“It was—” Graham doesn’t look up for an answer so instead of elaborating, I just say “yep” to cater to his lack of genuine interest. He’s sitting at the kitchen island, hunched over the Burlington Free Press. He loves this newspaper. He says it’s the only paper in the world that prints mostly good news, which is stupid and inaccurate. Personally, I think a newspaper that chooses Essex Woman Grows Largest Radish over The End of Roe v. Wade? is useless.

I go to the sink and wash the mulch off my fingers. Evidence down the drain. Once I’m dry, I move around the island to where Graham sits and snag a blueberry off his plate, one of the off-colored squishier ones he’d left uneaten on the side, and I kiss his cheek. It’s more stubbly than I’d like for the day before our wedding, but I don’t care enough to say anything. His mother will do that for me, I’m sure.

“How are we feeling this morning?” I ask, pressing my chin into his shoulder the way he likes. “You had a couple drinks last night.”

He stares down at the paper, but I can tell he’s no longer reading. “It’s a special occasion,” he says. He’s trying to sound pleasant and unbothered by the question, but the way he’s white-knuckling the real estate section is giving him away.

I kiss his cheek again. “It’s totally fine, babe. We’re getting married tomorrow. Can you believe it?”

That seems to loosen him up, hopefully get him ready to have a couple more later, and he looks up at me for the first time in this conversation. He looks tired, light blue bags peeking out under his eyes, his eyelids heavy with each blink. But he looks happy. Or, more than that, content. Like this—him reading a newspaper, me scratching his back and stealing blueberries off his plate—is how he wants to spend the rest of his life.

He leans his head against mine, so our cheeks barely touch.

“You have to get your stuff out of our room before people get here tonight,” I remind him.

He nods, scraping me with his stubbly face.

“Are we really doing the whole can’t sleep together the night before the wedding thing?” he asks, rolling his eyes like the thought is exasperating.

I take his face in my hands and turn it toward me so I can look him straight on. “Are you asking me to break a long-held wedding tradition? When I’m marrying into a family that’s, dare I say, obsessed, with tradition?” He laughs. “I’ll let you have that conversation with your mother.”

He huffs disappointedly and turns back to the woman in the paper with the ten-pound radish. “Fine. I’ll get my stuff after breakfast.”