“Okay,” I say, hitting send on one last e-mail.
The whoosh of it leaving my outbox feels louder than it should.
“Perfect. We’re all having dinner together later—are you coming?” Ben says, still standing there, leaning against my desk.
“Not today.” A pause follows anyway… thin, stretched tight. “I’m having dinner with my… boyfriend.”
There it is.
That shift.
It’s subtle, but I feel it immediately, like the room inhales and forgets to exhale.
“Oh.” Ben tries for casual. It does not go well. He knows my relationship is…to say the least…nerve-wracking. Or he’s assuming it. I don’t usually talk much about my private life, but the fact that I spend most of my time here at work must say it all. “Uh… where?”
“At the Plaza.”
Silence again.
He blinks. Once. Twice. Processing. “Um,” he says, and now there’s something dangerously close to delight creeping into his voice. “That sounds like a proposal.”
My laugh is automatic. Defensive. A reflex more than a reaction. “Oh, I don’t think so.”
But the laugh wobbles on the way out, betraying me. Because the thought is already there. Has been there. Sitting quietly in the back of my mind for weeks, months, years, maybe. I’ve just been very good at not turning around to look at it directly.
Ben’s expression flickers, just for a second. “Don’t you want him to?” he asks, trying and failing to sound nonchalant.
If I want to marry Matthew?
Well, we’ve been together for seven years now.
Seven years is long enough to know someone’s coffee order, their worst habits, the exact cadence of their stomps in a hallway. Long enough to build a life that looks suspiciously like permanence. Long enough to wonder why it still isn’t. Why he never proposed.
“I mean…” Ben studies me now in a way that feels a little too perceptive for nine in the morning. “The Plaza is kind of peak proposal territory.” He wiggles his eyebrows, like that somehow softens the statement.
It doesn’t.
“Oh, please no, no one marries anymore anyway. Marriage means trouble. You should be aware that a significant portion of our revenue comes from divorce cases, Ben.” I wave a hand, too fast, too dismissive.
If I move quickly enough, maybe the truth won’t catch up?
The truth that Matthew and I don’t work out?
The truth that I’ve wanted kids and family for…years?
“I just think he wanted to go out to eat. We do that sometimes.” A beat passes. “Rarely, actually. If I’m being honest.”
Perfect. Now I can feel Benstaringat me, but I don’t meet his eyes. Instead, I turn back to the documents he just gave me, opening the file with more force than necessary—anything to have somewhere else to focus, somewhere safer.
But the moment I read over the files, my breath catches.
A sharp, electric jolt runs through me.
Because what’s on those pages?—
That’s not right.
Koltun Kirillov, I read. My heart is pounding up to my carotid artery now.
