She puts on her coat and finds him at the back of the boat, leaning against the guard rail and looking out at the water. His face is vacant and he doesn’t seem to notice when she approaches him.

She pokes him in the side with a gloved finger. “Hey.”

He turns and his face doesn’t move for a second. Then he’s putting on a smile and saying, “Hey! Congratulations!”

She shakes her head, “Oh, right. Finally, after three years, I have a wedding date. Big congratulations to me.”

“You looked happy in there.”

She holds onto the rail with both hands and stands close to him. “Relieved is more like what I was feeling.”

“Ah.”

She bows her head low then. “This is not at all how I imagined it would go.”

“What do you mean?”

“Love, marriage. When I was a little girl, I thought it would be- I don’t know. I thought it would be something better, bigger. I certainly never thought I’d be proposed to after a lasagna dinner at his parent’s house while he’s watching football.”

He pretends to be mesmerized by the water below them.

“That’s how he proposed. I guess I never told you about that. He just turned to me during a commercial and said, ‘Hey, what do you think about getting married?’ And he didn’t even have a ring for me. We had to save up for one. That’s right, half of this baby was paid for by me,” she says and wiggles her ring finger at him. He smiles sadly at her.

She looks at the ring like it’s revolting to her and he wants to hold her.

“And now my big romantic moment. Three years after the fact, my drunken fiancé stands at the microphone of a cruise ship and sets a date because he’s been inspired by stupid Captain Jack.” She laughs, but it’s the saddest thing he’s ever heard. “Yeah, that’s not how I saw it happening at all.”

He puts an arm around her shoulder just for a second. “He loves you though.” He doesn’t know if he believes that, but it’s what she needs to be told.

“Yeah…”

He hears her crying before he sees it and then she looks up at him and the stars are getting trapped in her tears and sliding down her face and he wishes he could just fix her. But he can’t. It isn’t his job to fix her.

She says, “I told him once that my dream wedding would be in the fall, somewhere with a lot of trees. Maybe up in New England. New Hampshire, maybe. And we’d have it right when the leaves would be golden and red and falling around us. And- But he couldn’t remember that, could he?”

He takes off one of his gloves and brings his hand to her face to wipe away the moisture. She smiles when he touches her and says, “You probably would’ve remembered that and, even drunk, set the date for October.”

He lets his hand stay there on her cheek. “You wanted to have apple cider at the reception.”

She bites her lip and looks down at her feet, smiling. “When did I tell you about that?”

He shrugs, takes his hand away from her face and says, “Um…Your second year here, I think.”

It was June, she had had been fighting with Roy, she was wearing her pink shirt, she had smiled so brightly after she told him.

“God,” she groans and presses her face into his chest.

He puts a tentative hand on her back.

Suddenly, she snaps her head back to look at him. “Why aren’t you in there with Katy?”

There’s a change in him now. He shifts on his feet and frowns. His eyes turn glassy and he says, “I, uh- We broke up.”

“When?”

He laughs under his breath, “Five minutes ago, maybe.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

They both lean into the guard rail again and watch the water splash against the boat. The silence isn’t like the one before. It isn’t filled with tension that makes the back of her throat itch like there’s something important she should be saying. It’s comfortable and she can forget for a second that life isn’t turning out how she thought it would. She can forget about settling and disappointment. And she can just lean her shoulder into his and smile while watching their breath come out like smoke, winding together as it drifts into the night.

After a while, she quietly says, “Jim?”

He doesn’t say anything, he just turns his head and gives her these eyes that she could fall into.

“I don’t know if I want to get married anymore.”

He lets out a loud breath and takes her hand, but they’re both wearing gloves and it feels a little awkward. He says, “Stop. You’re going to get married and your husband is going to love you and you’ll be so happy.” He smiles and squeezes her hand, “You’re going to have the best life you could imagine.”

She looks at him doubtfully and everything about him in that moment seems heartbreaking as he gives her this unfaltering look.

“I promise.”