“Okay,” he said when they were on his bed, his voice that of a man starting a serious project. He centered his body over hers, resting his weight on his elbows and looking at the wall just beyond her head. “Okay.” In the faint light from the street lamp outside the window she saw his jaw edge forward. He was rigid from head to toe. She put her hands on his lower back. “Okay.” With what seemed to her to be as little movement as possible, he pushed forward, then began to rock his entire planked body back and forth, saying “okay” every few thrusts, the St. Christopher medallion winking between them. He finished almost immediately—“O-kay”—and then froze, suspended, his eyes still fixed on the wall.

As he rolled to the side, he exhaled and folded his arms across his stomach.

That was it for him, she thought. She hadn’t been with anyone since Dermot, had barely had the chance to be in bed with David Hardy before he was done, and now, in all likelihood, he was done with her entirely.

But in the car on the way back to her apartment, he said, “Marry me.”

Her throat closed up. She swallowed and said, “We hardly know each other,” which sounded awful, given what they’d just done.

“I’m serious. I love kids. I want to be a father and a husband, it’s what I was meant to be, and you can’t argue with fate, can you? I mean, who are we to start getting all heavy with fate?”