Chloe looked at me as though I had taken something from her. "You bought a ring?" she asked. "And you canceled it without even telling me you were thinking about proposing?"
I almost laughed at the impossibility of the accusation. The whole point of a proposal, I wanted to say, was that the other person did not know exactly when it would happen. Instead I said, "I thought we were ready for a promise that mattered to both of us. This morning showed me we aren't."
She stepped closer, and the edge in her voice returned. "So that's it? You get to spring a proposal on me and then punish me by taking it back?" she said. "You wanted to control the narrative, Mark.
You wanted to look like the good guy who was going to give me a ring and then walk away in some grand gesture." I shook my head, suddenly weary. "No one else even knew about the ring," I reminded her. "There isn't an audience here, Chloe. I was going to marry you because I loved you."
That was the first time I had used the past tense, and I heard it as clearly as she did. Her eyes filled briefly, though whether from hurt, frustration, or the shock of losing control of the conversation I could not tell. She looked toward the packed car and said something under her breath about me being pathetic, unable to handle a confident woman having a life outside our relationship. Then the accusations came faster, as though each one might force me to defend myself and keep standing there. I listened until she ran out of words.
"You will never find anyone who puts up with you the way I did," she said finally. Her voice had become sharp and exhausted, and a tear slipped down one cheek even as she glared at me. "You think you're so reasonable, but this is cruel.
You're running away instead of talking." I looked at the box in my hands, then at the woman I had once expected to grow old with. "The future we were talking about ended when you made it clear that being included in it was something I had to earn," I said. "Goodbye, Chloe."
She stared at me, waiting for the explanation that would reopen the argument. I gave her none. I put the box in the passenger seat, closed the door, and walked around to the driver's side while she stood beside her own car. When I started the engine, she called my name once, louder than before, but I did not lower the window. I pulled away from the curb and watched the street stretch ahead in the dim evening light.
I wish I could say the next ten minutes felt triumphant. They did not. My hands were steady on the steering wheel, but my throat ached and my eyes burned at traffic lights where there was nothing to do but sit. I had spent years thinking of us as a single unit, and the habits of that shared life did not vanish because I had made one clear decision. At the first red light, I reached toward my phone to tell Chloe I was on my way to the hotel, then stopped with my hand halfway there.