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IT WAS STUPID to focus on, insignificant in light of, well,everything, but Samantha Cooper’s bent knee was beginning to ache.

“Marry you?” Hannah’s eyes flitted around the room. “Sam, you’re—you’re kidding.” The color drained from her face. “Oh God. You’re not.”

Sam’s heart stuttered to a sluggish stop. “Is it … is it the ring?”

It was …daintywould be putting it delicately—all she could afford. But it would look so pretty, perfect on Hannah’s slender finger.

“Is it the—” Hannah choked on what was either a sob or a laugh. “No. The ring is …” Her freckled nose scrunched, kick-starting Sam’s heart into beating again. “Fine.That ring is fine.”

“Oh.” Good. That was good. Hannah thought the ring was fine. Hannah thought—

Oh.

This time last year, Christmas, Hannah had gifted her an immersion blender. A fancy fifteen-speed number Sam had been lusting after for months, too pricey to entertain purchasing on her paltry pastry chef budget. One with a blade guard and rubber handle and nonstick edge, cordless and easy to operate. Perfect for pureeing, emulsifying, blending, and blitzing. It had seen its fair share of use in the months since. Hannah’s favorite soups. Her favorite protein shakes.

Now it felt like Hannah had taken that immersion blender and shoved it into Sam’s chest, setting it to blast, turning her insides to pulp.

Proposing wasn’t entirely out of left field, not some wild whim. They’d talked about this, the possibility of it, marriage. Granted, not in a while, but when they’d first started dating. Back then, everything about Hannah—from how beautiful she was to the sharp, sweet sound of her laugh—had turned Sam’s brain to mush, rendering her speechless or giving her the worst case of verbal diarrhea, nothing in between. It was on their first, second maybe, date that she had blathered on about her parents, how in love they were, happily married for thirty-five years. How, one day, she wanted that for herself. Embarrassing stuff, honestly, but Hannah had smiled and said she’d always dreamed about having a big wedding.

Months later, Sam had stumbled on Hannah’s Pinterest wedding board,thousandsof pretty pinned images—diamond rings and big bouquets and satin wedding dresses. Irrefutable proof that they wanted the same things out of life, that they were on the same page.

Only now she wasn’t sure if they were even reading fromthe same book, in the same language. Considering that, of all the ways she’d imagined her proposal playing out, Hannah dropping her head into her hands and hissing, “People arestaring. I cannotbelieveyou’re putting me in this position,” had not been among them.

Peoplewerestaring. The older couple seated at the table across from them stared unrepentantly from behind their menus, leaning in, straining to hear over the dulcet tones of the harp being plucked in the corner of the dimly lit restaurant. Over by the bar, the maître d’ and bartender whispered, and in the corner, a girl no older than fifteen held her phone aloft, recording. Before midnight, Samantha would be Tik-Tok’s latest viral sensation, the laughingstock of the internet.

She scrambled back into her chair. “Why don’t we table this?”

“Table this?” Hannah’s voice hitched, broadcasting Sam’s shame to the entire restaurant. “I can’t just … Youproposed. Publicly, no less. Unless I’m mistaken, that means you want to …” Hannah looked the way Sam felt—like she was going to hurl. “Marry me.”

Thatwasgenerally what a proposal implied. “I do? Want to. Marry you, I mean. And you always said you liked public proposals. Your Pinterest boards are full of pictures of jumbotrons and—and skywriting. But if the timing isn’t—”

Hannah laid a gentle hand atop hers, expression closer to contrite than Sam had ever seen it as she snapped the robin’s-egg-blue box in Sam’s sweaty hand shut, sparing them both the misery of continuing to stare at the itty-bitty diamond Sam had spent a small fortune on. “I don’t want that.”

No number of skinned knees, broken bones, paper cuts,and grease burns could hold a candle to the painful silence that followed.

“That’s okay,” she said, voice full of false cheer. A camera flash went off somewhere over her shoulder, causing them both to flinch. Wonderful. A picture for posterity. As if she had any desire to remember this moment. “What is marriage but a piece of paper anyway?”

A sharp pang of longing ricocheted through her chest, but she breathed through it.

All she really wanted was to spend the rest of her life with Hannah. What that life looked like didn’t matter, only that they spent it together.

She tucked the ring box away, out of sight like it had never even existed. “Seriously. Consider it forgotten.”

“It’s not marriage, Sam.” Hannah reached for the bottle of Dom and filled her glass to the brim with a put-upon sigh, pity swimming in her gray eyes. “It’s you.”

You’re not the girl I fell in love with, Sam. When I met you, you were going places. Places I wanted to go with you. But now you come home late every night, covered in flour, reeking of butter and God only knows what else you use in that kitchen. You never want to go anywhere or do anything. Nothing fun. You come home and you rot on the couch watching old episodes of that British baking show you’re obsessed with, and you know what? I’m pretty sure you love those damn cats of yours more than you claim to love me.

Don’t even get me started on how you’re delusional aboutthe restaurant if you honestly think Coco’s going to promote from in-house. It’s never going to happen. I know it, and deep down, you know it, too, but you refuse to look for a job anywhere else. When we met, you had so much potential, and I’m not going to wait around a second longer and watch you continue to squander it.

“—am?Sam!”

She jolted, jumping a little at her name. If the way Mrs. Nelson looked a touch exasperated told her anything, her one gloved hand holding the elevator door, she’d been trying to get Sam’s attention for a while.

“Sorry.” She smiled sheepishly and squeezed inside the elevator. “I’m a space cadet tonight.”

Mrs. Nelson smiled warmly, looking so much like Sam’s grandmother in that moment that her heart squeezed. “You look tired, dear.”