The Proposal

"Yes!"

The word hung in the air like a balloon let off too early. Dexter just froze, one knee still on the sand, his hand still wrapped around his shoelace. He looked up at me with this expression I'd never heard, like I'd spoken some foreign word.

"What?" he said.

My heart was racing as if it was trying to come out through my throat. Sunsetting behind him was orange and pink, the sort of perfect thing you read about in movies. I had been so sure. The way that he had acted all weekend, kinda nervous and fidgety. The nice dinner last night. All this beach walk like a romance film.

"I. I thought you were." I gestured at him, still down with his shoe.

He quickly stood up, brushing sand off his knee. "Celia, I was tying my shoe."

Oh.

Oh no.

"Right," I said, trying not to make my voice squeak. "Of course you were."

We simply stood there eternally. A couple and a dog walked by, and I was trying to figure out if they could see how ridiculous this was. Like the air around us was blushing for us.

Dexter comes and releases this laugh that isn't much of a laugh. More like something you do when you have no clue what else to do. "So, um."

"We have to return," I said hastily. "It's dark."

Striding down to the hotel was torturous. Our footfalls in the sand were too loud. I couldn't help but remember how anticipating this weekend, how I'd packed this dress I never wear and even toted the good perfume. How I'd been dropping hints for months now about my friend Keiko's engagement ring.

In my room, I went straight into the bathroom and glared at myself in the mirror. My cheeks got red, but not from the sun. When I came out, Dexter was sitting on the end of the bed, hands clasped between his knees.

"So," he said. "That was."

"Mortifying?"

"I was gonna say unexpected."

I sat down next to him, with room between us. "I feel like an idiot."

"You're not stupid."

"I literally nodded for you to tie your shoe, Dex."

He was quiet for a minute. Then he replied, "Were you expecting me to propose?"

My stomach flipped. This was it—the conversation we'd been sidestepping for I don't know how long. "I don't know. Maybe. I mean." I played with the comforter. "We've been together three years."

"Yeah."

"And all our friends are getting married."

"yeah."

"And you've been odd all weekend. Like, nervous odd."

He whirled around to confront me. "I have been odd."

"So what's going on?"

Dexter pushed his hands through his still-disheveled hair from the beach wind. "I've been thinking a lot about us lately. About where we're going."

My heart started doing its climbing thing again, but different this time. Fearful different.

"And?"

"I don't know if I'm ready to be married, Celia. Like, at all. The whole thing creeps me out."

There it was. What I'd been shoving out of my head for months. "Oh."

"It's not that I don't love you."

"But you do not want to marry me."

"I don't know if I want to marry anybody. Right now, anyway."

I had something inside me snap. Not break, precisely, but like if you drop a plate and it acquires this hairline fracture that you can scarcely perceive. "How long have you been feeling this way?"

"Honestly? Since Keiko's engagement party. All these people were asking us when we were going to do it, and I just. I felt trapped."

"Trapped." I said the word as though it tasted bad.

"That's not the correct word. Pressured, perhaps?"

I got up and moved over by the window. The beach was empty now except for a few teens around a bonfire. "So what does that do for us?"

"I don't know."

"That's not very helpful, Dex."

"I know."

I whipped back around. He was still sitting there, looking bewildered. "Even want to attempt to solve it?"

"Yeah. I do. I just. I need time to think about what I want without everyone else's agendas, you know?"

"And what am I supposed to do in the meantime while you're trying to figure that out?"

"I don't know."

"You keep saying that."

"Because I really don't know, Celia. Sorry."

We ate dinner at this little restaurant in the street. It was to be a romantic evening. Instead, we sat facing each other stabbing at our food and enjoying the most honest conversation in years.

"When did we fall out of the habit of talking about the things that mattered?" I asked, twirling pasta on my fork.

"I don't know. Somewhere along the way, I guess."

"Do you recall when we'd sit up till three in the morning just shooting our mouths off for no reason at all?"

"Yes. You'd always get hungry and make those disgusting grilled cheese sandwiches."

"They weren't disgusting."

"They were pretty disgusting."

I almost smiled. I almost. "So what do we do now?"

Dexter put down his fork. "I think maybe we should take a break."

The words hit me like a dash of cold water. "A break."

"Just to get things clear. Both of us."

"You mean, break up."

"I mean. possibly."

I nodded, though my chest felt closed up. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"What else am I going to say? I can't make you feel the same things I do."

"Celia-"

"It's fine. I mean, it's not fine, but it's. honest. At least now I know."

We ate in silence again.

That night, I listened to Dexter sleep. He had easily drifted off to sleep, as he always did. As I lay there looking up at the ceiling in dismay, thinking about how one split-second mistake would change everything. How a yes to the wrong question would be the moment that you'd finally see the answer to the right one.

I'd have liked for him to ask me because I assumed that's what happens next. But there in the dark, I understood I'd loved being engaged more than loving the prospect of being married to Dexter himself. We'd been going through the motions for months at least.

The next morning, we tidied up and returned home quietly. When he delivered me to my apartment, I kissed his cheek and said, "Thanks for being honest."

"Thanks for understanding."

"I don't understand. But I'm trying to."

Two weeks afterwards, Dexter messaged me to tell me that he was relocating to Portland to work. I replied: "Good luck."

And I meant it. Despite the pain and feeling like a fool for not having foreseen it, I meant it.

Prompt inspired by @theinkwell's weekly fiction prompt see here

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