They decided not to tell anyone that night. Not while they were down at school and not right away when they got back to New York. It was tacky to post something so meaningful to social media. Besides, they’d need to tighten the band first. Till then, the ring could go back in the shoebox in the closet. They talked about telling their parents or at least a couple friends, but they pushed it to the end of the weekend and then it was a very busy week at work, one of the busier weeks of the year for each of them. And before long it was another weekend, and it had been nine days of silence. Of late nights at the office and early mornings at the gym. Of no meals at home together and not much chatter. No conversation about a potential date or venue. They’d talked about locations before, in the abstract: somewhere on the coast in California, somewhere in the neighborhood in New York. But there was something that obviously hadn’t locked into place the way it should.
One night that second week back, he asked her about it. She denied anything was wrong. They fought a little bit about the full sink of dirty dishes and the pileup of laundry in the corner of the studio. A week later, in for the night on a Friday, they drank whiskey and lemonade, and as they drained the cocktail shaker they finally cut to it. She was worried. Not just about her, but about him. They were meant to be together, she was certain, but there was something that had been gnawing at her, she said, low-level gumming her guts for years. They were still young. But they’d spent their twenties together. They’d gotten old prematurely. What happened if that suppression of twenties-dom reared its head someday down the road? If all the crazy, if all the lost nights, if all the solitary searching and shame they’d skipped right over bubbled up and buried them alive at a future time and place TBD? What then?
He knew her well. He knew what she was really saying. “You’re worried I’m gonna want to fuck other people,” he said.
She didn’t answer right away. She had tears in her eyes and she looked at him cautiously. “I’m worried about you, I’m worried about me.…We’re still…changing. We’re still becoming who we are. We still have some things to figure out, don’t we?”
“I’d never do that to you and you’d never do that to me,” he said, still caught up on the first part.
“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hit me here,” she said, placing painted nails on her stomach.
“So what,” he said.
“So nothing,” she said.
And they danced around it for the rest of the night, and the next day and the day after that. And neither of them told anyone else anything. But then one night while they were screwing around, teasing each other’s bodies, bringing each other to the edge, they started saying it aloud. For fun at first, just speaking the words, making one imagine what it would be like if the other were with a stranger. To be single for a night, a weekend, a couple weeks max. To bury the question for good. To go out and have one last time, or maybe two, or at the absolute max three. It was like someone had cracked open the window and let the outside in, a razor-sharp breeze in the bedroom.
No one knew about the engagement still. Another week passed. There was an elaboration of the fantasy. Busy days at work, but a rush to get home. More sex than they’d had in years. Personas embodied. Strangers come between them. He asked her if they should finally tell their parents. She said it was probably a good idea. But nobody called home. Not yet.
Another few days. Her bosses asked her if she could spend a month in L.A. To keep an eye on the production of a pilot she’d helped to develop. On previous trips out west she’d stayed with Will’s folks, but this was different. This was the most critical trip of her nascent career. She had to be in Santa Monica. Close enough for when they needed her when they needed her. They’d put her up in a nice hotel. It was the perfect opportunity, she told him. It would be one month, five weeks max. Late April to late May. A discrete period. Away from here. Somewhere else. Both of us with one month to work out what needed working out.
He was stunned. He couldn’t believe she was serious. She saw the hurt in the lines around his mouth, and she flew across the apartment to his side, assuring him that she was just kidding, she didn’t mean it, it was only a game for the bedroom.
He told her he thought maybe she was right, and that he could do it if she could do it. Only, could she really do it? She was the one who kicked him in the shins when his eyes followed a pair of yoga pants across the street. Who flicked his forehead when he smiled too long at a barista. Who twisted up the bedsheets when he described the summer associates fresh out of Stanford and Yale, lawyers who were so much younger than she was now, leggy redheads and petite blondes.
Four or five weeks. She thought about it. She could handle it if he could handle it, she said. She was pretty sure she could.
“One, then?” he said.
“One it is,” she said.
And with their minds sweating a little at the prospect, their hands and mouths found each other’s bodies right
