Free Marrying Up by Jackie Rose

necessary, and fuelled by my desire to grow and change into the person I want to become.
    I will achieve everything I’ve been working toward in therapy in one fell swoop.
    And there’s one other thing…one other reason. Marilyn Monroe and her merry band of husband-hunters aside, I’ve seen the glorious effects of the marriage between love and wealth first-hand. Which is why I also had Asher and Zoe to thank for planting the idea of The Plan within me, at least subconsciously. Our lunch earlier in the summer had sparkeda bit of a self-pity fest, so it should come as no great surprise to anyone that, in my weakened condition, I ended up indulging in one of those singlehood meltdowns I’d always felt so immune to. Only my meltdown was different, because from it, great change would soon be born.
    Zoe and Asher were old high school friends, and I hadn’t seen them in ages. Back in the day, the three of us were thick as thieves. Sure, we were big losers—boys who wear black eyeliner and girls who wear combat boots fall somewhere between band geeks and the janitor on the popularity spectrum in suburban American high schools—but we didn’t give a shit. Cheerleaders mocked us and football players spat on us, and we loved every single minute of it.
    Asher was supersmart and received a partial scholarship to Brown. His parents, though stunningly cheap, were so terrified he was gay that they liquidated their 401(k) plans to pay for the rest of their wayward son’s Ivy League education, hoping that four years at what they assumed was a nice, conservative East Coast campus might be enough to straighten him out.
    Although Asher wasn’t even remotely into guys, he truly enjoyed letting his parents think he was, so he was more than a little peeved when he could no longer avoid telling them he and Zoe were getting married (“It worked!” Mr. and Mrs. Blake had apparently shouted to each other when he gave them the news). I was a bit surprised myself when I learned that they were together, since none of us had ever hooked up in high school, except for the time Zoe and I got drunk at a Pearl Jam concert and made out just to see what it would be like. After Asher left for school, Zoe says she just sort of realized he was The One, and so she eventually followed him out to Rhode Island. I suppose two years of soul-crushing, booze-blurred bar-hopping with me and George was enough to give shy little Zoe the courage she needed to profess her undying love to an old friend.
     
    Happily, the feeling was quite mutual. Now they live in Philadelphia, where Asher works as a lawyer for the A.C.L.U. and Zoe has a dog-grooming business. These days, they’re quite wealthy, too, courtesy of Zoe’s generous dad, who had recently come into more money than he could ever spend, due to a substantial patent payout on some computer-chip thingie he’d dreamed up years ago. That’s basically it. We still keep in touch, though not as often as we should.
    When the two of them walked into the restaurant, they were as luminous as the last time I’d seen them, at their wedding almost a year earlier. Asher and Zoe were one of those couples who were completely unaware of how wonderful they were together. You know the type, I’m sure—that they didn’t make you sick is almost enough to make you sick.
    After the usual catching up, complete with mutual berating for not visiting more often, I could see that they were anxious to tell me something. Naturally, I figured they were pregnant.
    “Are you kidding? Me? Pregnant? No way!” said Zoe.
    Asher rolled his eyes.
    “Why not?” I asked. “What’s so crazy about that?”
    “She tells me we’re not even close to ready yet,” he sighed.
    “But you’re the only married friends I have,” I pleaded. “You’re also the only normal people I know who are married. I need you to have kids. You’ve got to restore my faith in the whole process.” Thinking of my nieces and nephews, I figured it would be nice