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her boyfriend and thinking so hard I could see her brain moving around beneath her pretty little hat.
    â€œSo?” the roommate’s boyfriend opened again. “Do you want to go to Hawaii?”
    â€œYeah, do you?” someone else behind me asked.
    Scarlet looked down at her feet pensively. There was no way to know if she’d started to cry. Her shoulders were shaking. She took one of Ian’s hands into both of hers.
    Ian looked at me for a second and I knew he felt terrible.
    â€œDo you?” someone else asked.
    â€œIan,” Scarlet said with her eyes moving from her feet right to Ian’s eyes. “You know, I think I would like to take that all-inclusive trip with you to Hawaii.”
    Ian’s face brightened. All around me let out the breath they’d been holding in.
    â€œI would like to go,” Scarlet went on, “but . . . but only if it’s as husband and wife.”
    â€œWhat?” I’m nearly certain this was me.
    â€œWhat I’m trying to say, Ian, is that it’s 2011. I’m an independent, educated, and successful sister. And I’m not ashamed to say that I’m in love with you and I want to marry you. Times have changed and, as a woman, I want to ask you to be my husband.”
    The cameras around me started rolling again as Scarlet tried to get down on one knee to ask Ian to marry her.
    Shocked as he was, Ian’s mouth was just as wide as mine had been in the lobby earlier, but he didn’t let Scarlet get down on her knee. He pulled her back up: “Will you marry me?” she asked.
    I was standing there praying to God and everything holy that Ian said yes. Really, I’d actually seen this a few times in my years working in nuptials, and when a woman proposes and a man declines, there’s simply no savvy recovery. She leaves there let down and goes to the insane asylum and then from there to her grave. I didn’t want him to marry Scarlet, but to say no right then would ruin her and the dreams of every woman in that room. He could say yes now and then no later.
    And when I looked at Ian, I knew this was what he was about to do—the first part, anyway—because he was looking at Scarlet like she was all new and smelling like spring again. His color was back. His hands were confident at his sides. He looked, well, happy.
    â€œYes,” he said. “I will marry you.”
    It would take me some years to understand that Ian didn’t say yes to Scarlet just because he couldn’t say no. Birds of a feather flock together and, as I was looking for love, Ian wanted to believe he was already in love. That the feelings that had him rolling up that poor little book weren’t real doubt, but real fear—something that would dissipate, go away, once he realized that he was doing the right thing. Right or wrong, so many of my clients, so many of my friends, had gone to the altar using the same logic. Thinking that the love they wanted would conquer all. I wouldn’t admit it myself, but if I was in the same position—ready to get married and had the person I thought I loved standing in front of me asking for my hand in marriage—I might’ve done the same thing.
    In the end, only time would give the answers in Ian’s case. As the crowd of awkward smiles closed in upon him and Scarlet, cheering, I realized that the time for questions was over. I picked up a champagne flute and joined in. Kissed Scarlet on the cheek and winked softly at Ian. Posed for pictures, slid off my heels, and walked to my car, vowing to never again bring up the escape plan we’d discussed in the bedroom at the W Hotel.

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    â€œNo ‘Settle for’ Man”
    #IlovewhatIdobut: But when you love love like I do, it’s hard to listen to two people who probably aren’t in love and shouldn’t be getting married, explain why they’re in love and are getting married.
    â€œI would fucking kill someone for