Decadence (11 page)

Ryan, on the other hand, laughed, and
squeezed me tighter. “Don’t freak out, it’s just a hypothetical
question. Relax.”

But I could tell it hadn’t been just a
hypothetical scenario he’d been throwing at me. He’d been feeling
me out, wanting some kind of answer one way or the other. I knew he
wanted an answer I couldn’t give, and he proved it by asking me to
marry him two years after trying to laugh it off.

I had to be stupid. Most girls would do
anything to be with a guy like Ryan. At first, I told myself there
were a jitter for everything and that was all there was to it.
Engagement jitters. A little cold feet. Ryan was a great guy,
husband material, honest, hard working, loyal to a fault. He
forgave people when he shouldn’t have and bailed them out of
trouble when they didn’t deserve it. He had a promising career in
front of him and a clean past behind him--a rarity. He was any
woman’s dream man.

But not mine.

What was wrong
with me?

The truth was, there was no excuse that I
could use--not my age, or the fact that my sister I were orphaned
when I was still in the single digits--all I could admit, in the
end, was the truth itself. The truth was, it didn’t feel right. I
didn’t want to pledge my forever to Ryan when I had doubts from the
beginning. I didn’t want to be his wife. I didn’t want to be
anybody’s wife. At least not now. Then again, I wasn’t sure if I
ever would.

Commitment. Long term. Marriage. The diamond
on my left hand felt like a weight bearing down on that one little
finger, like a rock that could take me to the bottom of the ocean.
Heavy and damning.

I looked at my reflection in the mirror
again, at the girl who’d said yes when she should have politely
closed the ring box, pushed it back towards him and told him I
would think about it. But there was no real etiquette when 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 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 his
selfish points. “Put the ring back on your finger, tell me this was
all cold feet, and we’ll have the rest of our lives to figure out
whatever it is you want to figure out in the long run.”

“That would be childish.”

“No, that’s life.”
“Then I don’t want that kind of life,” I said. “I want to know what
I’m getting into, don’t you?”

“You know me, Lea,” his tone was pleading.
“You know I love you, you’ve known me since you were seventeen
years old. Your sister introduced us. Your sister trusts me with
you more than she trusts anyone else.”

“Don’t bring my sister into this, it’s not
fair.”

“You don’t want me to mention Shana because
you know she won’t agree with what you’re doing,” he sounded as if
he’d found the chink in my armor and he intended to use the wiggle
room it allowed. “Shana knows you better than anyone on earth, you
and I both know that, and she knows that you and I are meant to be
together. If I bring her up, you have to face that and you know
it.”

“Shana wouldn’t be the one marrying you.” I
told him.

“Wow,” he took two steps back, away from me,
as if I’d just unduly slapped him across the face and he hadn’t
seen it coming. “We’ve been together four years, you’ve been
wearing my ring claiming to be my fiancée for the past two months,
and now you’re repulsed at the idea of being my wife.”

“Don’t be overdramatic.”

“You’re calling off our engagement and you’re
telling me I’m being overdramatic?”

“Do you want kids?”

“What?”

“You heard me,” I had no intention of backing
down just because he seemed intent on dodging questions. “Do you
want children? Eventually? In the future?”

“Of course I do.” He said it without
hesitation.

“Well, I don’t.”

“You’re just saying that,” he waved his hand
in my direction, dismissing my declaration as if it were nothing at
all. “You will one day. Everyone does.”

“Everyone does not want kids someday. Your
ideas of what is and what isn’t don’t speak for everybody.”

“People change their minds.”

“Not necessarily.” I shook my head, ready to
argue my case. “People’s ideas change and relationships tend to
change as a result. There’s a difference.”

“Is that what this is? Change? Your own
personal evolution that you’re trying to drag me along for?”

“Ryan,” it was my turn to let out a shaky
breath, shook my head, not believing he wasn’t getting it. “That’s
the point. I’m not trying to drag you along for it. This is about
me and what I need and I what I want.”

“What is it that you need?” He stepped closer
to me. I hadn’t noticed him walking any closer, hadn’t been
listening to his footsteps, my head full of other things. “What is
it that you want?”

I hesitated. I’d come to the part I’d wanted
to avoid. “I need someone who will listen to me and understand
where I’m coming from. You hear me, but I don’t know how much you
listen because you’ve proven to me over and over again that you
don’t understand me.” I cleared my throat, tried to push the tears
back, hold the dam together with every ounce of force in me, but my
own saltwater was strong and mounting. There was only so much I
could do when the dam had already been weakened. “And it’s not just
that we were brought up differently, or our race difference--you
know that’s not it, or the fact that you’re a morning person and
I’d rather stay up all night. You don’t get me. You know how much
that shit hurts? But after four years, I have to accept it.” The
dam broke, I felt hot wetness roll down my cheeks as my vision
blurred and my voice cracked to the point where the last sentence I
spoke was nearly inaudible. But he heard me, for once, Ryan was
actually trying to listen. The problem was, it was too late.

“Baby,” he had his hands on my face, trying
to draw me in for an embrace that I was resisting. “We can get past
this. Whatever it is. You can go to counseling, we can go together,
whatever it takes. I don’t want to lose you over things that
haven’t even happened yet.”