Scribbling Women & the Real-Life Romance Heroes Who Love Them

by Hope Tarr

  It was hard enough to convince my friends and family that I, their little feminist, their perpetually soapbox-perched firecracker, was actually asking for help with seeking a husband. Growing up in India some twenty years ago, this was entirely normal in most families. But, while not entirely unheard of, arranged marriages weren’t quite the norm in mine. My grandmother, who was one of the first “lady doctors” in post-colonial India, had married a man of her choosing and been banished from her home and family for her decision. My cousins and friends responded to the news that I was actually entertaining the thought of letting my parents look for a husband for me with an intervention, much like one they might have staged had I been on drugs. My mother’s first reaction was to list all my friends who happened to be male as possible romantic interests. “What about X, he’s a doctor and so handsome?” “What about Y, he’s been sweet on you since tenth grade?”

  But I was determined, even in the face of ominous warnings. “With your upbringing, you could never handle the male-dominated arranged-marriage scene!” (Yes, there is a scene.) And the shock. “Are you crazy? Why would you want to marry a man who can’t find his own wife?” (Yes, the irony.) As for the male domination, in my startling naiveté I actually hoped for someone to demand a dowry so I could shut them down and teach them a thing or two. What was the point of doing something so very off-the-wall if I couldn’t fight and fell a few social dragons along the way? As for the shock, well, how else was I going to meet men with the express guarantee that they were in it for the long haul?

  But the naysayers had been right. The path to an arranged marriage wasn’t exactly lined with exciting battles against dowry seekers, or with roses, for that matter. Unlike my mother, whose spectacular debut on the arranged-marriage scene resulted in my father wanting to sell his soul for her at first sight, I was paraded in front of a dozen men without quite the same results. Yes, I refused to do my hair or wear lipstick. Yes, I spoke my mind and showed them the me who was looking for unconditional acceptance, not the me who wanted to reel someone in and then reveal my full splendor, bit by bit (as advised, in all sincerity, by one of my aunts). What was the point of turning this most romantic quest for a soul mate into a transaction, if I couldn’t at least be honest? Although in truth, I wanted what everyone saw as transactional to be romantic. I wanted a man to take one look at me, at my unbrushed hair, my unpainted lips, my unvarnished opinions, and love them enough to take the leap with me straight to the altar.

  For the few months before the thirteenth man was set up for me to meet, every conversation I had with every human being I encountered inadvertently snaked its way to my Husband Search. “Has the click happened yet?” my grandmother asked with her hawk-eyed accuracy. “Have you decided to get off your high horse and adjust your expectations?” random relatives asked without having any idea what my expectations even were. “Are you ready to give up this madness?” my most loyal friends asked. To be honest, I was close. Of the twelve men I had considered, only one had come close to breaking my heart, which in itself was pretty darned heartbreaking, given that these men came highly recommended through my parents’ impressive and extensive social network.

  When my mother told me about Boy Number Thirteen (“boy,” by the way, is what all marriageable men in India are called for reasons only a social anthropologist can explain), all I could do was groan. Thirteen was my last lucky number, one, eight, nine, and eleven already having passed without altering my half-souled state. My levels of hope were low, my backup plan in place—my GRE taken, my grad-school apps ready to go. I went running, mostly to torture my mother by being late. She’d taken to reading me my numbers every day. “It’s been ten boys. Eleven. Good Lord, is he the thirteenth one already?” Nothing like an arranged marriage to complicate a perfectly healthy mother-daughter relationship.

  When I arrived at my parents’ country club to meet yet another potential soul mate, I was not just on my last remaining lucky number, I was on the last dredges of hope. I was also a good fifteen minutes late. My knee throbbed from having fallen during my run of rebellion, and the bottom of the loose salwar pants I had pulled on in a hurry had slipped over my foot and tangled in my shoe. I saw my future husband for the first time with my leg kicked up, in the middle of yanking my pants off my shoe, not to mention the unbrushed hair and the absence of lipstick. To this day, he insists he didn’t notice, which pretty much sums up why my soul is still snapped tight into his after close to two decades. Who can resist a man who sees none of the madness that is you?

  So here was this “boy,” a good seven years older than me, down from America in want of a wife, not yet in possession of a fortune per se but in possession of a couple of master’s degrees, and the hint of a dimple in one cheek. And an appetite. As we talked into the wee hours of morning, he proceeded to eat everything on the menu without a hint of self-consciousness. Being denied authentic Indian food in America will do that to you. And he laughed at everything I said. And he used an awful lot of the word “yes.” As in, do you like to read? Yes. Do you like to travel? Yes. Movies? Yes. Music? Yes. My future swept up to greet me. I even remember the exact moment when I knew with absolute certainty that I was going to grow old with this man. The lamppost shone down on us as we sat leaning forward on our lawn chairs, empty plates strewn across our table, and he said something about his nephew and smiled the kind of smile that screamed “family over all else,” and that dimple made an appearance.

  Seven days after that, we were married.

  But it almost didn’t happen. He, in his all-American way, left me that night with an “I’ll call you,” which apparently was man-speak for “bye” and didn’t have anything to do with an actual phone being picked up. So, when my mother asked if she should call his family as is the protocol in traditional arranged marriages, I informed her not to bother, because he was going to call (no, not even an arranged marriage can save you from the “will he call?” conundrum). This, of course, led his family to believe that I wasn’t interested. That’s what you get when you try to mooch off centuries-old tradition and mix it freely with the rules of modern-day dating. But thank God for the general bastardization of tradition. His mother threw protocol to the wind and, unlike her son, picked up the phone. And the precarious misunderstanding crumbled, revealing a fact every marriage must invariably learn to live with: a man’s utter inability to communicate.

  But what he lacked in terms of communication, he made up for in terms of enthusiasm. He showed up at my doorstep at five the next morning (very skillfully playing the jet-lag card) and whisked me off to breakfast and then to lunch and then to dinner. Somewhere in the course of that day, he asked me if I wanted to marry him. Amazingly enough, it wasn’t a hard decision, especially not after he went down on one knee on the concrete floor of a parking lot in the middle of a power outage.

  After eighteen years of marriage, I couldn’t tell you why the decision was that easy. Maybe it was the fact that from the first time we met, every time someone asked him for a decision, he involved me in it. Maybe it was the fact that the way he looked at me when I dressed up to go out with him was exactly the way he looked at me when I pulled on my oldest T-shirt and shorts. Maybe it was the fact that our first act of intimacy was him resting his head on my lap. But, whatever it was, there was never a moment of discomfort with him. Never a moment of being strangers.

  Maybe that’s what they mean when they talk about soul mates. Because it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with having common tastes and interests. In the years that have followed, we have disagreed on so much more than we’ve agreed on. He still says yes a lot, but it’s mostly to get me off his back. His appetite, which I had found so very endearing, has been gobbled up by a fifteen-year-long health kick. And if you ask him to tell the story of how we met and married, you’d probably get an entirely different version. But when he talks about our nephews and nieces and our kids, his smile still screams “family over all else.” I still don’t brush my hair, and h
e continues to look at me the exact same way whether or not I do. And after all these years, if you sent me back in time and gave me not just thirteen but thirteen hundred “boys” to choose from, chances are I’d still choose the one who never felt like a stranger.

  Sonali Dev writes Bollywood-style love stories that make a crazy tangle with her life as wannabe supermom and domestic goddess. Sonali lives in the Chicago suburbs with her very patient and often amused husband and two children who demand both patience and humor, and of course her characters who can’t stop doing Bollywood dances inside her head. Sonali’s debut novel, A Bollywood Affair, will be available from Kensington in November 2014. Find her online at www.sonalidev.com.

  Falling for My Husband

  By Jen McLaughlin

  Okay, first things first. One thing you have to know about my husband is this: He’s the least-clumsy person you’d ever meet. The man could fall down the stairs and land on his feet like a cat. It’s ridiculous how non-clumsy he is. I often tease him for this, and he loves to make fun of me for being the complete opposite of agile—aka, a bit of a klutz. I admit this. But the fact that he is as smooth on his feet as he is?

  Well, that makes the story of how we met even more interesting…

  All right, now, picture this. I’m at a party, and it’s dark outside. Drinks are flowing freely and people are chatting everywhere. You know, the way typical college-aged parties tend to be. Outside, there’s a bonfire in the backyard, where most of the party is gathered. The makeshift bar is stationed in the kitchen, so people are going in and out nonstop.

  Now, I’ve been to this house quite a few times, since I’m a close friend of the person who is throwing the party. Recently mixed drink in hand, I walk away from the kitchen and almost crash into this tall guy. He’s just over six-foot, and I’m just over five-foot-one…and a half.

  I’ve never seen him before, but he catches my attention immediately—as well as catching me so I don’t hit the ground. I look up after I regain my balance. He has blond hair and blue eyes, and a smile that makes me hold my breath. Yep. I totally held my breath. Cliché and all.

  We didn’t really talk much at this point in time. I’m a little embarrassed at literally almost falling at this guy’s feet, so I smile and kind of brush past him. I, of course, steal a look back at him, but then head outside. As I walk toward the bonfire, someone stops me to chat.

  To this day, I don’t even remember who it was, because my mind was still on him. The blond guy who’d caught me just moments before. By the time I finish chatting with this unremembered person (sorry, whoever you were), I’m ready to join the party again.

  I sip my drink out of the red Solo® cup (college party, remember?) and head down the hill. After a second, I realize someone is in front of me. It’s dark and I can’t see who it is…but I know one thing…

  He is walking way too fast.

  It is black outside, so he can’t see it, but he is about to hit the dip in the yard that is pretty darn deep. I reach out to try to stop him, but I am too late. He wipes out. Literally wipes out, flat on his butt, and slides down the hill. I stumble after him, trying to catch up, feeling awful for not catching him sooner.

  “Are you okay?” I ask breathlessly, dropping to my knees at his side. It’s not until I am this close that I realize it’s him. The guy from the kitchen.

  He laughs. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  We both stand, and he brushes himself off. I just kind of stand there, being the awkwardly shy girl I’ve always been. He gives me a smile, the type that makes your heart do a flip-flop in your chest, and then heads off to his group of friends, while I head off to mine.

  I didn’t see him again all night long, so I figured that was the end of that.

  Fast-forward to a few nights later. I am waitressing for some extra cash, and I am at work, watching the door for any signs of people coming in. It’s deader than a doornail, I kid you not.

  “Hey, I know you,” someone says from behind me.

  I’d been told there is a new guy starting, but not his name. I turn with a smile. The guy behind me is cute, blond, and has blue eyes. Something about him rings a bell, but I have no idea why or what. “I don’t think so. I’m Jen.”

  We introduce ourselves, and then all night long we chat. He is a graduate of high school and is joining the Marines. He is leaving in August and has a girlfriend. I am a single mom to a baby—long story, there—and staying here. I have a crush on him, I’m not gonna lie, but he has a girlfriend. Case closed. Off-limits.

  So, we do what we can do, under the circumstances. We become close friends.

  This status lasts a long time. We met in the summer, and he left for boot camp that following August. We’ll fast-forward a bit more now…

  He comes back three months later, and we hang out as much as we can. He still has a girlfriend, and I have a boyfriend now, too. Still just friends. He leaves me again, this time heading off for basic training in North Carolina. He calls me every few weeks, just to chat and check in on me, but he is gone. And I miss him.

  Skip forward to Christmas. The holiday comes around, and he stops by on Christmas Eve night. I have a boyfriend now, so I’m therefore unavailable, and I think he is, too…only, he tells me he isn’t. His girlfriend broke up with him earlier in the month, and I hadn’t even known about it until now. He stays late into the night, and we talk and talk for hours, just as we always do when we get together.

  Again, the attraction between us is undeniable. It always is. But it never seems to work out between us, darn it. After all, I am still stuck in Pennsylvania, and he is now moving across the country to Washington state. You can’t get much farther apart than that and remain in the US.

  This is goodbye…again.

  My heart breaks a little when I hug him for what I am sure is the last time.

  He leaves, and I move on, as people tend to do.

  Three months later, I get a phone call from an area code I don’t recognize. I almost don’t answer it. Almost let it go to voice mail. But something tells me to pick up the phone. So…I do. It is him. He is calling to tell me his duty station got changed, and he is now only four hours away, as opposed to a whole country away, and he is coming home that weekend.

  We make plans to get together for dinner, but I never dream anything is going to happen because of it. We’ve been going out to eat together for almost a year now. What makes this time any different? Nothing.

  But then we see each other, and for the first time ever? We are both single.

  I still remember the way my heart sped up when he picked me up that day. The three of us go out to our favorite restaurant—him, me and my daughter—and we talk for hours. Then, after she goes to bed, he sits down on the couch and we snuggle up to watch a movie.

  We get to talking about his breakup with his girlfriend and discuss my life and my singleness—ahem—before we both just…fall silent.

  As if in slow motion, his mouth descends to mine, and the second we kiss, I just know…this is it. This is the man I’ve been waiting for my whole life. He might not live locally, and he might be a Marine, which is a pretty unpredictable life, but I’ve been friends with him for over a year now.

  This. Is. It.

  I know so much about him already, and now I have the chance to find out even more.

  I don’t hesitate. I take the chance I’ve been given.

  Looking back over thirteen years later…we had a rocky start, since we got together right before the World Trade Center got hit by two airplanes, and the world kind of exploded. His job as a Marine introduced a whole new kind of fear into my life, but I wouldn’t have ever walked away from a second of those fears, changes, and heartbreaks.

  All of it added up to be what we are now. We’ve been married for over eleven years, and we have four beautiful children together. We’ve moved across the country, moved back, gotten out of the Marines, changed career fields. We’ve loved. We’ve lost. We’ve fought.

  But one
thing never changed….

  Our love and commitment to one another.

  And it never will.

  Jen McLaughlin is a New York Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal best-selling author. She writes steamy, best-selling New Adult books for the young and young at heart. Her first release, Out Of Line, came out September 10, 2013. It hit both the New York Times and USA Today lists within the first week of release. She also writes best-selling contemporary romance under the pen name Diane Alberts. Visit her online at www.dianealberts.com/jen-mclaughlin.

  Once in a Blue Moon

  By Deanna Raybourn

  They say true love comes along once in a blue moon. And a butterfly can conjure a hurricane a thousand miles away, changing history and landscapes with just a flutter. Personal history can be bewitched by things just as inconsequential. A train not taken, an appointment changed, a door opened a second too late, and events unfold differently, like a map whose contour lines have shifted. If you step off a curb at just the wrong moment, you could be mowed down by a city bus. Or you could be mowed down by love, moving so fast that everything becomes a blur—an Impressionist painting of the life you thought you knew.

  I was nineteen years old when I met my husband in a place I wasn’t even supposed to be. I was a sophomore in college and looking for any excuse to ditch my political science class. “Then come to my communications class instead,” said my friend. “There’s a guy in there you just need to see, he’s that cute.” A chance to see a beautiful boy or an hour of my professor droning on about municipal administration? It wasn’t even close. I grabbed a soda from the vending machine and followed her in. I don’t remember anything about the instructor or what she talked about. Was she even a she? I can’t recall. But I remember the first time I saw him. He was sitting in the front, and I had to walk past him to throw away my soda can. When I chucked it into the trash can, he looked up at me with the most beautiful blue eyes I’d ever seen and said, “You know, you really ought to recycle your aluminum.”