Sarah leaned back in her chair at the kitchen table, scrolling through her phone while I stirred the stir fry on the stove. Our condo always smelled like whatever I was trying to fix that day—garlic, soy sauce, toasted sesame—and the faint, permanent scent of new paint from the building’s never-ending renovations. The city hummed outside our windows, headlights sliding across the glass like quiet warnings.
We’d been engaged for eight months, and our wedding was set for September 22nd, just four months away. Four months sounded like plenty of time if you said it quickly. It sounded like nothing at all if you’d ever planned anything that involved deposits and timelines and other people’s schedules.
I’d always been the planner in our relationship, handling the details while she focused on her creative work. I didn’t resent it. I liked knowing what was coming. I liked lists. I liked calendars. I liked the calm that came from putting chaos into boxes and labeling them.
“That smells amazing, Alex,” she said without looking up.
Then her thumb paused, her mouth pulled into a grin that wasn’t for me.
“But hey, look at this. Jenna just posted from her bachelorette in Vegas. They did skydiving.”
I plated the food and set it down in front of her, the steam rising between us like something that wanted to be said.
“Skydiving sounds risky,” I told her, and tried to keep it light. “Glad it’s not us.”
She finally put her phone down, but her eyes had that distant look I’d noticed more often lately. The look that meant she was somewhere else—somewhere louder, shinier, less… us.
“Yeah,” she said. “But it’s exciting. Our plans are so standard.”
I sat across from her, fork in hand.
“Standard is good,” I said. “We’ve got the community hall booked, the band, the florist. It’s all coming together.”
I said it like the words could be an anchor.
Sarah worked as a graphic designer for a small firm, but three months ago she’d switched to a hip advertising agency downtown. She’d come home from her first week smelling like someone else’s perfume and rooftop smoke, cheeks flushed from laughing too hard. She’d told me about brainstorm sessions where they threw sticky notes on walls like confetti. About a creative director who called everyone “genius” and meant it. About the open office and the neon sign in the lounge that said DREAM LOUD.
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