You don't want to waste another minute when you realize
Sam looked at her out of the corner of his eye. Speaking in a tone just a touch lower than the normal conversational level he said, "He's proposed to pretty much every girl he's ever been with, you know?" He instantly regretted it.
He did not want to open that can of worms but he swore he told her that when he found out she had accepted his proposal but Sarah was too busy screaming at him from another time zone for telling her friends about her engagement before she could and 'ruining it' for her and he still thought about it every time he thought about her not being his and about how her marriage was (not) functioning.
She crinkled her brow in thought. She knew that because she had been friends with the girls but, no, that particular thought had never occurred to her. Her husband's relationship with her high school best friend was an on and off tumultuous, dangerous and depressing sort of this and when he was with her Sarah had told her friend that he was bad news. When he had proposed or even given her a ring (had he?), they were just in high school and nobody takes that seriously. Alice though, I'd have to ask her about that, the girl thought. I don't think I knew about that one. They'd only dated for such a short time and they broke up because I called him to tell him she was still screwing her ex-boyfriend who was my friend at the time. That other girl he dated before me is still crazy about him and thinks he would be with her even though she's with somebody else, he is not interested and he's married with a kid. Maybe he proposed to her?
All of these thoughts crept up on Sarah in quick succession. Had he proposed to all of his girlfriends? When he proposed to her did he even think she would really marry him even if she said yes? They weren't even officially dating. They were smitten with each other for sure but she'd only been seeing him for about a month when he asked, in what she saw then as a grand romantic gesture. She had said yes. They'd been engaged for a year, moved in together during that time, and gotten married. The relationship was harder when they lived together and even more so when they were engaged. And then she wanted a baby so they made one. Did he ever intend for any of this to happen? How had she never even considered to possibility that this wasn't what he actually wanted that rainy night?
"I'm different," she said finally. "He bought me a big, fancy ring even though I didn't want one. He didn't do that for anyone else. Even though we moved really quickly, I think he had to have known we would really get married and we would really do this thing." She hoped. She kept driving, eyes on the road. It would not do to dwell on this. She wondered aloud why he hadn't told her this before, reminded her at least, since she should've already known. He reminded her that he did, in fact, do just that. She had been too busy being pissed at him to listen to the words that were coming out of his mouth and his genuine concern for her which she'd written off as him being ridiculously self-serving. "You should've told me when we were dating. Warned me, reminded me, whatever, then. It would've made a difference to know before. It made no difference after. I'd never been engaged before. I'm not the kind of girl to break engagements."
He told her that he didn't even know they were dating and she said, "We weren't. Not officially. You weren't even around anyways. You were in a completely different state on the other side of the country. We weren't even talking, you had no way of knowing." She sighed then, "Things had to happen to make us who we are. Now we are who we are and we're still growing and I'm still not learning from my mistakes, still disregarding good advice and bullshit, still going through the motions."
And it would never change. She always chose wrong. Always ignored what they had. Never allowed herself to be truly happy and sabotaged herself every time she got somewhat close to approaching happiness, calmness or stability.