“Baby,” he says, rubbing my leg. “This friend of a friend offered me twice what the bike is worth. I was thinking about you, and how, when you move in with me, we’ll need that garage space for a second car. Maybe a Volvo. Plus, once we have kids, our priorities are going to change. It won’t be long before I’m running for office, and a motorcycle is just a liability. I don’t want to be ‘that biker dude’ in the attack ads.”

Attack ads? Priorities? I reach for my champagne and guzzle it.

“That bike was the beginning of our story.”

“Everything’s a story with you,” he says.

What about the feeling of freedom each time we hopped on the bike together? What about the wind on our skin? Or the front-row seat to the sights and smells of a city, how everything changes with the seasons? What about those few wonderful weeks each spring when the cherry blossoms bloom?

What about the way the motorcycle drove his mother crazy?

Oh my god.

I cross my arms over my chest. “Did your mother make you do it?”

“Don’t start with my mother again.” Ryan groans.

“I’m just shocked. I wish you would have talked to me before you sold it.”

“Hey,” he says, more warmly. “If it’s that important to you to have one last hurrah on a motorcycle before we get married, let’s rent one and do the Appalachians.”

It’s his I-surrender voice, the hoisting of the little white flag. And this is when I’m supposed to laugh and say thanks, baby, and then we’d let the conversation drift to something pleasant. We could start talking about the trip, about making it real. About the route we’d want to take and where we’d stop along the way. This is when I’d pretend Ryan didn’t just say some truly alarming things about his expectations of our life.

We’ve become masters at changing the subject, lightening the mood. Pretending certain realities don’t loom in our near future.

But tonight, I don’t do the thing we always do. I don’t lean in for a kiss or shrug it off. I look him in the eye and say:

“I’m tired of this idea that everything has to change—that we have to change—after we get married. It’s a wedding, not an apocalypse. Isn’t the point to celebrate what we already have?”

“Okay . . . how much have you had to drink?” he says, bumping my shoulder with his. I know he means to be playful, but it feels patronizing.

I rise from the barstool, grab my purse. “I need some air,” I say.

Ryan glances around, always aware of appearances. Even when he doesn’t know a single person in this restaurant or this neighborhood. As if everyone is already deciding whether to vote for him. It’s maddening.