After 7 years together, Paxton finally proposed at my birthday dinner. I said yes before he finished asking. But his mother slammed down her glass and threatened to break a promise I’d never heard of. Paxton froze. When I asked what it meant, she looked toward him. “Tell her,” she said. “Or I will.”
Paxton and I met when we were twenty-five.
He spilled coffee down his shirt on our first date, then spent twenty minutes insisting nobody would notice.
The stain covered half his chest.
I liked him anyway.
Paxton and I met when we were twenty-five.
What started as coffee after work became weekend visits, late-night conversations, and eventually a shared apartment.
We took our first vacation together and discovered that Paxton packed six pairs of shoes for a four-day trip.
I packed two.
We took our first vacation together.
We adopted a dog named Murphy, who promptly destroyed three of Paxton’s shoes.
I considered that a reasonable compromise.
By thirty-two, we had seven years of memories, shared bills, and a grocery list neither of us remembered to update.
What we didn’t have was a wedding date.
We had seven years of memories.
Whenever marriage came up, Paxton said the same thing.
“I want to marry you, Gio. I just want the timing to feel right.”
For a long time, I believed him.
The only person who seemed relieved whenever we postponed the subject was his mother.
For a long time, I believed him.
***
Cara wasn’t an unpleasant woman.
She remembered my birthday, invited me to family dinners, and sent me home with enough leftovers to feed a neighborhood.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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