I said. “I’m still doing it.”
“Oh, man, Mom’s gonna kill me. I was supposed to talk you out of getting married, not get roped into the wedding party,” Steven said, getting up.
I hid my smile. That is, until Steven added, “Con and I had better start planning the bachelor party.”
Quickly, I said, “Jere doesn’t want any of that.”
Steven puffed up his chest. “You don’t get a say in it, Belly. You’re a girl. This is man stuff.”
“Man stuff?”
Grinning, he shut my door.
