A Little Bit Engaged. Teresa Hill

then gave up on the obvious part.

      “So,” he said, because he felt the need to have it drilled into his head, “you’re engaged?”

      A pained look crossed her face. She hesitated way too long over her answer, then said weakly, “Yes.”

      That was interesting.

      “Sorry.” Ben frowned. “I’m being nosy, but…you don’t sound too sure about that.”

      “No… I mean…” She frowned, too. “Honestly, I don’t know what I mean.”

      He didn’t know whether to feel guilty or happy. He really did try to do the right thing. He didn’t succeed all the time, but he felt it was important to try.

      So what was the right thing here?

      She certainly shouldn’t marry the guy if she didn’t love him….

      They looked at each other again, her waiting to see what he said, him not knowing what to say but wanting to know more.

      “Want to tell me about it?” he tried. He’d had a lot of success with that particular phrase. A lot of times people thought about it and decided they wanted to talk, and there he’d be. Maybe she wanted to talk.

      “Maybe,” she said, frowning. “Maybe it would be easier with a stranger. I mean, if I just brought up the idea that Joe and I might not get married to one of my siblings, all three of them would hear about it within seconds, and they’d have questions that I just couldn’t answer, because…I don’t know what to do, and I hate that. Don’t you hate not knowing what to do?”

      “I find myself quite often not knowing what to do,” he admitted. Like now. Right now. What did he do now?

      “But don’t you hate it?”

      “I don’t like it, but…I guess I just think that’s mostly what life is—stumbling along, not knowing what’s going to happen, a lot of times not knowing what I should do but hoping I can figure out the right thing to do.”

      “It’s awful. Life should be simpler,” she argued. “We should always know what we should do. We should always be able to figure it out.”

      “And you can’t figure out what to do now?”

      “No,” she complained. “Honestly, I’m not even sure if I’m engaged anymore. The date when we were supposed to be married has come and gone, and we’re not married, and neither one of us has said a word about rescheduling. We just kind of…left things up in the air. Which is really not like me. But I just don’t know what to do. If I did, I’d do it. But I don’t, so I haven’t done anything, and I’m really not good in situations like this.” She frowned again. “You know?”

      “I think so,” he said, thinking that if she didn’t even know if she was engaged anymore, who did? Thinking that a good next question would be, Do you love this man? Does he love you? When what he wanted to say was, If you weren’t engaged, would you give me your phone number?

      He blamed the impulse, again, on lack of sleep and acute loneliness. Apparently, he was in worse shape than he thought.

      “You’re very easy to talk to,” she said, as if she didn’t quite understand why.

      He shrugged easily. “Years of training. I guess some of it took. And in my entirely professional opinion, I can tell you that most people get confused on a regular basis. It’s perfectly normal.”

      Kate frowned. “And then they just don’t do anything, because they’re afraid they’ll do the wrong thing? Or because they think maybe something will happen at some point, and then they’ll just know what they’re supposed to do?”

      “Exactly.”

      “I hate that, too,” she said. “I mean, how can we expect to get where we want to go, without figuring out what we want and making a plan for getting it?”

      “So, you don’t know what you want?” he asked cautiously, thinking he knew exactly what she was like. Tough on herself. Focused. Driven. Ambitious. Baffled by how difficult some people found life.

      Obviously, she needed help. And it was possible he was helping her clarify her feelings. That was good, right?

      “Maybe.” She looked even more troubled and, sounding doubtful said, “But this is supposed to be for the rest of my life. This is not a decision to mess up.”

      “No, it’s not,” he said, striving for an absolutely objective tone. One should be absolutely sure when choosing someone to marry. He’d give that advice to anyone who asked. Not just possibly engaged women he wanted to date.

      “Maybe it’s just cold feet,” she suggested.

      “Maybe,” he agreed. He could be really good at this objective stuff.

      “But it would be awful to lose the right man, just because I’m nervous about making that commitment or waiting for…well…”

      Oh, yeah. What did she want from this relationship that was missing? What could he possibly say that would be unbiased here?

      She just looked sad then. “I don’t know what I want.”

      “I think you do,” he said, then could have kicked himself.

      Still, not bad advice, he told himself.

      He’d learned from experience. People knew. They just didn’t want to admit to themselves that they knew, because then they’d have to do something about it. If they could just pretend that they didn’t know, they didn’t have to do anything.

      “Tell me what to do?” she asked.

      “I can’t. You’re the only one who knows how you really feel.” Then, because he felt guilty, he added, “Kate, if you really don’t know, it’s okay to let things ride for a little while until you figure it out. That’s just being careful.”

      “I don’t think I’m being careful. I think I’m being a coward.”

      If she’d been anyone else, he would have reached over and squeezed her hand or patted her shoulder to try to comfort her because she looked so troubled. But Ben wasn’t touching her.

      “You think I’m awful, don’t you?” she asked.

      “No.”

      “You say that, but you sound like you think I’m awful. You’re looking at me like you think I’m awful. Do you know Joe?”

      “No.”

      “He’s a good man. A very good man.”

      But that didn’t make him right for her.

      He groaned. Ben, gag yourself now. Right now.

      If he had a needle and thread, he’d have sewn his mouth shut and known he deserved the pain it caused him.

      “Now you look angry,” she said.

      “At myself. Not you.”

      “Why?”

      “Because I’m wishing you weren’t engaged,” he admitted. “Which means I have no right giving you advice about this, and I have to shut up. Now.”

      She looked puzzled. “You mean…you want to…you and me?”

      He nodded.

      “Oh.” Her mouth fell open and her eyes got big and round. Soft color filled her cheeks, and he started laughing, couldn’t help it.

      Either he was a terrible flirt or she was completely oblivious to him as a man, because it was obvious it hadn’t even occurred to her that he might be interested in her. He either really liked her for that or felt sorry for himself for being invisible to her.

      “I’m really not very good at this sort of thing,” she said. “You know, the man-woman thing.”

      “Me,