It wasn’t exactly a surprise—Rae had known it was coming—but seeing the rock on her best friend’s hand made it real in a way she hadn’t expected, a way that made Rae miss something she hadn’t lost yet but now knew she was going to lose very soon.
On one level, the level she was proud of, she was genuinely elated that Ellen had found her life partner, that she’d never be ghosted or taken for granted by any of the dating app fools ever again. But on another level, the shameful one, she felt like someone was taking away the closest thing she’d ever had to a sister, like Ellen wasn’t just growing up but actually growing out of her. She was going to be happily married well before thirty, while Rae’s own nuptials still seemed very far off. Dustin’s pace of recovery seemed to be slowing, even regressing, and she wondered, not for the first time, if she was clinging to false hope.
But then the real Dustin would poke out again, with a hug or a hand or a Bellini verse, and she knew that the hope was real, it was true, and it would win in the end. His depression consumed the majority of her thoughts these days, so there wasn’t much space in her mind to sketch out their own wedding, but there was still space in her heart for it, so it stayed safely tucked away as a reverie, loosening her breath when it got stuck on the stress of her not being able to see into the future and verify that it had all worked out.
Dustin had only grunted when Rae recounted the engagement news to him. Rae was learning to understand grunt quite fluently, and she was sure that it was a disapproving grunt, an acrid grunt, but she hoped she was wrong.
Tonight he was lying on the couch, wearing just boxers and headphones, in the same position as when Rae had left to take a long walk across the Williamsburg Bridge and back, in need of fresh air. The only differences were that the window blinds were now drawn and two beer cans had appeared on the coffee table.
“Dustin?” She walked over and sat on the edge of the couch, placing a hand on his bare shoulder.
Slowly he opened his eyes, as if breaking some invisible adhesive seal. His facial scruff was bordering on beard territory. He looked as bearish as the current stock market sentiment.
He slid his headphones down around his neck, not taking them off altogether. “What?”
“Ready to go to the party?”
“Do I look ready?”
She softened her voice the best she could. “It’s not for me to say what you should or shouldn’t wear.”
“But it is for you to say that I have to go?”
“I didn’t say you have to go. I said it would mean a lot if you came.”
“Word trickery.” He wasn’t slurring, but his spacing was off. “You’re making me go.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Good. Because I’m not.”
Rae tried to count to five before she answered but only made it to two. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to. Ellen hates me anyway.”
“Would it kill you to make an effort?”
She regretted the question immediately.Kill.The verb articulating her worst fear. She didn’t think things were that bad, but no one who lost someone to suicide ever did. Rae was still pouring over all the online articles, trying to train her eye for hindsight warning signs.
“You could just come for half an hour,” she tried. “There’s going to be an oyster bar and everything. Just pop in and out.”
Dustin’s voice hardened even more, bouncing hollowly off all the walls between them. “So I can listen to everyone telling us that we’ll be next to get engaged? No thanks.”
Rae blinked, then blinked again, with an absurd kind of hope that closing her eyes might change what her ears had heard. “What?” she asked, though she’d understood him with piercing precision.
“Don’t insult my intelligence,” Dustin said, almost sneering now. “I know you have your little scheme to get married by thirty.”
Rae felt like she’d been slapped. She wanted to slap back, but that would just be cruel, hitting someone who was already down, so she turned the fury inward. She must’ve set some of the marriagepressure on Dustin’s sunken shoulders, making him feel like being her boyfriend wasn’t enough for her. Or maybe it had been her mom’s tactless hints that she wanted to be around to see her grandkids grow up, or even his own mom’s comments over New Year’s about how it was about time Dustin brought home a nice girl and settled down like his brothers.
It all felt so thoughtless now, like rubbing salt on Dustin’s open wounds.
“I don’t have a scheme,” Rae said, holding one of his hands in both of hers. “I don’t care when we get married.” She meant it, too, in this moment. The whole timeline of rushing to close the deal felt incredibly misdirected, some kind of banker formula forcing her life into a tiny box when the most beautiful love stories spilled freely in their own shape and time. Her corporate side got the worst of her sometimes, but her creative side always won out in the end. Or at least she wanted it to win out.
“Ifwe get married,” Dustin corrected.
“If,” Rae repeated, nodding fervently to show she believed the word swap, that it wasn’t crushing her inside, even though it was. “We aren’t following in Aaron and Ellen’s footsteps, and that’s fine. More than fine. But let’s just go over to the party and say a quick hi. It would mean so much to them.”
“Rae,” Dustin said, and she cringed at how he used her name to end the conversation rather than start it. “I’m not going.”
