Her chest was pressed against mine as we crowded under my little sister’s Hello Kitty umbrella, desperate to get under a sliver of dry space.

 “You couldn’t have taken the time to find a bigger umbrella?” She questioned as I wrapped an arm around her, holding her close to me, away from the downpour around her.

“I wanted to get here before the rain,” I protested as she wriggled around, trying to get comfortable. She was stepping on my feet in the process, but I wouldn’t tell her that. “Guess it beat us.”

She laughed in an almost sarcastic manner. “No kidding.”

A flash of lightening passed over us, making her jump. She buried her face into my chest, the same way she’d done on our first date, dared to watch a horror movie by a couple of her friends, who knew she was terrible with jumps scares.

“You look like a drowned rat.”

She laughed genuinely this time, quiet yet real. “So do you.” She looked up at me with those big brown eyes of hers, soft and warm and perfect. She reached up, her hand just inches from my face, but she bit the inside of her cheek out of nervous habit and lowered it again. “Why did you want to come here, anyway?”

“I wanted to tell you something,” I said, fishing around in my pocket for that little hard surface. “I’ve been waiting to tell you all year, I just hadn’t gotten the chance to tell you…”

“No, Roger I- please don’t tell me you’re not-“

Finally, reaching the little box, I pulled it out of my pocket, unable to stop smiling. “And maybe it isn’t perfect, but I feel like that fits us, right?”

She shook her head, ruddy, soaked curls sticking to her cheeks and neck, her mascara running in black smudges down her face. She was beautiful even in her worst moments. “Roger, please don’t say it,” she whispered.

“Will you marry me?”

And she paused for a moment, a pained expression crossing her face, one that I’d seen too many times over the years we’d spent together. “I’m sorry, I just… I can’t.”

My heart dropped into my stomach. “Why can’t you?”

“I can’t explain, I just- I need to go.” And she ran off into the rain as thunder crashed around us, but she didn’t jump this time, and she didn’t look back.

And I stood stunned and heartbroken, under my little sister’s damn Hello Kitty umbrella.