Yet somehow, here we were.
Dozens of pairs of eyes turned our way, and the restaurant fell quiet, awaiting my answer along with Asher. The only sounds were the bachelorette party loudly awwing and the older Chinese woman muttering, “He’s not even half as handsome as you.” Her son quietly shushed her again.
With a tight little smile, I whispered, “Stop joking around and get up. People are looking at us.” Surely he was joking, right?
But his crestfallen expression...oh no.
“Anna...I’m serious.”
Bile burned my throat, and I regretted every last bite of food from our meal. I tried to pull him up by his arms, but he wouldn’t budge. “Get up, Asher,” I whispered fiercely.
His eyes hardened, but he calmly pressed on. “Answer the question.”
I shook my head and blinked away the moisture in my eyes. “Don’t—I can’t—please just get up,” I begged.
The disappointment...no, the devastation...on his face. I turned away, unable to stand it. Without another word, he snapped the box shut, stood up, and walked out of the restaurant.
The girls in the bachelorette party all booed.
Numb and cold, I stared down at my empty plate, trying to process what had just happened. Conversation resumed, slow and uneasy, as I put my head in my hands and tuned out everything but my thoughts.
Why had he forced my hand that way? We’d been totally fine together as we were. We didn’t need to get married. He fucking knew how I felt about marriage, and yet...why? Did he think that I was just playing hard to get? That I didn’t know what I actually wanted? I’d told him, clear as day, that I was never going to get married. Yet somehow, after three years of dating, he hadn’t listened.
And we lived together, so now...now I had to go home and face him, in private, assuming he’d gone straight home. Fuck.
I stood up to go.
Out of nowhere, the waitress appeared with the server book, her face carefully blank. “How was your dinner this evening?” she asked, placing the book on the table and beginning to clear away our plates.
FUCK. Asher had said that dinner was his treat. He’d been the one to pick the place, and I certainly couldn’t afford it, not on my meager office admin salary. I grabbed the book and checked the bill. $267.43. That didn’t even include tip. My poor, abused, low-limit credit card would almost certainly get declined for that amount.
“Ah...it was good.” I reached into my purse, made a show of rummaging around, then gave her my credit card anyway. “I’m going to the bathroom, be right back.” I needed to call Asher and tell him to get back here and pay.
The waitress sniffed and frowned, likely discerning hints of cheap nylon dress with afternotes of thrift store heels from my person. She took my card between her forefinger and thumb as if it were contaminated, then dropped it into the server book. I wasn’t fooling anybody.
As she walked away, I escaped in the other direction, towards the bathroom. I hurried into an empty stall and nearly dropped my phone into the toilet in my rush to call Asher. Breathe. The phone rang and rang, but he didn’t pick up. I tried twice more, until my call went straight to voicemail.
What to do what to do what to do?
I rubbed my temples, the beginnings of a massive headache brewing. Had he deliberately saddled me with the bill? To demonstrate how dependent I was on him? I snarled. How fucking dare he?
I sat down on the toilet and held my head, pulling on the roots of my hair, willing myself to just breathe, keep breathing, keep breathing...until several minutes later, when my head was finally clear.
Well. It was simple. I just had to explain to the waitress what the situation was. Maybe she’d hold on to my phone or ID as collateral while I looked for Asher. I had no family, and my only New York friends were his friends, all of whom were casual music show buddies, at best. It had to be Asher.
But what would happen when I found him? Would he even care anymore? Was it over between us? And beyond being romantic partners, he was my best friend in New York. He wouldn’t just throw that away, would he?
If our tumultuous history were any indication, he would still care, and I’d figure out some way to manage things between us. I always did, because I had to.
But a rejected proposal seemed like a much bigger issue than late rent or accidental flirting, and there was no way that I was budging on this. I was not getting married.
Breathe. We’d find a solution, somehow.
I smoothed my hair and my dress, unlocked the bathroom stall, and walked out, back towards the table. I repeated my carefully crafted excuses over and over to myself, preparing to face that snob-goblin waitress. But the words evaporated when I saw that the table was clean and empty, with nothing other than the red rectangle of my credit card in the center. There was no shameful credit card slip with DECLINED printed at the top waiting for me.
The waitress reappeared with a clean set of plates and flatware and began setting the table, not looking my way.
“Did you run the card?” I asked her.
She fiddled with the alignment of a fork for a moment before turning my way. “Ah, no. The family sitting behind you offered to pay for your table.” Her tight-lipped smile didn’t even meet her nose. “Have a good night, miss.” She resumed setting the table, so she missed my eye roll at her extra emphasis.
But...whoa. I thoughtfully gazed at the empty table where the older Chinese woman and her family had sat.
