“Didn’t answer him, no.”

The man whistled. It was a whistle that meant, “Wow, how could you have done such a heartless thing?” It was full of judgment.

“Yeah,” conceded the woman, mildly irritated by the tone of the stranger’s whistle. She didn’t need his judgment. She had already judged herself plenty for not having answered the question. And besides, she was there to make her wrong right, so she defended herself: “And that’s why I’m here. To answer him. I mean, I didn’t answer him in the first place because I didn’t have an answer at the time. Because I was going to college—my dream school!—and then, the night before I’m about to go off into the world to do what I hope and dream, he asks me, ‘Will you marry me?’ I mean, come on! I was leaving in the morning. What was I supposed to do?”

The man thought the question was rhetorical. But the woman was looking at him as if she wanted an answer. So he answered her. “I don’t know,” he said with shrug.

“I mean, I told him I’d have to think about it, that I’d think it over overnight and that I’d be back before the sun came up with an answer. And then I left. I left him standing … right there…” The woman pointed to where the man was standing on the small porch. “And … then … I didn’t make it back with an answer. Before the sun came up or … at all.” The woman dropped her head as if in shame. And she saw her shoes and wondered again why she had worn them.

“Well, that sounds like an answer to me,” reasoned the man.

“What?!? No!” The woman looked back up at the man and desperately wanted him to know that her non-answer wasn’t an answer. And she passionately pleaded her case. “That wasn’t my answer! I just went off into the world, and that’s not an answer. And I think…”

The woman looked up at the sky and went to a sad, faraway place.

“What?” asked the man, bringing the woman back to where they were.

The woman looked at the man. And looked as young as she did when she left Almost. And said, “I think he thought I’d say yes.”

The man scoffed. And wondered why someone who was clearly intelligent would say such a stupid thing.

“What?” asked the woman, wondering why the man had scoffed.

And the man said, “A guy’s probably not gonna ask a girl that question unless he thinks she’s gonna say yes.”

The woman looked back up at the sky and marveled at all the stars in it for a moment and conceded, “Yeah.” And then she looked at the man again and said, “And I’m just afraid that he waited up all night, hoping for me to come by.” And she realized how much harm she must have done to Daniel by not answering the question he had asked. “And,” she went on, “I just want to tell him that I know now that you just can’t do a thing like not answer a question like the one he asked me. You can’t do that to a person. Especially to someone you love.”