HE SHOULD HAVE LEFT

Alone With It

Kel crashed early that night. He was totally spent—foggy from the relief of finally proposing, after so long just circling it in his head.

Amara stayed awake beside him. She could hear his breathing slow, drifting into sleep. She couldn’t settle. Too many thoughts, all stirred up from the evening. The garnet ring kept catching slivers of light from the window whenever she shifted her hand.

She slipped out quietly, careful not to wake him, and stepped onto their small balcony. The city was quiet, mostly. Just the odd okada horn cutting through, or the distant, stubborn drone of someone’s generator a few houses over.

Her phone rested in her hand. She hovered over Richard’s name, not sure why she lingered there. It was more instinct than choice.

I’m engaged, she typed. But then she deleted it. Too big. Too finished. It sounded like she wasn’t even sure how she wanted to feel about all this, let alone announce it.

Big news tonight, she tried instead, and sent it before she could rethink.

His reply came almost instantly. It always did, and she realized, in a way she hadn’t bothered to admit to herself, that she counted on that. She’d stopped noticing how Kel’s replies had gotten slower, his hands always busy, stained and tired after another day at the shop that wouldn’t leave him alone.

Oh? Do tell, Richard wrote back.

She just looked at the message, thumb paused, the unanswered question bright on the screen. In the bedroom, Kel rolled over in his sleep, mumbling something she didn’t catch, one arm groping for the spot she’d just vacated. Even in sleep, he kept reaching.

She watched him for a moment. That tugged at something sharp inside her—too close to guilt for comfort. She flinched.

Kel proposed, she typed, finally. Then added, like she was being accused, even though no one was: We’ve been together three years. It was going to happen eventually.

Richard didn’t answer right away. She watched those little dots come and go a couple of times before his reply arrived.

Congratulations, he wrote. Then, after a beat: Does this change anything between us?

She stared at his message, feeling the whole weight of it drop into her lap. Honest, direct—more honest than anyone had been with her all night. More real than her mother’s joyful phone call not half an hour ago. More honest than how she was already rehearsing the story to tell her sister tomorrow.

Does this change anything between us?

Yes. Of course it changed things. She owed him the real answer. She owed Kel that, too. She owed herself. But with the night air warm around her, the ring glinting every time she moved her hand, she just wasn’t ready. She couldn’t give up the old, easy rooftop evenings or the lighter version of herself that only got to exist with Richard.

Let’s talk about it later, she replied. She was buying time—she was good at that. Had built a career out of that exact sentence; soothing, promising nothing real.

Sure, Richard wrote back, and again: Congrats. Really.

She set the phone facedown on the balcony table, a little too hard. The thump sounded loud in all that quiet. She hugged her knees, staring out at the dark below.

She replayed the night in her mind: the proposal, the ring, the flicker of doubt she felt before saying yes—and how she said yes anyway. She meant it. And still, a part of her was already talking to someone else.

She loved Kel. That was never the question. Not even through the mess, not through the late nights, not through—whatever you wanted to call what happened on those rooftops with Richard. She loved him simply, in a way she didn’t love much else, no calculus or secret ledger about what it cost.

But now, with the ring cool against her skin, she could see it: loving him and being faithful to him had split in her head, gone onto separate tracks. She’d convinced herself they’d never run together—never crash. Tonight, she felt them start to bend toward each other. She got scared. Scared enough that her first instinct, before joy or guilt or anything clear, was to check if that other track—Richard’s replies, those nighttime conversations—was still open.

Funny, how easy it was to say yes to Kel. Maybe because of love, maybe because saying yes meant she didn’t have to think about the question anymore. The ring was as much relief as romance—a final answer she didn’t have to wrestle with.

Except, here she was, wrestling with it anyway. Sitting out in the dark, staring at her silent phone.

Eventually she slid back into bed. Kel cuddled her close, half-asleep, murmured her name. He was at peace. Amara, not so much. She lay there, wide awake, the ring a strange, heavy thing on her finger.

She made herself a promise—one she desperately wanted to believe: She would end things with Richard. Properly. Before the wedding. Before it became something that Kel found on his own, instead of something she put to rest herself.

She meant it, at the time. She’d learn later, looking back, that she hadn’t been lying—she’d been sincere, but that didn’t mean anything. Sincerity wasn’t the barrier. Fear was. All the good intentions in the world didn’t make the hard stuff any easier.

She thought, just briefly, about waking Kel up right then. Telling him everything, before the wedding plans got rolling, before things became even harder to turn back. The idea flickered through her mind—clear, reasonable—and then faded, because she wasn’t ready.

So she shut her eyes and let herself drift, the ring still on, Richard’s unanswered question hiding somewhere in the back of her mind. She kept promising herself the day would come to face it, but the truth was, she had no plan for how to ever get there.

Morning would arrive soon enough. There’d be phone calls, and announcements, and planning—distractions stacked one on top of another, each making it easier to avoid the one conversation she really needed to have.

She finally slept, holding onto her promise like you’d cup your hand around a candle’s flame on a windy night—hoping it survives long enough to matter, even while knowing you’re not doing anything to protect it.