Married To The Human Calculator Chapter 1

My mother was convinced I’d never get married, primarily because I spent money with the reckless abandon of a trust fund kid—even though I was anything but.

She blamed an $18 DoorDash delivery and a four-dollar latte.

“That $18 takeout?” she’d lecture. “You could have cooked a full meal for ten dollars and had leftovers.”

“A four-dollar coffee? You could just splash some cold water on your face straight from the faucet. If that doesn’t work, give yourself a good, hard slap to wake up.”

She finally shut up the year I brought home a man more financially meticulous than a tax auditor: Landon Bell.

* * *

When I told my best friend, Jess, I was bringing Landon home for the holidays, she still couldn’t wrap her head around it.

She didn’t understand how I—Vera Chen, the girl who viewed cash as disposable confetti—could possibly be with someone so ruthlessly cheap and painfully calculating.

Landon insisted on splitting every joint purchase down to the very last cent. In the months we’d been dating, every single dinner, movie, or road trip was strictly split the bill.

Gifts were a sterile exchange, not a romantic gesture. If I gave him a $150 designer candle, he would immediately look up the exact price and then, without fail, send me back a gift of precisely $150.00 in value. No more, no less.

Jess was still staring, waiting for an explanation.

I rolled my eyes, pulling my suitcase onto the bed. “A girl’s gotta love what she loves, Jess. You might not like cilantro, but I do.”

I ignored her skeptical silence and focused on packing. Since graduating college and starting work, I rarely went home, usually only making the pilgrimage for a long weekend or the major winter holidays.

Just a few days ago, my mother, Eleanor, had sent her usual passive-aggressive text: “Your cousin’s son is already running around. I haven’t even seen a photo of a boyfriend.”

I hadn’t told her about Landon right away, afraid she’d get her hopes up for nothing. But after six solid months, I felt secure enough to present him to the family.

Before we left, I gave her a quick call. “Mom, I’m on my way. And yes, I’m bringing a boyfriend this year.”

As expected, she was ecstatic, cutting me off before I could finish and already shouting the news to the rest of the family—the extended clan was notoriously nosy.

It wasn't until we were almost boarding that I realized I forgot to mention one detail: “We’re taking the regional train, not the express. It’ll take a few hours longer.”

The regional train was Landon’s idea. When he pulled up the ticketing site, he noted the slower, regional ticket was exactly one-third the price of the high-speed one.

“The extra hours?” he'd said with a shrug. “You can watch a movie or just sleep it off. It passes quickly.”

Given my mother’s lifelong crusade against my spending habits, his logic, infuriating as it was, was sound.

I sent her a quick text to update her. The three dots indicating she was typing flashed on the screen for a long time. Then they disappeared. Then they came back.

Finally, her reply arrived: “Just keep an eye on your luggage.”

It was a small miracle. Finding out I had a boyfriend had clearly put her in an excellent mood. Usually, any self-made decision, even a minor one like swapping a shirt color she requested for one that suited her better, resulted in a verbal thrashing. Now, she was offering a rare moment of care.

I couldn’t wait to get home. I had another piece of good news to tell them all.