Just
You do it to yourself, you do/and that's why it really hurts
The wedding was private. Ted, Marshall, Lily, their two year old Gina, the fetus growing in Lily's uterus with not yet identifiable secondary sex characteristics; Robin's parents, Barney's parents, and a few other relatives that it would have been in bad taste to forgo inviting.
The spring was cold. Robin wore a jacket until the minute she walked down the aisle. The congregation in the black wrought-iron chairs were shivering, trying to warm themselves as best they could. Clouds were heavy, low and gray in the sky, and the grass was damp from the showers earlier that afternoon.
But still.
It was awesome.
.
A year and five months prior to that misty spring day, Barney proposed. Over Chinese food they'd been eating from the carton in his bed late into the night, post sex. That was how their relationship was; they slept over at one another's apartments nightly, they spent forty-five minutes flipping through take-out menu after take-out menu, trying to devise the most satisfying, yet most economical meal plan for that evening. They tried to choose dishes that would satisfy the other's appetite, and not merely their own selfish longing for kung pao shrimp.
They were embarking on completely foreign territory of self-sacrifice, investment in another human being. Their commitment phobias and hang-ups were far from non-existent.
But still.
There they were, making love on a pile of Mr. Ling's Kitchen menus in a bed they'd been sharing every night for two months.
.
They were a regular couple. They weren't perfect, they weren't gooey, they weren't unrealistic. They ate that night in a relative silence, both absorbed in their respective reading material that had come in the mail earlier that day. Fliers, catalogues, all the regular weekly advertisements. Their comfort in the presence of one another was apparent.
It was, after all, a long road for them to arrive at that place of honest, forward love and comfort.
.
To Robin, Barney pulled the ring out of no where. One moment, she was thumbing through a 50 percent off recliners flier, the next she was met with Barney's intense, soul-bearing gaze and his saying, "We should get married."
To Barney, the ring had been on his mind for three weeks. He was constantly aware of where it was; in his suit pocket, in a velour box in his sweaty palm the night they went to an elegant French restaurant downtown two weeks ago. The night he proposed, it was in his bedside drawer, hammering on his heart the minute Robin climbed into his bed in her lavender nightie, sitting right in the middle, focusing intently on which greasy kitchen would provide their dinner that night.
She was at ease – totally and completely uninhibited. She bit at a hangnail on her finger while she recited lists of dishes to him.
The sex helped him settle his nerves.
She was still at ease after. Yes, her cheeks were a bit more flushed, her nose a little shinier with sweat, her hair less kempt, an extremely probable hickey forming on her fairly exposed left breast. That night it felt right.
He plotted how to get the ring from its red velour box in the table onto her finger. His mind raced, his eyes darted. He was riddled with nerves.
The nerves dissipated by a quick glance up from her food from Robin, a little smile, and the return of her focus to her rice noodles and Ashley Furniture catalogue.
He was so in love with her.
So he leaned into her, garlic likely both on their breath, and told her that they should get married.
.
There was this single protest:
"We've only been together for two months, Barney."
There was this single rebuttal:
"Robin, I want us to be together for the rest of our lives. This is it. I love you. Will you marry me?"
He got the ring from the drawer.
"Yes."