“They’ll stare,” he said quietly.
“Let them choke. You’re coming.”
We walked—okay, rolled—into the gym.
People stared.
A few friends stepped up. Moved chairs. Cracked dumb jokes until he laughed.
My best friend Jenna ran over in her glittery dress, hugged me, then leaned down to him.
“You clean up nice, wheelchair boy,” she teased.
We danced with me standing between his knees, his hands resting on my hips, swaying beneath cheap lights.
I remember thinking: if we can survive this, nothing can break us.
After graduation, we married in his parents’ backyard.
Fold-out chairs. Costco cake. A clearance-rack dress.
No one from my family came.
I kept glancing toward the street, half-expecting my parents to appear in a storm of judgment.
They didn’t.
We exchanged vows under a fake arch.
“In sickness and in health.”
It didn’t feel like a promise.
It felt like a description of the life we were already living.
A few years later, we had a baby.
Our son.
