April 27th, 2010

mistake

he doesn't want to marry her.

he realizes it once he's proposed. he's sitting across from her at the dining room table, the dishes with remnants of the meal they've just eaten, the one he' s just cooked for her, in front of them, and he's holding the ring out, it's in his hand, suspended above the table between them, and he's staring at her, and she's smiling, that big, toothy smile of hers, so wide he can almost see her tonsils, for god's sake, and she's saying, "yes! oh, scotty, yes!" her voice is so high and he's always hated when she calls him scotty, his name isn't even scott, it's david, but he's scottish so his friends call him scotty and she just started doing it, three years ago, and he has never told her to stop, never had the heart, or the strength, and looking at her giant, wet smile and her hair, too frizzy, too shaggy, too short, (sticking up in what she thinks is a hispter cut but it's really just bad) all over her head and she's shrieking "yes! yes! i have to call juliet!" and she grabs the ring and he sees there is food on her fingers, some tomato sauce or something and she crams the ring on and she leaps up from her chair and comes around the table to kiss him with that awful, wet, too-wide mouth and he wonders, "how does one go from love to hate in only four words?" and "what the fuck am i going to do now?"