I wondered what Harry would think of the ideas, the fantasies, that kept me awake at his side while he snored softly next to me—those secrets that helped me finish the job he rarely completed during sex.

I should've told him. Then maybe it wouldn't have come to this.

I opened my lips, not sure what answer would fall out, when I realized that my silence—far too long in the face of his eager proposal—had already answered for me. The hope that had glowed in Harry's pretty blue eyes had vanished, and now he was wearing that soft bruised expression I met sometimes when my mood wore thin and I snapped at him.

"I'm sorry," I whispered as Harry's bottom lip began to tremble.

The words were barely audible, but the restaurant had grown silent. All at once, with my not-quite answer, the restaurant sprang back into life. A slender, scaled waitress gave up her disguise as a statue and rushed back into action, delivering plates of food to a table of human diners. The accidental audience around us now displayed a new and polite determination to ignore the rest of our scene.

"But...it's been three years," Harry said, still kneeling, now frowning.

"Please, please sit," I answered, reaching down to tug at his elbows, careful to avoid his outstretched hands still holding the ring box.

"Do you...not believe in marriage?"

"It's not that, it's—"

"Me? It's me," Harry said, voice growing a little too loud.

He deserves to be angry, I reminded myself. I should've done this earlier. I should've broken up with my comfortable but not satisfying boyfriend of three years... I wasn't sure when.

No, I was. It was as soon as he'd started talking about marriage a few months ago and it had filled me with a clammy, nervous dread. I'd known I was bored for too long, yes, but I hadn't realized I was actually afraid of a future with Harry until that first coy mention.

"It's me too, Harry," I said softly, eyes blinking away the sting that rose. I was the one doing the damage, which meant I was not the one who deserved to cry. "It's us. I'm sorry."

Harry finally rose from the floor, but he didn't take his seat at the table. Gazes were flicking back and forth between us more rapidly again, a new curiosity heightening the tension in the room. Would Harry explode? Would we fight?

Sadly, I already knew the answer to that question. Was it perverse of me to wish my unfailingly sweet boyfriend had more of a temper?

"Do you… Is that going to change?" Harry asked, his brow tangling and an elegant hand going up to push his golden and carefully coiffed hair back from his face. He didn't wait for my answer. "Do you even want to be with me?"