Slightly Engaged. Wendy Markham

Jack is waiting for.

      Is he uncertain?

      Is he falling out of love?

      Or maybe it’s Sweetest Day.

      Maybe he wants to do it on Sweetest Day.

      That has to be it.

      Chapter 5

      “Sweetest Day? Never heard of it,” Jack informs me.

      We’re headed home from work on the third Friday night in October—which, if all goes as planned, will be our rehearsal dinner a year from now—waiting in a rush-hour crowd on the uptown subway platform at Grand Central.

      “Sure you have,” I say as though he’s just claimed he’s never once wondered what it would be like to sleep with the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover model.

      “Sweetest Day?” He shakes his head. “I don’t think so. What is it?”

      “It’s a day when you show your appreciation to loved ones,” I recite, having looked it up on the Internet earlier so I’d be prepared for this conversation.

      “Show appreciation how?”

      “You know…cards…candy…” Diamond engagement rings…

      NOT Chia Pets…

      “Who invented it? Hallmark? Brach’s?”

      “Brach’s?” I echo in disdain. At least he could have said Godiva.

      “Yeah, you know…the candy guys.”

      “I know,” I tell him—or rather, shout at him as the uptown express train comes roaring into the station on the opposite side of the platform. “Brach’s. The candy guys.”

      I must say, this exchange isn’t going quite the way I envisioned.

      I was supposed to very casually ask Jack how we’re going to celebrate Sweetest Day tomorrow, and he was supposed to get a knowing gleam in his eye and feign ignorance.

      The ignorance is there all right, but it sure seems authentic, and the knowing gleam is as scarce as the number-six local.

      I wait to make my point until the express train has left the station and the noise level has been reduced to the rumble of trains and screeching of brakes on distant tracks, an unintelligibly staticky public-address announcement upstairs, and—right here for our listening pleasure—an off-key portable-karaoke singer and her coin-cup-jangling pimplike male companion.

      I ask, again, “How should we celebrate?”

      I can tell Jack’s thinking the question would work better if I left off the first word and made it a yes/no.

      Should we celebrate?

      His answer to that would probably be no.

      His answer to How should we celebrate is merely, “Celebrate?”

      Which is no answer. Unwilling to let him off the hook, I say, “Got any ideas?”

      “We can watch Game One?”

      “Game one?”

      “The World Series. Tomorrow night.”

      “Oh. Right. I forgot,” I tell the man who once came dangerously close to derailing our relationship by choosing a Giants playoff game over dinner with me.

      He chose me in the nick of time.

      He even cooked that dinner, the first of many.

      Yet here he is, acting like a dopey dog that keeps trotting back to the electric fence line for another jolt.

      Jack asks incredulously, “How could you forget about something like the World Series?”

      Same way you can forget to propose when your mother has practically done all the work already, I want to tell him.

      I say simply, “I don’t know. But it’s not like we don’t have TiVo. Don’t you think we could do something a little more romantic than watch the World Series, in real time, with commercials?”

      He has the gall to look alarmed.

      Okay, I give up.

      “Romantic…like what?” he wants to know.

      Time to let him off the hook. “Never mind,” I say with a sigh.

      After all, I owe him one for being so charitable to Raphael that night with the paella. He played three rounds of Trivial Pursuit and didn’t even complain when Raphael kept cheating to avoid the Sports and Leisure questions and land instead on Arts and Entertainment.

      Anyway, clearly, Jack isn’t planning to propose on Sweetest Day, even now that I’ve enlightened him.

      I’ll have to shelve the story I was going to tell our future kids one day about how we got engaged in October, my favorite month of the year. I think it’s safe to assume that the only remotely wedding-related thing anybody’s asking me to be this month is maid of honor at a gay wedding.

      I crane my neck to look for the light at the end of the tunnel.

      I’m not speaking figuratively.

      I’m looking for the actual light, as in the headlight of the number-six train.

      All I want is to get home and take off these stockings and two-inch heels. Lame, I know, but two inches are two too many for me.

      “Hey, I know!” Jack says suddenly. “How about if we go out to dinner tonight? You know…to celebrate Sweetest Day.”

      “Tonight? You mean…go back out after we get home?”

      Now that, my friends, is a revolutionary idea. When we first moved in together we came and went at all hours, but we’ve become proficient nesters lately. Most nights, once we’re home, we’re home—especially now that we have TiVo and even last-minute Blockbuster video rentals are a thing of the past. I know. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

      “I was thinking we could stop somewhere now, on the way,” he says with the air of one who plans to zip through a drive-through for a couple of Whoppers.

      “I don’t know…I’m kind of tired and I don’t really want to hang around all night in this.” I look down at my trench coat, crepe suit and pumps, which I donned for a client presentation with the futile hope that somebody might recognize me as executive material.

      “We can go home first so you can change,” Jack offers. “I wouldn’t mind getting into some jeans myself.”

      Jeans?

      Okay, who said anything about jeans?

      Aren’t we talking about a romantic Sweetest Day Eve dinner here?

      Apparently, only one of us is. The other has apparently set his sights on the kind of establishment that offers a denim dress code and a tuna-melt special.

      I yawn. It’s a fake yawn when I start it, but it turns real before it’s over.

      “I don’t think so,” I tell Jack. “I’m really wiped out. It’s been a rough week.”

      He’s watching me with an oddly intent expression. The platform has grown so crowded with commuters that his face is about six inches from mine and he’s looking right into my eyes, frowning slightly.

      “Are you okay, Tracey?”

      “What do you mean?”

      “You just seem kind of…edgy.”

      I look around at the restless horde of uptown-bound office drones being serenaded by Karaoke Girl, who is now bellowing, “I’ve Been to Paradise But I’ve Never Been to Me.”

      “Who isn’t edgy?” I ask. “There hasn’t been a six train in almost ten minutes.”

      “No, not about the subway.