I snap a picture of him with his back turned to me and post it to my Instagram with a rosy filter. I caption it with three hearts and Game night with my love! No better way to cap off an awesome day, and there’s no one else I’d rather spend it with. xoxo. #LivinTheLife #MarryingMyBestFriend #TrueLovesKissFromARose

#TrueLovesKissFromARose is our wedding hashtag and if you look it up on Pinterest you’ll find one million pictures of bouquets, table settings, and bridesmaid dresses that I like (but am not allowed to have). Dopamine trickles in with the first response to my post: omg you guys are so cute; but the plush, pillowy feeling grinds down to metal on metal when Zach replies with lmao. yeah right. I delete his comment.

It’s my own fault that I’m still in this mess, and I know it. I’m the biggest coward I’ve ever met. I’m doing neither of us a favor by refusing to back out. If Nicholas had half a brain he’d be calling it off, too, so maybe we’re locked in some silent draw, waiting to see who bows out first.

I know why he won’t. His mother’s been nagging him to marry and give her grandchildren to rank from most to least favorite, depending on whose physical features our unfortunate progeny inherit. If Nicholas jumps ship now, Deborah will revert back to nagging him to procreate using the frozen, ten-year-old eggs of her friend from tennis, Abigail, who died a year ago and for whatever ungodly reason left her eggs to the Rose family. Heather, Nicholas’s sister, is to be the incubator for this abomination of a child.

I can’t jump ship, either. I’ve been shouting to the world that I’m perfectly happy in my perfect relationship, and if I run now I’m going to look like a fraud.

Aside from that, Mrs. Rose has hinted more than once that if I back out, she’ll bill me for her troubles. If I leave her son, she’ll undoubtedly take me to small claims court to be reimbursed for Swarovski crystal candleholders customized with the letter R (everything has been custom-ordered to feature the letter R), which I wasn’t involved in picking out. I don’t have a ton of savings, but I do have a little bit tucked away, and I’ll defend it with teeth and nails.

“Mom’s still going on and on about the prenup,” Nicholas is saying from the next room. Maybe we’ve been here all evening and my imagination made up going to Brandy’s. I’m sitting in the same spot, while staring at the same spot, and that uneasy churning in the pit of my stomach is a third, invisible member of our party. It materializes reliably whenever we talk about the wedding.

“I told her no way,” he continues when I don’t respond. “She and Dad never got one. Why should we? It’s not like you’d ever leave me.”

Nicholas loves to congratulate himself for not getting a prenuptial agreement. He thinks about it all the time, which I know because he won’t stop bringing it up. He’s waiting for me to jump in with a pat on the back, but I leave him hanging.

“Mandy’s haircut looks awful,” Nicholas remarks, darting a shrewd glance at me. “Those bangs. Ugh.”

He knows her name is Brandy. I mention her at least once a day. I’m smoking at the ears not just over this, but because I had bangs when Nicholas and I met. He says all the time how pretty I was, and how he fell for me immediately, and yet for about a year now he’s reminded me every time he sees a woman with bangs how much he loathes them.

“They look cute on her,” I say defensively. It’s true. Brandy’s got these quirky piece-y bangs for her shag cut and she pulls it off so well. Her hair’s always top notch. She experiments a lot with colors, and the style of the month is a mesmerizing blend of black and garnet. When she stands outside, the effect that sunlight has on her stunning hair belongs in a commercial. She never leaves the house without a full face of flawless makeup, and is the only person I know who can pull off a combination of electric blue liner, orange ombre eyeshadow, and fuchsia lipstick.

He whistles a low, innocent tune. It feels like If you say so.

I’m losing it so quietly that I am almost not even here. In my mind, I click the file on my computer that notes a list of Nicholas’s positive attributes, running through each memorized line. They’ve lost their power to impress, I think because I’ve reread them so many times that I’ve become desensitized.

Nicholas holds the umbrella for me and makes sure I don’t get wet. When it’s raining and we park, he sidles up so that my passenger door opens to the sidewalk and not the muddy, grassy part of the curb. He has my order at all our restaurants mentally bookmarked, so he can recite exactly what I want to the waiter while I’m in the bathroom.

He has thick, beautifully rumpled chocolate-brown hair and he gets side-eyed by a lot of women whenever we go out. He says my eyes are the color of champagne, which became his favorite drink after we met for that very reason, and I had a wonderfully bubbly, fizzy sensation course through my veins whenever he smiled at me.

He likes dogs. Not enough to get one, but enough to chuff a laugh while I kneel to pet someone else’s dog, just before he says jokingly, “Don’t get any ideas.”

He doesn’t sneakily watch our favorite shows without me. If a song comes on the car radio that he hates, he doesn’t automatically change the station but first asks if I like it. He still wears a pair of socks with a poodle print that I got for him when we were first dating, even though it was a joke gift.

These might sound like minor traits, or even givens that I should take for granted, but I hold on to them like life preservers.

I love these things about the man. But I do not love the man.

I know this with all of my heart, sitting here in the house we live in together, the countdown to our wedding ticking louder and louder with each passing day. A doomsday clock. He and I are going to be a disaster, but whenever I think of taking proactive steps to avert the disaster, my tongue rolls up and my limbs paralyze. I can’t speak out. I can’t be the one to end this.

If he has a list about me, I’m sure it’s much shorter. I have no idea what I’m bringing to our relationship right now aside from the fact that I’m keeping dead Abigail’s frozen eggs at bay.

Thinking about this is prodding the wound, making it bigger, making it worse because I’m growing more aware of the breadth of my anxiety, the depth of my dissatisfaction. It is both therapy and torture. Something is not right. Something is missing. I am in knots.

I have no right to feel this unhappy, and I wish Nicholas were inarguably horrid so I could justify leaving. I fantasize about happening upon him with a dental hygienist in the back of his car at a shopping mall.