It was strange for her to admit that she rarely noticed her own fiancé, but it was the truth. Roy wasn’t, in a sense, a person for her to notice; he was an elemental force that shaped the reality of her world. She was aware of Roy in the way one was aware of the weather or the traffic. His moods were borderline predictable, in the way that February would be cold or rush hour busy, but still bore watching: the difference between a day he felt slighted and one when he’d won the warehouse poker game was as stark as between a blizzard and a thaw. But she didn’t really notice him as himself; it was more a matter of checking how his status would affect the larger terrain of her life than anything personal to Roy.

When, exactly, this had become true of her fiancé, the love of her life, her future and her comfort, she wasn’t exactly sure.

It was probably longer ago than she’d care to admit, even to herself (this meta-admission being as close as she was comfortable to coming to admitting quite how long it had been) but she was certain that things had gotten worse over the summer. The summers had once been the brightest times in their relationship. It was nice enough out that Roy spent less time drinking in bars or playing poker at guys’ nights and more time tossing a football around reliving his glory days—which meant more energy and a better mood for him and an opportunity for her to participate (as audience, of course, not player, but she was far more welcome sitting in a camp chair with a sketchbook at a pick-up football game than taking up a seat at the poker table). The light was better, too, so she could actually sketch after work, and sometimes they even took long drives or picnicked by the lake on work nights. It was in the summer that she was always most certain of her choices (not that she was uncertain the rest of the time, exactly, but in the summer she could see most clearly the future she wanted for the two of them). The winter was long and dreary and (she explained to herself) everyone felt weird and unhappy. The summer was glorious, and she tried very hard not to flip that explanation around and wonder if everyone was happy and easygoing then.

Of course, this summer could have been used as a counterexample to that argument, because Roy had definitely not been happy or easygoing. He’d become crabbed and resentful after tweaking his hamstring during a rare spring basketball game at the Y kept him from playing his usual football—and the fact that his friends kept playing without him didn’t help matters. She’d suggested they still go, and she could sit with him and they’d both watch so he could still hang out with his friends, but a curt “Nah, Pammy, I don’t do that stuff” had been the best response she’d gotten to her multiple offers. He’d stopped hanging out as much with the high school buddies and started doing more with the warehouse workers, who were less likely to get out and exercise even in the summer because, as Roy put it when Pam asked, “we get tired enough at work.” He’d never seemed “tired enough” before, she thought. But now he was grumpy, and the two were close enough as made no difference.

It wasn’t that she disliked the warehouse workers: by and large they were a pretty reasonable bunch, and their various significant others were too. But for every barbecue with friends and family there were two nights of drinking, gambling, or watching baseball and yelling at the TV. She should have been grateful that Roy liked to host, since it meant he was around, but the unspoken but very clearly implied assumption that she would cook and clean and prepare for these events and he would sit on the couch with their friends didn’t make it rewarding, and the one time he’d thrown out her paints when she’d left them on the table before the guys came over was burned into her memory. So too, to a lesser extent, was the time she’d tried to be “one of the guys” and sit on the couch with a beer herself. His eyeroll and his “so what’s for dinner, Pammy?” had been followed by a “you’re not really just gonna sit there, are you?” and a fight she had definitely not enjoyed, but had at least made sure he didn’t either.

All of that was in the back of her mind as fall rolled around and with it the annual Dundies party at Chili’s. Usually this was the signal to her that summer was over: a disappointing and embarrassing “Longest Engagement” Dundie (along with Roy’s even-worse celebration of the trophy) was her annual reminder that it was time to put away the joy of summer and assume the drudgery of the long hard slog into winter. This year, though, she found herself already there, and that, perhaps, was what made her point out her frustration to Jim: did she really need another Longest Engagement Dundie if it didn’t at least bring her the memories of a good summer with Roy?

Maybe this was why she found herself noticing Roy more fully at the Dundies. Usually this kind of grumpy mood from him, and his eagerness to depart, would have been like a cloudy day or the backup behind a car turning left: annoying, maybe a little dispiriting, but the sort of event you barely paid attention to in the larger scheme of things. Nothing worth mentioning, or doing anything about. The sun would burn through eventually, the car would get out of your way, and you wouldn’t even remember it the next morning.

But today? After this summer? It was too much. She found her teeth grating and her fist clenching and her laughter getting just a little too high-pitched, because she was noticing Roy for the first time in what was probably a lot too long. She was noticing how he didn’t really care what she thought or she wanted, noticing that he somehow combined the worst of both not caring about what could with a little effort be a fun outing and thinking that the single most embarrassing moment of the night would be the highlight (i.e. the stupid stupid Dundie), noticing that he didn’t notice her either.

And she was sick of it.

So as she told him she was staying (typically, he didn’t really care, just peeled out of the parking lot anyway) and went back into the Chili’s, she made a choice. This was going to be a day where she didn’t care about the weather, or the traffic. And the best way to show it, she decided, was to steal as many drinks as possible. After all, if Roy didn’t like her kicking back at home—she’d kick back here. Why not? Jim would look after her, after all. She’d be fine.