He’s still just staring up at me, and the gravel’s jumping under my feet as the train goes by, and the diamond sparks in its box like a live wire. I’m sweating already. My knees are shaky. What do I say? What do I do?

I say “no,” watch the hope in his face crash as the train screams by. The grind of the wheels and the engine drown out whatever he’s saying, so I just watch the way he mouths the words, still down on one knee, pinned like a bug under glass.

He cries. I comfort him. We both part ways to call our respective mothers. He gets engaged fourteen months later to a pretty redhead, gets a promotion, raises two chubby daughters, plays golf with his IT friends, sends his girls to college, retires early, flies his wife to Hawaii, dies smiling and full to the brim with love.

I date and break up and date and break up and date and break up again. I think of him. I call him sometimes when I’m drunk, listen to the cozy domestic background noise as he tells me, for the fifth time, that I’ll find the one. Or I call late at night, when I know he won’t pick up, and listen to his sweet daughters’ voices chiming from the answering machine.

I adopt two cats. The gray one dies. I get another.

 My cat scratches at the neighbor’s door one day, a fit blonde guy, and he follows her back to my apartment, where I’ve died alone in the middle of cleaning out my fridge. Brain aneurysm.

  No. I don’t think so.

So I say “yes.” He starts crying anyway, jumps up and hugs me so tight I think we’ll both topple over onto the railroad tracks. We have to wiggle the ring over my knuckle. The diamond stares blankly up at me.

 We walk hand-in-hand the whole way home, laugh our way up the stairs, spend the night in bed, wake up exhausted. My ring catches on the sheets, catches in my hair, catches on my shirt-sleeves in the morning.

He gets his promotion, golfs with his work friends, leaves me behind in the kitchen stirring pasta sauce. No pretty daughters to get underfoot. He wants them. I want them. But it turns out I’m the problem.

 He stays late and forgets to call, and I yell at him over the phone. The sauce boils over. I boil over. We fight and make up and fight again. He spends more time at work. I try a spin class, try a book club, try a smoothie maker, try an affair. I pick up hobbies and turn them over in my mind and set them down again. There are no kids to keep up appearances for, so we don’t bother. We separate in July.

 I adopt cats. They die. I adopt more. I die alone. It’s a trap, and I want none of it.

 So maybe I don’t say yes. I don’t say no. Maybe the train screeches past and I push him out in front of it, turn on my heel, walk away and keep walking as the diamond flashes under the wheels.

 Maybe I cry for a few days. I call my mom. The newspaper runs a story on it, and they interview me. “Grieving Fiancée.” I meet the sweetest guy at a support group, and he asks if he can take me to coffee. Just to talk.

 I say, “Sure.”

Maggie Weber