Decadence by Monique Miller Page A

turning
down a proposal. Not really. No matter what anybody said.
    I looked at myself in the mirror again,
silently trying to convince myself that I was doing both of us a
favor. My whole heart wasn’t in it and I was adult enough to admit
that and that had to count for something. Yet, no matter what I
said, that didn’t stop my heart from beating like a jackhammer in
my chest, my palms from sweating, my mind giving me dual
instructions--one part telling me to go back in there and get it
over with, pull the band-aid off before he started talking about
setting a date and sending out invitations, while the other part
was trying to get me to chicken out, spare feelings, spare pain,
wait and see what happened instead of breaking it off.
    But I knew I couldn’t stay in the bathroom
forever.
    I opened the door and he was already laying
down on the bed, his arms folded, his head resting on them as he
flipped through the channels, the remote poised near his ear. He
was comfortable in my presence in nearly every way. We had been
together long enough that we only got excited with one another
about certain things at certain times, nothing was really new
anymore. We had grown together and the discovery period was over,
and once the discovery was over, there was a nonchalance people
tended to share.
    I was about to turn twenty-two in a couple of
months and he was twenty-three and the passion was already dying.
It hadn’t been completely snuffed out, but I could feel that it was
on its way. I didn’t blame Ryan, or me, just our circumstances,
lives, changes and the lack thereof. Besides, I was beyond blame. I
just needed him to hear me.
    “Can we talk?” I asked him as I moved
tentatively over to the bed, watching him as he watched me make my
way over to him.
    “Lay down beside me,” he had already turned
his attention back to the TV screen. “We can talk after I watch
this play.”
    Something was on, some game or another.
Sports had never been my thing of interest and I hadn’t even
pretended for Ryan’s sake. I heard the uproar of a crowd, possibly
a whistle blowing, announcers droning on and on, at least to my
ears it was droning. They could have been excited for all I knew or
cared. It was noise and nonsense to me, but Ryan was engrossed.
    “Now, Ryan.” I felt like the nagging
girlfriend, the nagging fiancée, the nagging wife-to-be. Just
thinking of all the titles that anyone could use, and had used
since we’d gotten engaged, to describe me were making my head
hurt.
    He sighed heavily, glanced at me, annoyance
written all over on his face, as he reached over and muted the
volume then made a huge show of just how much he was being
inconvenienced by the way he sat up from where he’d been so
comfortable.
    “What’s so important that it can’t wait about
five more minutes?” his eyes were going from my face to the TV
screen, darting back and forth like it was a game itself.
    Ripping it off was the best approach in spite
of the fact that I dreaded it.
    Ryan saw it somehow in my face, my eyes,
before I did anything at all. I knew because whatever he’d wanted
to watch so badly became less of a priority and I was no longer on
the backburner of his attention.
    The rehearsal of my words in my head hadn’t
meant a thing when it came right down to it since an aching lump
had already formed in my throat and I couldn’t talk.
    I lowered my eyes, slid the ring off my
finger without looking back up at him, but I could feel him staring
at me as my eyes filled with tears. I hadn’t expected myself to
cry, I hadn’t wanted to either. Tears from me at this point just
felt manipulative. Malevolent. I was the villain in this story, and
villains didn’t deserve to shed tears.
    I tried to hand him the ring, but he didn’t
take it. Still, I couldn’t look up into his eyes. I laid the ring
on the bed in the space between us.
    “But why?” He asked me in a small voice. It
was too small a voice for a six foot tall solidly built