Decadence by Monique Miller Page B

lacrosse
player that wasn’t afraid of snakes, that came to my rescue when I
saw a rat, that could lift me off the ground and carry me across
the campus grounds or farther. I was reminded of the time I
sprained my ankle and he’d carried me all the way to the emergency
room. He never slowed down, he’d remained steady the entire way
there.
    I looked down at the ring, all the excuses I
could spew on the tip of my tongue, but I didn’t want to hurt him
anymore than needed. There was no point in anything of the
sort.
    “I’m not ready, Ry,” I told him, surprised at
the pain in my own voice. I’d never heard my own feelings echo so
acutely. It made me uncomfortable. “I can’t.”
    “Is that what this is about?” He sounded
relieved. “Lea, baby, we haven’t even set a date yet. There’s no
rush, nobody’s pressuring you.”
    Pressure. After he proposed to me in a
roomful of family and friends-- both his parents, his stepparents,
his sisters, my sister, my uncle and aunt, my roommate--he tells me
there is no pressure when that was all that I felt the moment he
got down on one knee in front of all of those familiar faces. I
would have laughed at the irony of his statement, but I couldn’t
even muster an ounce of sarcasm.
    “It’s not that,” I tried to explain but the
words were like glue in my mouth. Calling everything off was harder
than I thought. “Not how you think it is. I can’t do this.”
    “Do what?” He threw up both his arms and let
out a humorless laugh. “Look, we’re the same as we’ve always been.
It’s still you and me. Nothing’s changed.”
    “Maybe that’s a part of the problem.” There,
I said it. But I still couldn’t look him directly in the eye. I
didn’t feel brave, I felt like a coward. I never should have
accepted his ring, never should have said yes. This conversation
should have taken place weeks ago. Guilt and sorrow weighed on my
heart, pressing down my thoughts. Any courage I’d gained in the
bathroom was trying to elude me now, but I held onto it. I needed
it.
    “What do you mean by that?” His tone was
accusatory. I took that as my cue to look up, look him in the eye,
be a woman and speak my peace, be a woman and do what I had to do.
Get it over with, pull the band-aid off, rip off skin if I had to.
Make both of us bleed.
    “What I mean is I shouldn’t have said yes
when I said it, that’s what I mean.”
    “What the hell is this about, Lea?” He stood
up, agitated, pacing in a small circle. I watched him fall apart
slowly as I pulled myself together bit by bit.
    “I thought about doing this over the phone,
save you the time and the money, but I didn’t want to cheapen what
we had.”
    “Had.” He stopped pacing, we faced each
other. He wasn’t asking a question, he heard the finality in my
voice.
    “I still love you,” I told him.
    “Then what’s the problem?
And don’t tell me that bullshit about you love me, but you’re
not in love with me. This isn’t a movie or some stupid book. If
you love me, you love me, that’s all I need to know.” He ran his
hand over his auburn hair, shut his eyes, squeezed them tight. When
he opened them they no longer looked their usual shade of green. It
was a color I didn’t recognize at all. “You know where I
stand.”
    “Do I?” I felt the frown on my face, squirmed
and decided not to think too much anymore. I was over thinking the
situation when I should have just been doing what I’d come to do in
the first place. “Do I really know where you stand? Do you know
where I stand? Not just about tomorrow, or next week, or next year
even, but on what kind of life we’d have together in the long
run.”
    “We’ll figure it out!” He inhaled a shaky
breath, trying not to be so frustrated, trying to even his tone,
bring his voice down a decibel or two. I could see his struggle on
the inside rising. One of his bad qualities was surfacing; he
wanted what he wanted, damn anyone else. That was just one of