Week 1 of 52 Short Stories

“Will you marry me?” 

The second I look up at what I thought would be the overjoyed face of my partner, I know I’ve made a mistake.

Tears are streaming down their face, but we’ve been together for over five years. I know what their happy tears look like. 

“Sam…” they manage to sob out. I now wish I was anywhere but here. It’s clear they wish the same. “... I can’t.”

It’s now I replay everything that’s ever happened in our relationship. Trying to see what signs I missed, what I got wrong. 

“It’s not you. It’s me.” 

With that, they basically drive a stake through my heart. I realize I’m still on one knee. Still holding the ring out. I close the ring box and drop my hand. I’m still too shocked to stand. If I try I think I’ll fall, so I stay one knee and drop my eyes along with the ring. “I don’t understand.” 

They seem torn between getting down on their knees to look me in my eyes or bolting away, but in the end, they too stay still. We are frozen in what could have been the happiest moment of our lives, instead it’s the end of “our” life. Once we part it will just be mine and theirs. 

 If I look up I will see love in their eyes, but I also will see that there isn’t romantic love, not anymore. And I will wonder when it left and how I missed it. “I haven’t been able to tell you. I couldn’t find the words. And I’m so, so sorry that I couldn’t.” They get down on their knees, apparently wanting to show sincerity, a little too late for our relationship to be anything other than over. “I do love you, Sam. But I can’t marry you. I can’t… I can’t even be with you anymore, because I’m not in love with you, I haven’t been for a while now, and you deserve someone that is. I want that for you. You should want that for you too.” 

I look into their eyes then. They are filled with regret, love, and pity. And I feel my own eyes glaze over. I’m still in love, but the regret and pity in their eyes turn the compassion and love into burning fury. I want to scream. I want to break something or someone. I want to send this pain out of my body into something else. I realize that this is what hate feels like, and I know I’m never going to use that word lightly ever again. 

The venom coursing through me gives me the energy to get up. It’s my turn to look down on them and I feel a spark of satisfaction as they look up at me and see hurt added to the swirl of pity in their eyes. Good. You deserve that pain. 

Later, I will fill ashamed of this malice. I will think about calling them to apologize. I will resentfully agree that it was for the best to know before walking down the aisle. Before the divorce attorneys and asset disputes. 

Would it have been better if when they first fell out of love they let me know? Would it have saved us both time and money and pain and anger? Probably. But they told me before we were so deep in that getting out would have probably killed us both. I will feel like I should thank them for that. 

Years from now, I will think about standing there, looking down at the person I thought was my person, knowing in hindsight they weren’t, and I will send my thanks out into the universe and hope they feel that. I will hope they are in love and loved. I will wish for them all the joys that I had wanted them denied. 

But we are not there now. We are here. I’m standing, they’re kneeling, and though the hurt in their eyes is transforming to fear, I don’t act on my rage. I don’t act at all. The fire that allowed me to stand is still burning. It will burn for a long time. For so long that I don’t quite even realize when it starts to smolder and eventually go out. It will be inside me for years, scouring our memories, searing the good times until they are unrecognizable blackened masses of burnt photographs. Mutual friends will be shocked at how I have so thoroughly destroyed all of the date nights and group hangs that they’ll wonder if I concussed myself while trying to forget. It’s not as dramatic as all that. Most of them will never have to know how easy it is to block out pleasure that’s soured to pain. I both love that for them and envy them for that. 

It takes me an eternity and yet no time at all to gain my voice back, albeit void of any emotion. “What do you want me to say, Alex? Thank you? You’re so kind to think of me now and stop me from marrying the person I love?” 

“You just think you love me.” 

“Don’t tell me my emotions aren’t real. Aren’t genuine. I thought I was going to be spending the rest of my goddamned life with you five minutes ago.” They fail to hold in a small sob. I turn away afraid to see their reaction to my question, “how long have you known?”

“Known?”

“How long have you known that if I asked the question, you’d say no.” 

“I didn’t know for sure until you asked it.”

“Bullshit.” 

“But I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you that it’s over for a few months.”

Whether they meant it to or not, this drives another stake straight through me. They’ve been thinking about ending it for as long as I’ve been planning popping the question. I’m hit again with how far apart our thinking was, and when I’m not blinded by the feeling of betrayal, I’ll see this is the exact opposite. This is their last act of devotion to me. 

“Please leave.” 

“I’m sorry, I wanted to tell you in a better way I really was working myself up to-” 

“Please leave.” 

I can’t look at them. They can’t seem to look away. 

“Are you going to be okay?” The compassion I hear in their voice nearly sends me over into violence. I go to the bar cart we built together. I feel like smashing it, but not as much as I feel the need to drown my pain with whiskey. I’ve decided to not look them in the eyes again for both our sakes. 

“You don’t get to ask me that. Now I want you to leave. Are you going to make me ask again?” 

They don’t. They stand up. They hesitate for a moment, thinking maybe they will give me one last hug, one last kiss on the cheek, one last hand clasped in hand. They decide against it. They know a single touch will cause the contained sorrow to explode from us both. 

I listen to them leave rather than watch. I hear them grab their coat and shoes and take a key out of their pocket. I hear them lock the door, and then slide the key under. They pause again, at the locked door that they can no longer unlock, that they are no longer welcome to enter. And then they walk away. Down the hall, then the stairs. I don’t hear them leave the building, I’m too many floors up for that, but I imagine them walking out the front door, still feeling the weight of what just happened. Feeling it for a block, two, three. It will take longer than they thought, but it will slowly lift. 

In a week from now, they will ask a mutual friend to get in touch about getting things they left at my place. The friend will inform them it’s already at the friend’s house. I had brought it over a few days ago. It’s all packed on the bar cart we built together. 

I can build a new one. And I will build a new one. It will be in a few years, it will be with the person I say yes to when they ask a question I’d sworn to myself I’d never ask again, until meeting this person. I had been days away from asking them myself. 

A decade from now, a mutual friend will ask if they can invite Alex to their wedding. It will have been so long since I’ve thought about them, it will take a moment to remember what Alex they could be talking about, but when I do, I’ll say sure.