Instead, I nodded, the way I always did, and told myself he had a point.
“I want to do it right.”
Houses were expensive, and his promotion wasn’t final yet.
Marriage was just paperwork anyway, wasn’t it?
That’s the joke Luke liked to make whenever the topic came up at dinner with his family.
“It’s just a piece of paper,” he’d say, grinning. “We’re already a team.”
But I’d noticed, too, how his bank account stayed in his name only, and mine stayed in mine. He called it practical.
“Just for now,” he always added.
“It’s just a piece of paper.”
***