A short story,
Icy.
About cold feet.
Icy.
Written in 2019.
Allegra and Teddy always said that they would get married after they both graduated from college, and now this was the case: Allegra had just received her diploma from the University of Chicago earlier this week. She should be excited. Ecstatic even. Yet her feet had turned to ice.
Teddy graduated two years before her, first beginning law school, then asking Allegra to move in with him, flashing his notorious smile always flanked by joyous dimples. They had been planning this for years, but Allegra had wanted to wait until she graduated and started her job. So they waited. At first. But Teddy’s knack for being highly unpredictable and loving a little too hard eventually caused their apartment hunt to begin anyway: eleven months in advance.
Their relationship had been one like the movies, with two high school sweethearts falling head over heels in love and planning to be together forever; and Allegra loved Teddy just as much as he loved her. But while Allegra had fallen in love with Teddy’s boyish charm and well-meaning ignorance, lately she couldn’t help but see him as a little too child-like to have already planned out their entire life before her eyes. They had been a couple for six years, and Teddy was Allegra’s best friend. But these past few months had dragged on like years, and with each passing day Allegra gave up a little bit more of herself. Her feet were only getting colder.
When Allegra finally averted her gaze from the blizzard ravaging the streets outside Teddy’s apartment window back to the warm yellow glow of his living room, he was pacing. “Why now?” he muttered, his eyes tearing a hole through the wall with their intensity. “What did I do?” He was speaking more to himself than to her. It was almost like he didn’t realize she was still in the room. When she finally spoke he seemed startled.
“I just think maybe it could be good for us. Everyone keeps telling me it would be good for us.”
Her voice was clear but her mind was not. Allegra thought back to the friends that had put this idea in her head in the first place. You can’t marry someone without dating at least one other person, they had said. You’re both so young, how do you know you’re truly a perfect match if you have no one to compare each other to? You’re about to start a brand new chapter of your life. Are you sure you want to do this? She thought she was. But maybe she wasn’t.
Teddy’s voice brought her back to reality. He had stopped pacing, and was looking at her intently, the lights casting an almost eerie glow on his saddened eyes. He spoke so quietly Allegra could hardly hear him, and suddenly she thought his apartment felt foreign. The light brown couch that had always comforted Allegra, enveloping her and Teddy into its folds while they competed to see who could make the other laugh first, now looked monstrous. The bar she had eagerly sat at every Sunday to watch him flip chocolate chip pancakes while they listened to Mac DeMarco now seemed lifeless. For a moment she wished she could rewind, but she knew that was no longer an option. The dynamic between them had already changed. “I know what people say we’re supposed to do.” He said. “I just didn’t listen to them. I never thought you would either.” The betrayal was visible on his face, like a newly developed scar.
Allegra wasn’t sure what to say. She had no explanation, not one that made sense anyway. He was waiting for her to say something, but when she opened her mouth no words came out.
“I just don’t understand. Am I not enough for you?” Teddy’s voice was shaking now, and Allegra could tell he didn’t want her to see his face. Her heart broke more with each quiver of his lip. He was standing only six feet across from her, the coffee table the only thing standing between them. But to her, it felt like an ocean. Her eyes avoided his, searching for anything to focus on other than his soft brown eyes and the waves of distance crashing down on her.
When her eyes finally met his, she kept them blank, wanting to avoid telling the one person that she loved the most in the world that she was afraid of settling. She knew that asking him to do this was unfair; she had never been with anyone other than him, and to wait until now to suggest such a thing was undeniably cruel. Allegra had heard of other couples doing this once they realized they were planning to get married, but had never imagined that they would, much less that she would be the one suggesting it. She had never even considered it a possibility, not until a few months ago. So what changed?
Teddy stared back at her, searching for some answer under the surface of her pupils that wasn’t there. All Allegra could muster was “No, of course you’re enough for me” as she examined the abandoned bowl of cheerios he had been eating right before she turned their life together upside down. “That’s not it.”
“What is it then? I thought everything was going so well.” When his voice began to break so did Allegra’s resolve, but she refused to back down. She needed to do this.
“I just think we need to try and be with other people. Just for a while, so that we can see if we’re really meant to be together.” The words sounded false even to her and she knew they were falling on deaf ears. Allegra sounded like a stranger not even she would want to meet. Did she actually want this? This is what she was supposed to do, right?
It didn’t feel right.
Everywhere she looked there were photos of her and Teddy. On the wall next to the TV hung photos from their high school prom, Allegra’s smile so radiant it could have been her wedding day. On the table next to the bed they had shared too many times to count stood a photo of Teddy looking longingly at Allegra, having just told her for the first time that he wanted to marry her someday. That was four years ago. She never imagined this is where they’d be today.
“I don’t want to be with other people. I only want to be with you.” He crumpled to the couch in defeat and Allegra turned to the window. She couldn’t bear to look at him, so she watched the snow swarm around skyscrapers like bees. She couldn’t help but think her love for Teddy was like that: like a blanket of snow enveloping everything in its path. Sometimes it could be too much.
“But I’ll do it. If this is what will make you happy, I’ll do it.”
Allegra spun around, only to find herself falling into Teddy’s arms.
When she walked out of Teddy’s apartment building for what may have been the last time, Allegra’s tears began to fall like the snow. They were relentless and uncontrollable, a flurry of clear drops and a broken, conflicted heart. But as she took her first step out into the freezing Chicago streets blanketed in white powder, her boots were smothered by snow. And for the first time in a while, her feet were warm.