I lay in our bed, staring at the ceiling, replaying everything from the garden. My knees still felt sore from kneeling on stone. My throat felt raw from holding in tears. And my heart… my heart felt like a tired muscle that had been stretched too far.
A couple of days passed like that—avoiding, circling each other, walking around the apartment like ghosts who used to know one another. I wasn’t angry anymore.
I was disappointed.
If you’ve ever given everything you have to something and still come up short, you know the feeling. It’s not sharp like anger. It’s a dull ache that settles deep in your bones. It’s realizing you did everything right, at least everything you knew how to do, and it still wasn’t enough.
By the end of the week, he finally approached me.
“Meera,” he said, standing awkwardly near the doorway like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to come closer. “We need to talk.”
I nodded.
We sat on the couch, me on one end, him on the other, like strangers waiting for their names to be called.
He took a breath.
“I know things are bad right now,” he said, “but I want to fix this.”
“Do you?” I asked quietly.
He looked down at his hands.
“Yeah. I do.”
So I told him everything.
That I couldn’t keep waiting for him to decide if he wanted a future with me. That I felt like I’d been standing in place for years, waiting for him to catch up. That I felt foolish for proposing twice and still not getting a real answer.
“If you don’t know after four years,” I said, “I’m not sure you ever will.”
He didn’t argue. He didn’t deny it. He just sat there in silence, shoulders slumped. It felt like forever before he finally spoke.
“I do love you,” he said quietly. “I want to be with you. I just don’t think I’m ready for marriage yet.”
There it was again. That same damn phrase.
“Not ready.”
I swallowed the rising frustration.
“Why?” I asked. “What’s stopping you? We’ve been together for four years. We’ve talked about getting married before. You said you wanted that.”
He sighed, rubbing his face with both hands.
“I don’t know,” he repeated. “It’s a big commitment. I don’t want to rush into something I’m not sure about.”
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