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.
The place was full of young creatives who threw around terms like disruptive innovation and hosted rooftop parties. She started coming home later, her ponytail messier, her lipstick darker, her stories louder.
Her new colleagues—Laya, Harper, and Zoe—were a whirlwind of energy.
Laya was twenty-nine, perpetually single with stories of backpacking through Europe on a whim. She’d sleep on a stranger’s couch in Barcelona and call it “manifesting.” She’d talk about quitting jobs like it was deleting an app.
Harper, thirty-one, had eloped to Bali after knowing her husband for two months. She wore floaty dresses and spoke in quotes like she’d been raised by Pinterest.
Zoe, twenty-seven, was in an open relationship with a DJ who toured festivals. She had a laugh that carried and a tattoo behind her ear that looked like a tiny lightning bolt.
At first, Sarah’s stories about them were fun anecdotes.
“Laya convinced the whole team to do an escape room during lunch today,” she’d say, and I’d laugh, because that sounded harmless.
But gradually, the stories turned into comparisons, and comparisons turned into little cuts.
“Harper says, ‘Predictable guys are like vanilla ice cream.’ Fine, but who wants that every day?”
She said it while twirling noodles around her fork like she was winding up a thought she didn’t want to hear out loud.
The first time she said anything like that, I told myself it was a joke. The second time, it started to feel like a test I didn’t know I was taking.
That night, as we ate, she pushed her food around like the plate had offended her.
“Alex,” she said, and her voice softened the way it did when she wanted something. “Do you ever feel like we’re missing out? Like, life’s too routine?”
I paused midbite.
“Routine?” I repeated, because I needed a second to catch up to what she meant.
I had a steady job as a software engineer. We had a condo with a view. No crazy debt. That was stability, not routine.
“We’re building something,” I said. “That’s not a rut. That’s a foundation.”
She sighed, like foundations were boring.
“Zoe’s boyfriend surprised her with tickets to Coachella last weekend,” she said. “They danced until dawn.”
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