But You're Still So Young by Kayleen Schaefer

Author:Kayleen Schaefer [Schaefer, Kayleen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

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Charles bought Matt an engagement ring. It’s a plain band made of hammered silver because “he doesn’t like flashy,” he says. When the package arrived, Charles put it on his nightstand and told himself not to open it. If he did, he feared Matt might peek inside the box. But he couldn’t resist; he wanted to see the ring. “My stupid self got the better of me,” he says.

He might not have been being stupid. Matt hates surprises. It’s possible he wanted to warn him that he wasn’t just talking about proposing—he had a ring. “Maybe subconsciously I knew he would look,” Charles says. “Maybe I wanted him to.”

Matt did look in the box, but Charles didn’t find out he had until a few nights later when they got into a fight. They’d been at an all-day music festival in Jacksonville called PorchFest, drinking since 10:00 a.m., and they often fight when they’re drunk.

They were at dinner with some friends, talking about work. Charles said something like, “Matt wouldn’t be where he is if it wasn’t for me.” He didn’t mean it the way it came out. Charles introduced Matt to the person who got him his first job in social work, and “I think it’s cool that I introduced him to someone, and it turned into a career,” he says. “You want to be part of your partner’s life and you’re proud. But when you’re both drunk it’s easy to misread intention.”

Matt left the restaurant and walked back to their house, where their fight escalated into Matt telling Charles, “I know what’s in the package, and I don’t want it.”

They repaired the damage the next day—both of them felt bad about the fight—but Matt didn’t address what he said about not wanting the ring, and Charles was too scared to ask him if he really meant it.

The fight didn’t change Charles’s mind about proposing; he’s still planning to do it in Toronto in December, even though he admits, “I’m doing a lot of assuming.” If Matt really didn’t want him to propose, Charles thinks, he would have broken up with him. “After the fight, he would have called it off and said, ‘We’re done,’” he says, but he didn’t. “We made up and we’re together.”

He’s been mulling how, exactly, he wants to propose. They’ll get to the cabin in the wilderness, where he wants to do it, on the first night of their trip. But he thinks he will wait to ask until the next morning, while he’s cooking breakfast. He’s going to get on one knee again, but not immediately. “When you see someone in that position all brain thought stops,” he says. “I want to say all the lovey-dovey, feel-good stuff and then get on one knee.”

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