Surprisingly, the Moyashi didn't argue with me when I proposed to her. She actually said yes right off the bat. It made me wonder if she actually wanted to marry me or if she had simply been so scared that I would leave her over her pregnancy that she was agreeing out of relief. But either way, I knew that she wanted to be with me, so it didn't matter what her reasons were. We were engaged now, and that was what was important.
But the fact that she didn't put up a fight had made me nervous. I had more to say to her, and I now had absolutely no clue how she was going to take my next suggestion. So once she finished crying over the ring, I used the pizza I'd ordered to keep her busy while I collected myself.
Unfortunately, Allison was a talker, and now that she was no longer freaked out about her pregnancy, she wasn't going to let the meal pass in peace. And the moment she started to speak, she immediately asked about the thing that I was trying to gather the courage to say to her. "I guess the first thing we have to do is decide on a date. So, are you wanting to get married before I have the baby or are you willing to wait until after I'm skinny again to have our wedding?"
"Actually, I was thinking that we'd just go down to city hall and do it there." I was almost too scared to say the words. I knew that Allison wasn't a typical girl and therefore wasn't into a lot of girly things, but this was still her wedding that we were discussing, so there was no guessing how she'd take the suggestion that we not have a wedding at all.
The Moyashi stared at me for a moment, her face completely blank, making me nervous as I wondered what she was thinking, but then she spoke and that look morphed into one of confusion. "City hall? Really? You don't want to have a ceremony?"
I wasn't expecting that to be her objection, so I forged ahead with my original arguments; trying to predict what was going to be the best thing to say to convince her to see things my way was clearly not going to work in this situation. "The average wedding costs something like thirty thousand dollars. Not only do we not have that kind of money just lying around, but we've got a baby on the way. I figured you'd rather skip the ceremony and save our money for the baby or a house or something."
She blushed beautifully, but the expression was all too brief as distrust and disbelief took over and she raised an eyebrow at me. "You're really not going to make me wear a white dress and walk down the aisle in front of everyone we know?"
I snorted at that, finally understanding that her problem with all this was that she thought that I wanted a traditional wedding so much that I was going to make her have one. "I told you years ago that I was willing to get married as men if that was what you wanted. Nothing's changed since then. I'm not going to make you do anything. I know that you have no desire to be the stereotypical blushing bride, though you are gorgeous when you blush, so we won't do the wedding that way. We can just go down to city hall tomorrow and get it over and done with."
"'Tomorrow'?! But that's so soon!"
"I know, but hear me out before you freak out. You're going to lose your health insurance when you graduate. If we're married, I can put you on my insurance, and the sooner you're on my insurance-"
She cut me off with a resigned sigh. "Right. We need to be able to pay for doctors' visits and ultrasounds, not to mention the actual birth, and things like vaccinations and blood tests." This time the sigh she let out was annoyed. "When did you get so good at manipulating me?"
The question was clearly rhetorical, but I laughed and answered it anyway. "Around the time I figured out that you'll do practically anything provided that you don't have to pay for it. As long as whatever I want you to do is cheaper than what you want to do, I can convince you to do just about anything."
"And that apparently includes getting married."
The bitterness in her voice made me feel the need to question her. She clearly had objections to getting married, and I didn't want her to be agreeing to marriage solely out of financial concerns. "What's wrong with getting married?"
It took her a moment to respond, and when she finally spoke, her voice was quiet. "If we're married then we have to live together."
The stupidity of the comment made me wonder if her pregnancy hormones were stopping her from thinking straight; it would certainly explain why she wasn't reacting to things the way I was expecting her to. "In case you've forgotten, you agreed weeks ago that you'd move in with me after graduation."
"Oh, right." The embarrassed blush quickly changed to a look of distrust. "And even though I'm pregnant, you're still ok with waiting?"
I scoffed. "Moyashi. We've got a baby on the way. I'm not going to make you move in here just for us to decide that we need more than a one bedroom apartment. We need to decide where we're going to live before we make any decisions about when."
She stared suspiciously at me for a moment longer before letting out a defeated sigh. "Fine. We can get married. But I have a composition due on Wednesday. I've put it off long enough because of this whole pregnancy thing, and I'm not going anywhere until it's done."
The defiance in her voice made me laugh. As was typical for her, she was agreeing to do what I wanted to do, but we were going to do it her way. "You dropped your Thursday class, right?"
