"Because you listen. Because you don't play games. Because when I'm with you, I feel like the most important person in the world. My generation doesn't know how to love like that. You do."
I wanted to believe her. Most days, I do.
But some nights, I lie awake and wonder: Am I taking her best years? When I'm eighty, she'll be forty-two. When I'm gone, she'll have decades left. Is this love, or am I just selfish?
Last month, Amber found the ring.
I'd been carrying it for weeks, waiting for the right moment. Margaret's ring — the one I gave my first wife forty years ago. I wanted Amber to have it.
"Is this what I think it is?" she asked, holding the velvet box.
"I was going to ask properly. Dinner, candles, the whole thing."
"Ask me now."