The weary April sunlight glints off two platinum wedding bands. Brian plucks one from its fancy box and looks through it, squinting one eye shut. It’s Justin’s, the smaller of the two. He rolls it between his fingers. He’s been sitting in his car outside Frost & Co.’s Jewelers for at least an hour, paralyzed with indecision, inert with now-whats. He takes a deep breath and recalls the gut-twisting sensation of no, this can’t be happening. But it had. They’d broken the engagement. Two comets once caught in each other’s gravitational fields had spun apart, careening toward their separate unknowns.

He can return them, recoup his five thousand dollars, and in the process bid farewell to symbols and vows, to sworn promises before God and family. He can, but does he want to? Does he want to convert almost into never? Or is it only a matter of time before metal encircles flesh and bone? Maybe . . . maybe some day their futures can contain each other like two streams flowing into a river. Two tides tugged by the same moon. Two embers in the same fire. Maybe all he has to do is wait – wait and believe.

He places the band against his lips. The metal is as warm as skin. As warm as their bed where they’d talked all night – strange, circuitous ramblings about everything and nothing. Brian had bared his heart in ways and about things he never had before, filling in the Swiss cheese holes of Justin’s guesses with words. Actual words with actual meanings easy to ascertain. It's been less difficult than he ever would’ve imagined; several times he’d caught himself wondering why they’d never done this sooner. Stay up all night talking instead of fucking. Would things be different if they had?

They are avoiding everyone. This is their time. Let the others think what they will. If they’d actually married, they’d be in Cancun right now. Instead, they’ve stayed at home getting food delivered and walking around naked. Today is the first day Brian has left the loft in over a week. He feels heavy and molasses-slow as though he’s waking from hibernation, blinking at the spring’s cruel arrival. It’s also the first day they’ve spent apart. Brian knows where Justin is. There’s no reason for secrecy. He’s at home, searching for an apartment and studio space in New York City.

Brian slides the ring back into its slot and closes the box, stroking its lid with his thumb, his callus catching on the velvet. He doesn’t know when Justin will actually leave. He’s told Justin he doesn’t want to know until the night before. Maybe it’ll make things easier. The day will come soon though. Maybe tomorrow or the day after. Brian will come home from work to find Justin packing. He’s asked for certain favors – little things, like leave behind your razor. Don’t take all your underwear. Stock up on non-perishables because sometimes home is where your toothbrush is.

He’d been ready to be married. Yes, a catastrophe can change the direction of your life like a car hitting a patch of ice, but it can’t create something that wasn’t already there. Shape it maybe, but not create it. Brian’s greatest fear is that Justin might think his love was nothing more than a wisp of emotion, heavy as the soot-scented smoke from the bombing, but nonetheless insubstantial. Nothing could be less true. Far from ethereal, Brian’s love is a lion he’d fought like Hercules, a vice slowly tightening that he’d strained against too hard and for too long.

He tips his head back against the seat and closes his eyes. The rings. If he returns them, they’ll be liquefied and remolded into some other couple’s dream, some other couple’s declaration. No. The promise he’d crafted in his heart – the promise to have and to hold – cannot be melted back into the shifting shapelessness of time that had already passed, of fears that had evaporated like a summer rain on hot pavement. That promise is as unassailable as the elements it was made from. As enduring as a burning coal seam. As ancient as dirt and bone and steel.

Justin might not return, and Brian might not ask him to. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Not distance, not circumstance, not even time. The acid of day and weeks and years alone can corrode, but it cannot destroy a bond like theirs, a bond that Brian chiseled out of sheer terror – the terror of being known, of being loved and of loving in return. He hadn’t sought it out. He hadn’t even wanted it, but it's burrowed into his life, and he’d be nothing now but hollow space without it. An eternity of lifetimes couldn’t fill an emptiness so vast.

He places the box on the passenger seat and starts the car’s engine, shifting into gear and pulling out of the parking space into the busy after-work street. Snow-bloated clouds have devoured the sun. Night is falling. He’d sat in front of the jeweler for hours. He wants to go home now, home to the few remaining days they have. He won’t tell Justin that he kept their rings. He’s made enough grand gestures. This is an act of private revelation. If Justin doesn’t already know – if he doesn’t already believe – then two circles of metal won’t make a difference.

Brian slips the box inside his jacket pocket. The loft glows whiskey-warm. Justin looks up from the computer. Brian smiles a smile of hellos and half good-byes. A smile of don’t-worries and don't doubt. “Everything is so expensive,” Justin says when Brian kisses him. Brian looks at the listings on the screen. East Village. Stuyvesant Square. “You’re not . . .” Justin says nervously, turning to look in his eyes. “This isn’t forever. Nothing is, right? Isn’t that what you’ve always said?” Brian merely smiles. He doesn’t say so, but he’d been wrong. Some things are. Some things always will be.

He takes Justin’s hand to help him out of his chair and then doesn’t let go. Sliding his free arm around his waist, he pulls Justin close. There’s no music playing, but they dance anyway, grinning at each other, drunk on nothing but each other’s eyes. Justin rests his head against Brian’s shoulder. Outside, it’s starting to snow. Brian combs his fingers through Justin’s hair and thinks of the two wedding bands sleeping in their box. Don’t get too comfortable, he tells them. He might not have said “I do,” but he never said, “I don’t.” And he never will.