The cellist plays. The restaurant watches. Alex is on his knee with a ring he picked alone in a*****e I’ll never see, and I am wearing a safety-pinned blouse with another man’s bite mark under my collar.
He takes my hand. Slides the ring on. I let him because my body has stopped taking orders from my brain. It fits. Of course it fits.
“Alex.” My voice is splitting. I can hear it. “I can’t.”
His smile holds for one more second. One more breath. Then the warmth drains out of it degree by degree, the way colour leaves a sky at dusk, and what’s left is his face without anything protecting it.
“What?”
“I can’t marry you.” Tears roll down my cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”
He stays on his knee. The room is watching. The cellist has stopped and the silence is the loudest thing I’ve ever heard.
“Yo
