After Catching My Fiancé Begging His Mistress to Stay

The rooftop smelled like white peonies and rain that hadn't fallen yet.

I got there forty minutes early. I'd told the florist twice where the candles should go, and she'd nodded the patient nod people give brides. I wasn't a bride yet. Three years to the day, and I was about to fix that.

The dress was custom. Silk so quiet it didn't even rustle. I'd had the seamstress tuck the velvet box into a hidden pocket at my hip so Caiden wouldn't see it until I wanted him to. Manhattan blinked behind me, all those gold windows like applause waiting to happen. My heels sank a little into the soft grout between the tiles. I didn't move them. I wanted to be exactly here when he stepped off the elevator.

The elevator chimed.

He came out in the navy shirt I'd bought him for his birthday, sleeves rolled, hair still a little damp at the temples. He saw me, and for a half second his face did the thing I'd been chasing for three years — surprise, softness, the small private smile that I'd convinced myself belonged only to me.

Then it tightened.

I didn't notice in time. I was already walking toward him, already lifting the box, already opening my mouth.

"Caiden." My voice didn't shake. I was proud of that, later, in the way you're proud of small things on bad nights. "Three years ago you asked me to share a cab in the rain. I've shared everything since. Marry me."

The ring caught the candlelight. A plain platinum band. He hated showy things.

He went still. Not the still of a man overwhelmed. The still of a man calculating. His eyes drifted maybe an inch to the left of mine, the way they did when a server got an order wrong and he didn't want to embarrass them.

"Dani." Soft. Almost kind. "I'm not ready. I don't think I will be."

The peonies kept smelling like peonies. The skyline kept doing what skylines do.

He stepped closer. Kissed my forehead. His lips were warm and dry and they stayed a beat too long, like he was apologizing in a language I didn't speak yet.

"I love you," he said. "I just need time."

And then he left.

The elevator chimed again, closing this time. I stood there in a thirty-thousand-dollar dress with an open ring box in my palm and a waiter pretending very hard to fold napkins twenty feet away. My fingers wouldn't close the box. I watched them, like they belonged to a stranger, until the velvet finally snapped shut on its own.

The peonies. The peonies were absurd.

***

I didn't cry in the cab. I didn't cry in the elevator up to our apartment. I peeled the dress off in the dark and left it in a white heap by the bed, like something that had drowned.

Near midnight I made him tea. Lavender, the way he liked. I told myself we