He reaches over to the dresser and grabs the box. He hands it to me, but then he pulls it back. “Wait. Gotta do this right.”

He lowers himself to one knee and lifts the box up, presenting the ring to me. “Will you do me the honors of becoming Mrs. Asa Jackson?”

Seriously? This has to be the worst proposal in history. If you don’t count the one he gave this morning right after he had his hand around my throat.

“I already said yes, silly,” I say to him.

He grins and slips the ring on my finger. I look at it, holding it up to the light. I didn’t know hell had so much sparkle.

Asa stands up and walks over to the closet. He pulls off the blue shirt he’s wearing and begins to choose a different one. “We should match tonight,” he says. “Black shirt, black dress.” He pulls out a shirt and then throws a dress in my direction. I catch it. “I’ll be so relieved when we have our own place soon. Separate closets.”

My hands fist around the dress. “Our own place?”

He laughs. “You don’t think I’m going to marry you and keep you in this house, do you?”

“Keep me?”

He pulls the black shirt over his head. He starts laughing to himself as he’s buttoning it up. “I had lunch with Carter today,” he says casually, sitting on the bed.

Lunch? What? Our class together ended at lunchtime. Carter left class after making me feel the things I felt, and then went directly to lunch with Asa?

Why?

I sit on the opposite end of the bed and attempt to sound disinterested. “Oh yeah?”

Asa begins pulling on a pair of socks. “He’s not so bad. I kind of like him. Might even ask him to be a groomsman in our wedding.”

He’s already planning the wedding?

Asa slips on his shoes and stands up, turning toward the mirror. He runs both hands through his hair. “Have you thought about who you’ll ask to be your bridesmaids? You don’t really have any friends, do you?”

You make it kind of difficult for me to have friends, Asa.

“We just got engaged this morning,” I say to him. “Then I had class all day. I haven’t really had time to think about the details of a wedding.”

“You could ask Jess to be a bridesmaid,” he says.

I nod, but internally I’m laughing. Jess hates me. I don’t know why, but the girl hasn’t looked my direction in six months, no matter how much I try and reach out. “Yeah,” I say. “I could ask Jess.”

Asa opens the bedroom door and motions toward the dress still fisted tightly in my hands. “Take a shower and get ready. I want you dolled up tonight for the big announcement.”

The door closes behind him. I look down at the dress. I look down at my ring.

This hole I’m digging for myself is getting deeper and deeper. If I don’t figure out how to climb out of it, Asa’s going to fill it with cement.

***

Asa likes my hair best when it’s straight. I know this, because there have been a couple of times I’ve put some curl in it and he’s asked me to redo it. The first time was right after we started dating, when he was introducing me to Jon and Jess for the first time. And once on our first anniversary when we went to dinner at a restaurant I reserved myself. The anniversary dinner I had to remind him about three times.

He said his mother had curly hair and he prefers for me to wear mine straight.

I know nothing about his family, other than he doesn’t have one. And that one sentence about his mother’s hair is the only time he’s ever mentioned her in the years that I’ve known him.

Yet…here I am, standing in front of the mirror with the curling iron, adding curls to my hair. Simply because I know Carter likes them. I catch him staring at my hair sometimes when I put curl in it. Like he wishes he could touch it-slide his whole hand through my hair and pull my face to his. And even though he’ll be on the opposite end of the room from me, not even looking in my direction tonight, I curl my hair. For him.

Not for my fiancé.

The music is loud, the house is full of people, and I’ve been in my bathroom for an hour and a half getting ready. Of course an hour of that was probably spent staring at myself in the mirror, wondering how in the hell I got myself to this point in life. But I have to stop dwelling on all the bad decisions I’ve made and figure out how to make better ones.

I go see my brother on Sunday. Now that his care is private pay, I no longer meet with the social worker to sign his annual forms. But I think I’ll schedule an appointment with her while I’m there Sunday. I want to figure out what I can do to get his benefits back in place without Asa finding out.