My Boyfriend Proposed a Go-Dutch Wedding; I Agreed, He Knelt

While we were planning the wedding, Roy Delgado insisted we split every cost.

He laid his hand flat on the stack of receipts, and his reasoning was airtight.

Marriage is a two-person thing. It wouldn't be fair for me to carry every expense alone.

I looked at him and didn't argue.

Seven years together. I didn't want it to turn ugly over something like this.

He opened his laptop right away and pulled up a detailed spreadsheet, every number worked out to two decimal places.

With everything laid out, my share came to a hundred and eight thousand, eight hundred.

I paid it, and I thought that was the end of it.

Until the wedding itself, when the officiant reached the vows.

"Mr. Delgado, do you take Miss Henson to be your wife, for richer, for poorer?"

With every eye on him, Roy hesitated a moment, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a handheld calculator.

"The venue just told me they've added two tables at the last minute."

"Thirteen of the guests are from the bride's side, seven from the groom's."

In the silence, the calculator reciting each figure sounded unbearably loud.

Then he held the yellow payment code up in front of my face.

"Split per head, I've fronted four thousand six hundred sixteen dollars and forty-six cents for you."

"Send the money first. We'll pick the ceremony back up after."

When I didn't move, his childhood friend, the self-proclaimed feminism expert, spoke up on his behalf.

"These days it's about equality between men and women. Going Dutch isn't about the money, it's about respect."

The bridesmaid dress she had on cost a hundred and eighty thousand.

Ninety thousand of that had come out of my pocket.

I swallowed the I do sitting in my throat.

Scanned the code, sent the money, clean and quick.

Then I turned around, took out that stack of bills again, and threw it down in front of them.

"Since you love doing the math, let's do it properly."

1.

Something flickered across Roy's face, alarm, and he grabbed my hand and dropped his voice low.

"This is not the time for you to throw a tantrum."

"There are a lot of people watching. Let's finish the wedding first."

His grip was hard, his knuckles grinding into the bone, the pain climbing up my wrist.

So he did know perfectly well what mattered and what could wait.

He'd simply chosen the worst possible moment to humiliate me anyway.

I shook his hand off and gave a cold laugh.

"So when I settle accounts it's a scene, but when you do it, it's just business?"

He frowned, his whole face disapproving.

"That's different."

"We went over the earlier bills together. You signed off on them."

"Dredging all of that up now, if that isn't making a scene, what is it?"

Sophie Swanson stood beside him, holding up the hem of her dress, chin high.

"Roy, she just wants to use the wedding to make a show of herself. Don't indulge her."

"The most important thing for a woman is independence. A leech who only knows how to cling to you and drain you dry doesn't deserve to walk into the Delgado family."

I looked her up and down.

The bridesmaid dress she was wearing cost thirty times what my own gown had.

The day of the fittings, she'd picked this one out at a glance.

Roy had swiped his card without so much as looking.

"Doesn't matter what it costs. What matters is that you like it."

When he handed me that bill, my heart gave a jolt.

"The bridesmaid dress costs more than the bride's gown? Who exactly is getting married here, her or me?"

He'd answered with a careless grunt, only pressing me to sign quickly.

"Now isn't the time to fight over this."

"Sophie loved the style, not the price tag."

"You only get one wedding. Don't be so stubborn over a little money."

My pen hovered over the signature line, and the gowns he'd vetoed flashed through my mind.

"This one's too flashy. We're getting married, not entering a beauty pageant."

"This one's over budget. Practical and affordable is always the safest choice."

Looking and looking, he'd finally settled on a plain, ordinary off-the-shoulder gown.

Tag price, six thousand.

Roy briskly transferred me three thousand, then turned and took Sophie off to pick out jewelry.

"Your dress is grand. You'll need some pieces to carry it."

That night, when we got back, he held the receipt out in front of me.

"The bridesmaid's accessories. Check it over, and if it's fine, give me the money now."

I took it and glanced down, and the zeros after the total in the bottom right corner were too many to count.

The anger in me began to swell.

I threw the receipt back in his face.

"Who exactly are you marrying?"

He rubbed the space between his brows, his eyes scolding me for being childish.

"Sophie went out of her way to make time to be a bridesmaid. Why do you keep nickel-and-diming over this?"

"Darlene Henson, don't be so petty."

I laughed once.

Of everything spent on this whole wedding, less than ten percent had gone toward me.

And now he was blaming me for not being generous enough.

In the end I gave him the money anyway.

I just wanted to see how much he was actually willing to spend on Sophie.

But just now, he hadn't even forgotten to tally the bill in the middle of his own vows.

The calculator reciting each number, every person down there heard it clearly.

Every figure that popped out of it landed like a slap across my face.

Making all my patience up to this point look like nothing but a joke.

I pulled off the veil and dropped it on the floor. My voice left no room for argument.

"Until this account is settled, there's no wedding today."

The room broke into an uproar.

The murmuring rolled up onto the stage like a rising tide.

Something like embarrassment flickered across Roy's face.

I looked away and hid the struggle in my eyes.

The truth was, Roy hadn't always been like this.

Seven years together, and we'd never once fought over money.

Anything I looked at twice while we were out shopping would be sitting in our living room the next day.

Back then he loved to say it.

"When you love someone, you buy her the things she loves most and the best of everything."

The gifts piled up at home until there was no room left for them.

Then Sophie came back.

She started loudly preaching her whole leading-lady independence theory.

She branded a woman like me, who accepted gifts, as a self-degrading kept wife.

Without asking me, she listed everything Roy had ever given me on a secondhand platform at rock-bottom prices.

A friend bought these for his freeloading girlfriend. Cheap, must go.

And every cent from those sales went straight into her own pocket.

Then she got Roy to start building the fine habit of splitting every cost with me, right from the wedding.

She hooked her hand around Roy's arm, her tone looking down on me from above.

"Long-term dependence on someone else only leaves you unable to live on your own."

"You need to help her build the habit of independence. Don't let love make her lose herself."

I thought Roy would refuse.

But he took the whole theory to heart, and then carried it out to the extreme.

He tried to talk me around.

"Sophie's an expert on this feminism stuff. She knows it inside out. Listen to her, you can't go wrong."

"Darlene, I'm doing this for your own good too."

And now every cent he'd saved off me had gone to Sophie.

Roy pulled the stack of bills out of my hand, tore them up in front of me, and threw them in the trash.

"Don't bring up old accounts anymore."

"Be sensible about this. Don't embarrass your parents."

I turned my head toward the floor without thinking.

At the head table sat Roy's parents and Sophie's relatives, and nowhere among them were the two familiar figures I was looking for.

My eyes went cold.

"Roy, where are my parents?"

He pushed his glasses up his nose, his tone matter-of-fact.

"They wouldn't split half the gift money with the Delgados."

"They can't eat at this reception for free."

"Everyone from the Henson side, I talked them out of coming."

Slowly I clenched my fist, the knuckles straining white.

"Then why are Sophie's relatives here?"

"More people makes for a fuller room."

"They came to help out, being kind about it. Stop nitpicking."

Behind him, at some point, Sophie had slipped the ring off the tray and onto her own hand.

"This diamond's nice, plenty of fire to it. One day I'll buy myself one too."

Roy glanced back and didn't stop her.

"If you like it, wear it and have some fun with it for a few days."

I went to snatch it back.

The second my hand shot out, someone smacked it down, hard.

I stared at Roy, my eyes stinging.

"That is my ring."

He pulled out the receipt and the transfer records and shoved them in my face.

"Half of what paid for it is mine too, so I have the right to decide where it goes."

"Giving it to you doesn't make it all yours."

Sophie stood behind him, holding up her phone for a selfie.

The ring pressed against her cheek and smeared into the foundation caked on her face, thick and greasy, never coming clean again.

My chest heaved a few quick times.

"Fine."

"Then marry her instead."

But the moment I gathered up my skirt and turned, everything in front of me lurched into a spin.

My hand grabbed at Roy's sleeve on instinct, and the next second I dropped into darkness.

When I woke again, everything in front of me was a blur of white.

Mom and Dad stood by the bed, their eyes a little red.

I blinked. My voice came out hoarse.

"What happened to me?"

Hearing me, Mom came over and took my hand.

"The doctor said you're sensitive in your pregnancy and can't handle strong emotional swings. You fainted."

Pregnancy...

My hand moved to my flat stomach.

No wonder I'd felt so tired all through the wedding preparations, no appetite either.

I'd thought I was just overworked.

I closed my eyes.

But this child had come at the worst possible time.

"Where's Roy?"

At the sound of his name, Dad's face went cold.

"Hmph. By now I'd guess he's just finished the ceremony."

He handed me his phone, a wedding video playing on the screen.

Under a shower of falling petals, Roy knelt on one knee and, with a devout look on his face, slid the ring onto Sophie's finger.

Back when we were planning the ceremony, I'd mentioned the petal-shower moment to Roy. He'd taken one look at the price and waved it off.

"Poor value for money. Be rational. Don't pay for a passing mood."

Now Sophie mentioned it in passing, and he'd added it without blinking.

"Why is she the bride now?"

Dad couldn't hold it in and swore out loud.

"Roy said the ceremony program was all set and couldn't be refunded."

"Sophie said she'd never been married, so it was a good chance to give it a try."

At the end of it, he let out a sigh.

"He never had you in his heart at all!"

Lying there in bed, I only felt my heartbeat quicken, from anger.

The door to the room opened.

Roy and Sophie walked in, one after the other.

Before a single word was said, a payment slip was handed over first.

"I paid the checkup fees on my way in."

"Four hundred six total. Remember to transfer me two hundred three later."

I looked up at him, trying to find some trace of the man he used to be.

"Roy, I'm pregnant."

His hand kept punching the calculator, not even lifting his eyes.

"I know. That's exactly why I'm covering half the cost."

"From now on, prenatal checkups, delivery, opening the file, all of it, we split everything Dutch."

"During the postpartum month, don't hire a helper. Let your mom take care of you. Don't buy too many supplements either. Just enough to get by."

Beside me, Dad was breathing hard, veins standing out on his arms.

I propped myself up and sat, and a sudden dragging pain welled up in my belly.

"Is this the kind of life we're going to live from now on?"

Sophie's gaze shot straight at me, the ring still sitting firmly on her finger.

"Being pregnant isn't an excuse to play weak."

"An independent woman should shoulder the burdens of the household together with her husband..."

I cut her off.

"I don't want to hear it from you. I want to hear it from Roy."

He finished the budget list and sent it to my phone.

"Sophie's right. You can't keep leaning on me forever."

I tapped it open and looked.

Every figure was scraped down to the lowest possible cost, right down to the price of each diaper split precisely into two.

I unpinned Roy's chat from the top, pressed the phone dark, and sank back against the bed.

"Never mind. I'll pay for everything from now on."

His hand paused, surprise flickering in his eyes.

But he didn't refuse.

"If you think that's fair, then I don't have a problem with it."

Dad finally couldn't hold back and pointed at him, roaring.

"Roy, are you even a man?"

Mom stood up. Even she, always so even-tempered, lost her temper for once.

"When I put my daughter in your hands, you stood right in front of us and said you'd protect her for the rest of her life!"

Roy's throat bobbed, his tone thick with impatience.

"Sophie says times have changed. The way a husband and wife live together has to change too."

"Stop pushing your old-fashioned ideas on me."

He took Sophie by the wrist, turned, and pushed out the door.

I pressed the call button on the headboard.

A nurse came in.

I laid my hand on my belly, my voice firm.

"Could you help me schedule a termination procedure?"