I tried. I want that on record.

After the rooftop, I went home and I made a decision. Not the right one. Not the brave one. The safe one. I decided to try harder with Emily. To recommit. To pour myself back into the golden, glowing path that the ring had chosen and ignore the cold, starlit detour that my heart had taken on a Wednesday night on a rooftop above a laundromat.

I planned a date. A real one, not a dinner at the Ashfords' or a movie Emily chose or a double date orchestrated by Danny. I planned it myself, from scratch, the way I thought a good ring-match partner should.

Flowers. Not roses, too obvious. Sunflowers, because she'd mentioned once that they were her mother's favorite, and I'd filed it away the way I filed everything Emily said. Reservations at a restaurant that wasn't Bronco's, a quiet Italian place on the north side that she'd pointed out from her car once and said, "We should go there sometime." A walk afterward along the river, where the city lights reflected on the water and the night felt clean and still.

I did everything right. I wore the blue shirt. I opened doors. I put my phone away and listened, really listened, to every word she said.

And she lit up. God, she lit up. The Emily from the quad, the Emily from the mechanical bull, the Emily who kissed me hard and whispered her dreams. She was there, alive and present, and she was looking at me with eyes that said this is what I've been waiting for.

"This is perfect," she said, over pasta and candlelight. "Jacob, this is really perfect."

"You deserve perfect."

"I don't need perfect. I just need you to be here." She reached across the table and took my hand. The rings glowed. Not the blaze of the early days, but gold. Present. Trying.

"I'm here," I said.

She told me about her week. About the TA sessions, about the freshman who'd brought her a thank-you card, about a conversation she'd had with her brother about what he wanted to do after his own Ceremony next year. She talked with her hands when she got excited, and her ring traced golden arcs through the candlelight, and the people at the next table watched us with that familiar knowing smile.

I told her about the bookstore, about Graham's latest literary grudge (a bestselling thriller he'd called "an insult to binding glue"), about the cat's ongoing migration through the store's sections (currently fiction, which Graham considered a promotion). She laughed at the right places, the real laugh, and I felt a warmth that wasn't the ring. A warmth that came from simply making someone happy.

This was what we could be. If I chose it. If I committed. If I stopped walking up fire escapes to rooftops and sitting on curbs outside bars and letting my hand brush the wrist of a girl who wasn't mine.

"I'm here," I said.

And I was. Mostly. Almost.

The walk along the river was warm, and she tucked herself against my side, and our steps fell into rhythm the way matched couples' steps are supposed to. She talked about the TA position, about her plans, about a life she was building in careful increments while her mother built a different one on top of it. I listened. I asked questions. I said the right things.

But at the back of my mind, behind every smile and every touch and every golden pulse, there was a rooftop. A blanket on concrete. Bad coffee and good stars. And three seconds of a hand in mine that felt like the truest thing I'd ever done.

The performance was flawless. Emily didn't notice.

Or maybe she did, and chose not to say.

Danny and Megan broke up on a Thursday.

Not permanently. Not even seriously. But the fight was real, loud, and public enough that the entire cafeteria witnessed it.

"You don't get to tell me how to feel!" Megan's voice carried across three tables and a salad bar. She was standing, which was never a good sign with Megan. Megan sitting down was a debate. Megan standing up was a war.

"I'm not telling you how to feel, I'm telling you that your feelings are wrong." Danny realized his mistake immediately. I could see it cross his face, the precise moment the word wrong left his mouth and his brain screamed abort abort abort.

"My feelings are WRONG?"

"That came out bad."

"That came out EXACTLY how you meant it."

They went back and forth for ten minutes. The cafeteria pretended not to listen while absolutely listening. I sat two tables away with my head down, trying to achieve invisibility through sheer willpower.

The thing about Danny and Megan's fights was that they were honest. Ugly, loud, embarrassing, but honest. They said the real thing, the hard thing, the thing that sane people keep locked behind polite smiles and careful silences. Danny told Megan she was controlling. Megan told Danny he was emotionally avoidant. They both flinched. They both meant it.

And then Megan grabbed his face and kissed him, and Danny said, "I'm sorry," and Megan said, "You should be," and their rings blazed gold so bright that the girl at the next table spilled her drink.

Ten minutes. That's how long it took them to go from screaming to blazing. Because they fought real and they loved real and they never, not once, pretended to be fine when they weren't.

I sat at my table and watched them walk out of the cafeteria hand in hand, rings synchronized, and I felt a crack run through my chest that had nothing to do with them and everything to do with me.

Emily and I never fought. We never screamed. We never said the hard thing or the true thing or the thing that would crack us open and force us to rebuild.

We performed. We smiled. We let the ring glow and told ourselves it was enough.

I pulled out my phone and looked at two text threads. Emily's last message: a voice note, thirty seconds of warmth and plans and golden reliability. Sarah's last message: "New song. Terrible as usual. Wednesday?"

I put the phone away. Picked up my bag. Walked to class.

The ring glowed, faintly, on my finger. A candle in a room that used to hold a bonfire.

Emily mentioned Marcus on Saturday.

We were at her apartment, watching a movie she'd picked, some romantic drama about a couple navigating long distance. She was curled against my side, her head on my shoulder, and she said it the way you'd mention the weather.

"Marcus stopped by campus yesterday. He brought me lunch."

I didn't move. "That was nice of him."

"He does that sometimes. When he's in the area." She paused. "He said you seemed tense at the dinner."

"I wasn't tense."

"He said your energy was 'resistant.' His word, not mine."

"My energy is none of his business."

Emily shifted, lifting her head from my shoulder. I could feel her looking at me, but I kept my eyes on the screen.

"He's just trying to be friendly, Jacob."

"He's trying to be in your life."

The words came out harder than I intended. Emily's expression shifted, a quick tightening that she smoothed out before it could fully form.

"He is in my life. He's been in my life since I was twelve. That's not going to change because it makes you uncomfortable."

This was the closest we'd come to a fight. The closest we'd come to saying the real thing, the thing with edges. I could feel it hovering between us, and for one reckless second I wanted to grab it and tear it open.

Instead, I said, "You're right. I'm sorry."

And she said, "It's fine."

And we went back to the movie.

Later, after the credits rolled and the apartment was quiet, Emily went to the kitchen for water. I sat on the couch and noticed a bouquet of flowers on the side table that I hadn't seen before. White roses. Expensive ones, the kind that came from a florist, not a grocery store.

There was a card tucked into the stems. I shouldn't have read it. I know that. But my hand was already reaching, and my eyes were already scanning, and the words were already in my head before I could stop them.

Emily, thinking of you. Looking forward to the gala. You'll be brilliant as always. M.

Marcus. M. White roses and a gala and the casual confidence of a man who sends flowers to another man's ring-match and signs his name with a single letter because he's sure she'll know who it's from.

Emily came back with two glasses of water. She saw me looking at the flowers. She didn't flinch.

"The foundation gala," she said. "Next month. My family goes every year. Marcus is organizing it."

"And he sent you flowers."

"He's being supportive."

"He's being Marcus."

She set the water on the table with a precision that told me she was choosing her next words carefully.

"Jacob. Marcus is part of my world. My family's world. I can't cut him out because you don't like him." She paused. "And frankly, you've been distracted for weeks. You show up to half our plans late. You space out during conversations. Your ring is dimmer than it's been since we matched. Maybe instead of worrying about Marcus, you should figure out what's going on with you."

The words landed. Every one of them.

She was right. She was absolutely, devastatingly right. And I couldn't defend myself without telling her the truth, and the truth would destroy everything we'd built.

"I'm working on it," I said.

"Work faster." Not unkind. Not an ultimatum. But close.

The rings glowed. Faintly. Obediently. Two golden lights performing their role in a scene that was running out of script.

I tried. For two weeks, I tried. I planned dates and wore the blue shirt and held her hand and watched our rings glow and told myself that this was enough, this was right, this was the life the system had built for me.

But you can't perform love. Not forever. The body gets tired. The smile slips. The ring dims.

And somewhere across town, on a rooftop above a laundromat, there was a girl with no ring and a guitar and a wall she'd let me behind, and I couldn't stop hearing her voice in the spaces where Emily's silence lived.

The performance was ending. I could feel it.

I just didn't know what came after the curtain fell.