Standing outside in the muggy heat, being eaten alive by mosquitos, I tried to lob the rope over the branch just above Julia, and I waited to hear Rosie squeal when she got the good news.

But she didn’t.

The loop on the rope got stuck on a branch, and I yanked it down to try again. Meanwhile, Julia made noises I’d never heard outside of a horror film. Minutes passed. The cicadas screeched. The clouds passed. I looked back at the house and saw Rosie through the kitchen window, washing her hands at the sink.

With every passing instant, I became more certain that she’d learned she’d gotten the job and that she wasn’t going to tell me.

She was going to pass up the job for us. She was going to give up the dream for me.

It was one of the things I loved most about her—loyal and stubborn. But this, this was so fucking different. This was the big dream. This was the thing she wished for when she blew out her candles.

I wouldn’t let her miss this chance.

At last, the goddamned rope made it over the branch, a thick and solid one just above where Julia was clinging on for dear life. I anchored the free end of the rope around the trunk and used a second piece to tie the door to the cat carrier open. I opened up the tin of SPAM and put it at the back of the carrier, and then I hoisted it up slowly toward Julia so I didn’t spook her. It was like a low-budget inverted Coast Guard rescue operation, except it wasn’t a human at the end of a basket in the water, it was a cat. So I was going to have to be patient, wait for the wind carry the scent of the SPAM to her, and let her addiction to nitrates do the rest. The wind shifted infinitesimally, and Julia turned toward the carrier and twitched her whiskers, but she was still hanging on to the branch so hard that bits of bark tumbled down like crumbs. I sat down on the bench under the magnolia and reached for my phone. I didn’t have it because it was inside on the counter, waiting to be charged. In its place, I felt the ring box.

Julia began the slow negotiation of turning herself around on the branch, one paw, one half inch at a time. I waited and waited. But still, Rosie didn’t squeal.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Julia made a flying leap into the cat carrier, and it swung in the air like a wrecking ball, but I felt like shit because Rosie still hadn’t said anything about the job. As I lowered the cat crate down, I indulged the delusion that maybe, just maybe, she didn’t know yet and she wasn’t keeping it from me. Because Rosie was a lot of things, but she wasn’t a liar. She was as honest as the day was long, and I just couldn’t let myself believe that she would keep this news from me, all for the sake of us. To me, she was more important than any of it. Even this feeling that had changed everything in my life.

Gently, I let the crate come to the ground and looked inside. Julia was gnashing huge mouthfuls of SPAM right out of the tin, like a wild and starving scavenger. I reached in to take it because by the looks of things, she’d already eaten my daily sodium allowance, and if I didn’t stop her, God only knew what would happen next. She’d shrivel up like a salted cod or something. As my hand entered the carrier, she hissed and bristled. But I wasn’t buying it. “Knock that shit off, Caesar,” I growled back at her. She froze with a piece of SPAM still clinging to her whiskers, looking at me in pure astonishment. Ears flat. Eyes wide.

With the carrier door closed, I made the seemingly endless trek to the house. One hundred yards to the moment of truth. I could see Rosie through the kitchen window, looking down at something. Her phone, I figured. But she didn’t look up and say, Max! I have the best news! She didn’t say anything at all. Instead, as I walked through the front door, my worry was confirmed: she looked like she’d just been caught with her hand in the cookie jar, and she dropped her phone into her apron pocket. “Oh, hi!” she said with an embarrassed blush. “You did it! My hero! I locked Cupcake in the bathroom with a soup bone. Coast is clear.”

Holy, holy shit. She was lying to my face. I knew it—I could feel it, like the temperature had changed. She knew, and she was going to pretend it hadn’t happened. I slid the can of SPAM across the island and glanced at the still-illuminated screen, visible through the fabric of her apron. “Everything good?”

Rosie blinked a few times and smiled her sweetest, most wholesome smile. “Yep! All good!”

Still, I told myself, it was possible that she didn’t know, just possible that she wasn’t looking me right in the eye and lying to me, so I didn’t jump to any conclusions yet. “Say, did you ever apply for that job at wherever it was?”

Her eyes moved up toward the ceiling. “Umm… ReadyMadeLogos.com?”

The screen on her phone went dark in her apron pocket. I noticed that now my phone was plugged in where hers had been earlier, next to the bananas. “No, at the publisher. Gray Moose.”

“Oh!” She made a don’t be ridiculous face. “No. I’d never have had a chance. I didn’t apply.”

“You had your portfolio all set.” I knew that for sure; we’d spent a whole afternoon going over illustrations of crickets that played their legs like violins and illustrations of Randy the Raisin, in his purple Converse, exploring the dust jungle under an old refrigerator. “I even proofread your cover letter.”

She swiped her hand through the air. “Yeah, but who needs the stress?” she said. “Not me!” The smile was a good one, but I could see that on the edges it was a little bit…forced. It wasn’t the easy-breezy toothpaste commercial smile she flashed at me all the time. This one was pained, like she’d had to hold it for someone to take a photo.

I gave her a long stare and waited, willing her to tell me. To come clean.

But still, she didn’t. Instead, she smoothed her hair and tightened her apron strings. “So, handsome. What do you want for lunch?”

Inside my chest, my heart fucking split in two. She was doing this for me, for us, standing in front of me, lying to my face and pretending everything was the same as it had been half an hour ago.

Which it was not. It most definitely was not. “I’m going to give the dock a call and see what’s up with my boat.” I woke up my phone and saw it had enough juice now to make a call. Without another word, I headed up to her bedroom to put Julia Caesar somewhere out of Cupcake’s line of sight.

“Max?” she asked as I made my way up the steps. I paused with my foot about to hit the tread where her ass was that first night. I turned and looked over my shoulder.

Now or never. Say it, beautiful. Don’t lie to me.

“You okay?” she asked. Her pretty painted nails sparkled against the dark wood of the newel post. She twisted her left foot back and forth on its tiptoe so that her flip-flop swished against the hardwood below. “Everything all right?”

Not all right. One thousand percent not all right. I would not let her give up her dreams for me—no fucking way. Never. She was bigger than this and bigger than me, and I wouldn’t make her choose. Never. “Yeah. I’m fine. It’s just the heat.”

* * *

Through my phone, Rich from the docks hollered, “Got some structural damage to the keel, son! Real pisser!”

I heard Rosie open the bedroom door, but I didn’t turn to face her. Instead, I grabbed my duffel from under the bed. It was a first-rate, class-A douchebag move, and I knew it. But I was too pissed to talk it over with her—too frustrated to be reasonable. I wanted to protect her future more than I wanted to put myself in the way of what she deserved to have. “Sounds good, Rich.”

“Son! I think there’s a problem with this line! I’ll say it again! Keel is fucked! Time to sell her for salvage!”

“Thanks for all the hard work. I knew you guys could get it sorted out.”

The door squeaked closed, and her soft footsteps came nearer. I turned away from her as I grabbed my socks from the bottom drawer. The mattress squeaked softly as she sat down on the bed.

My ear was full of the sound of Rich tapping the phone with his finger, and I thought it was going to bust my eardrum. I turned down the volume with a few presses of my thumb. “You hear me? Son? Not livable! Sell her for parts!”

“That’s less than I figured it would be,” I said and grabbed my boxers. “I’ll pay in cash. I know that’s easier for you guys.”

“What the hell’s going on here, son?” Rich boomed. “We having two different conversations? Someone splice this line? Christ! I’ll spell it out for you! Sierra! Alpha! Lima! Victor! Alpha!”

Before he could spell out salvage all the way, I told him, “Thanks, man, be there soon,” and I zipped up my duffel. I ended the call and put my phone into my jeans. I’d let her hear what I needed her to hear, and I steeled myself as I hoisted my duffel bag over my shoulder and turned to face her.

Rosie’s eyes were wide and stunned. “You’re…leaving?” She fidgeted with the edge of her nightie and blinked like she was fighting back a rush of tears. “Why are you leaving?”

“You’ve got stuff to do, and Julia can’t live with a dog.” I did a thing I never fucking did and actually shrugged. It was as douchebag as I could possibly get. I was one pair of loafers and some ladies socks away from being that guy Rosie had iced at the Anchor Nurse. Number one asshole. That was me.

“But, Max,” she said, standing slowly. “I don’t want you to leave.” She reached out and put her hand on my forearm. It was fucking electric. It was everything, it was every dream, it was every hope. It was everything I’d ever wanted, right in front of me.

But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t keep her moored to shore. I would be her friend, but I wouldn’t be her ball and chain. I wouldn’t do it to her, I would fucking not. But I couldn’t resist one last kiss on her cheek—one last sweet, perfect kiss, on the perfect face of the perfect woman. She smelled like heaven. She was heaven, in the flesh. “See you when I see you.”

I closed her bedroom door behind me and jogged down the steps, taking a last big step over a baby gate that Rosie had put up as an extra line of defense. Cupcake came up on two legs to greet me, whirling around in her adorably weird little dance. I scooped her up in one arm like a football, keeping her close. From the hook by the door, I grabbed her leash and her harness and snatched her hedgehog off the sofa. Without looking up at Rosie’s window, I packed up the truck. I put Cupcake in her basket, buckled her up, and started up the engine. I floored it down Rosie’s long driveway with my goddamned heart breaking in two, while U2 hit me with the death blow from the mixtape I’d made myself. “With or Without You.” Fucking Bono. Bastard.