I rubbed the muscle between my shoulder and neck. It was thick with tension. I’d already peeled off my wet clothes and wrapped a towel around my waist. It was fluffy, something I hadn’t required before living with my girlfriend, but I had come to appreciate it along with the smell of her lotion on the sheets and the boxes of tissue in every room of the apartment. Even the clutter on her nightstand had become comforting.
I became glaringly aware of the drawer in the nightstand. It held only one item—a small dark red box. Inside was the ring I fantasized putting on her finger, the ring she’d wear on our wedding day, fitting perfectly over a matching band. I’d purchased it two years before and taken it out as many times.
We had a long road trip ahead, and I was going to take it along for the ride. Our drive to Kansas would mark the third time the box would be seeing the outside of that drawer, and I wondered if it would return to its home. I wasn’t sure what it might mean if it did, but I couldn’t keep wondering and waiting.
My hands felt scratchy and dry when I interlaced my fingers and looked at the floor, wondering if I should produce a flowery proposal like last time or if I should just go for it. Asking her to marry me this time would amount to so much more. If she said no, she would have to talk about what was next. I knew America wanted to get married someday because she’d talked about it to me and to Abby with me in the room.
Maybe she just doesn’t want to marry me.
Worrying that it would never be the right time for America to say yes had become a daily torment. No was such a tiny word, yet it had affected me. It had affected us. But I loved her too much to push the subject. I was too afraid she would say something I didn’t want to hear.
Then there were the tiny scraps of hope—like her talking about the future and the larger confirmations, like moving in together. But even as we’d unpacked the boxes, I’d wondered if she had just agreed to get an apartment because she was too stubborn to admit to her parents that they were right about us not being ready.
Still, the fear of the truth kept me from asking. I loved her too much to let her go that easily. She would have to fight to leave as much as I would fight to keep her. I questioned my sanity for even considering proposing a third time, and I feared it would be the first agonizing day of many where I would have to learn to live without her.
If she said yes though, it would make pushing through all that fear to ask worth it.
“Baby?” America called. The front door closed behind her words.
“In the bedroom,” I replied.
She opened the door and flipped on the light. “Why are you sitting in the dark?”
“Just got off the phone with Janice. She wasn’t super happy about the late notice, but she gave me Friday off.”
“Sweet!” she said, dropping her towel. “I’m going to take a shower. Want to join me? Or are you going to the gym?”
“I can go in the morning,” I said, scrambling to my feet.
America tugged on a string as she walked, and her bikini top fell to the ground. She paused a few steps later to shimmy the bottoms down her thighs, and then she let them fall the rest of the way.
I followed behind her, picking up pieces of clothing as I went. She reached beyond the curtain to turn the knob and frowned at me while I tossed her clothes into the hamper.
“Really? You’re cleaning up after me?”
I shrugged. “It’s just a habit, Mare. It’s compulsive. I can’t help myself.”
“How did you live with Travis?” she asked.
Thinking about Travis immediately made the beginnings of a hard-on disappear. “It was a lot of work.”
“Is living with me a lot of work?”
“You’re not that bad. It’s preferable. Trust me.”
She pulled back the curtain and then pinched my towel, pulling until the tucked portion was free. The fluffy cotton was on the ground, and then so was America.