november 2024

“So wait, your family doesn’t know we’re married?” cami's husband asks a week before Thanksgiving, the question an echo of a previous one. they're newlyweds and This isn’t the first time he’s asked, or even the second. Merely a different variation on them: Have you told them? And, when he assumed she had, What did they say? Each time Cami’s avoided answering, ducking it with practiced grace.

They’re in her kitchen, and Cami’s on her second attempt at making tamales the way her dad taught her. The first time was shaky and this one isn’t looking much better. As her hands work, she peers down at the piece of paper in front of her. It’s decades old, worn around the edges and creased. Her dad’s tamale recipe is a scribble of measurements, some exact, others sounding merely like a suggestion: a lot of this, a tiny bit of that.

“Shit, I should’ve soaked the corn husks in the hot water longer,” Cami mutters to herself, before she gives a semi-distracted “Hmm?” The very response he isn't looking for.

“Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

“The hmmm thing you do. Where it’s really just you buying time while scrambling for an answer.”

Cami looks up, surprised at his accurate read on her. “You don’t know me,” she accuses with a scoff, but there’s a tease in there, a smile on her face.

“Yes I do,” he’s behind her now, arms encircling her waist. Brushing aside strands of brown waves falling lazily down her back. “I love your hair,” he whispers against her neck. “And I do know you. And it scares you.”

Cami freezes up, but his mouth is warm and coaxing, moving along her neck, up to her ear. “But I know you also like it.” She feels his fingers undoing the tiny pearl buttons on the front of her blouse, opening it up, exploring the curves beneath it. Her eyes flutter closed and the tamales are eventually abandoned.

The truth is, her family doesn’t know she's married. Only that she met someone while on a nearly week long bachelorette trip and the relationship became serious very quickly. Some of her friends know. Brooke was the first person she told - “i’m sorry, you’re WHAT? did you say married or buried?”

In bed that night, Cami is wide awake. She stares up at the ceiling, her mind busy, always so busy. As if catching up for all the time it lost when she bludgeoned it into submission with reality tv. She thinks of Thanksgiving. How it’s the first year without her dad, how it’ll be the first holiday season without him. No big booming voice, no tamale making together. And the stories he plays on repeat. In the past, she’d roll her eyes with a teenage petulance that always emerged when back home and a groan of “Dad, you tell this story every year.” Now, she’d give anything to hear it again.

His favorite one was how he and her mom met, which happened to be in November. He swears it was love at first sight, still remembering every minute detail right down to, “She had hair down to her butt, it looked like freshly curled ribbon. She had the best laugh, it sounded like a donkey.” The latter always earned a glare from his wife. “And six months later, I asked her to marry me.” he always said she was the love of his life.

Cami turns on her side and stares at her husband. She thinks of their first meeting. Lowered inhibitions. The scent of sunblock. Booze, laughter (the first real laughter she’d experienced in months). The immediate passion and heat between them. And beneath all of that, gratefulness, abrupt and so intense it nearly brought tears to her eyes when it hit her. The parts of her heart she cauterized to block the pain were no longer numb. She could still feel excitement and happiness and desire. an exchange of "i love you" coincided with that realization. Then a wedding. No dad there to walk her down the aisle. And not for the first time, Cami worries if she’s conflated gratefulness for love.