I stared down at the sparkling ring on my finger the entire plane ride home. It had been a long eighteen months of dating, and should have ended the second week, not well into the second year. And yet, here I was, on a plane trip bought with all the air miles my folks could scrounge together, so I could see him during summer break.

It was stupid. This wasn’t right.

He’d asked me to marry him, over the phone, before I’d left to see him in Florida. Stupidly, I said yes. Not because I wanted to — I had wanted out for months — but because I’d never heard of saying ‘no’ to marriage proposals. So now I was trapped in a narrow plane seat, dreading meeting my dad at the airport and telling him the “good” news.

The man sitting next to me notices the ring I’ve been fidgeting with non-stop. “Congratulations,” he says warmly. I summon my best social graces and thank him, and he looks back down at his magazine again. After all, you’re supposed to smile when your boyfriend asks you for the rest of your life.