When she arrives downstairs, he’s idling by the curb, one arm hanging out the window. That, she thinks, is a great way to lose a limb. He watches, his expression blank, as she approaches the car. Against her better judgment, she reaches out and tugs the handle. Rolling her eyes, she then raps twice on the glass. After a pause, he grins and flips the door lock. “You’re a jerk,” she tells him, falling into the passenger seat. “That wasn’t funny the first time, and it’s still not funny now.”

“Sorry,” he says. “Won’t happen again.”

“Yeah, right.”

He leans in for a quick peck on the lips. She tries to pull away, but he tugs her back in. When they separate, she licks her lips, her tongue swiping along the dried, peeling skin.

“You should really stop doing that,” he tells her. “That weird lip-picking thing.”

“It’s a nervous habit,” she says. “I would stop if I could.”

“You could,” he argues, starting the car. The engine rumbles, clearly discontent. “You could if you tried.”

“I could do a lot of things if I tried.”

He frowns like he doesn’t believe her. Then, giving her a once-over, he says, “You look nice.”

She glances down like she’s forgotten what she’s wearing. Like she didn’t spend half an hour slipping in and out of dresses, each too revealing or childish or just plain ugly for the engagement party. Not theirs, of course. Not their engagement party. He won’t propose to her. He keeps saying he will someday, but it’s been so long, she’s been having these dreams where he’s kneeling at her grave, old and wrinkled, his hair thinning and white. I’m sorry, he blubbers. I should have married you decades ago.

“Stop that,” he says.

“Stop what?”

“Picking your lips.”

She blinks. She didn’t even notice her hand rising to her mouth, her fingers closing around skin, so dry it feels like the pull tab of a wrapper.

“It’s getting really hard to kiss you, you know.” He licks his own lips, never once broken, aside from that time he got punched in the mouth by his best friend. Well…former best friend. They survived a lot together, those two idiots, but it was impossible to come back from that.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says, sarcasm dripping from her lips even faster than the blood. “I’m so sorry my literal disorder makes you less inclined to kiss me.”

He gives her a look of exasperation. “It’s a disorder now?”

She turns her head. “It was always a disorder. You just didn’t know about it because you’re an ignoramus.”

She found out about it on the internet. That’s how she learns most things nowadays. It’s not as if anyone at her office gives free lectures on obsessive-compulsive-spectrum disorders. That’s not to say they haven’t noticed. They all have. One woman even gave her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder and said, Some Vaseline will fix you right up.

It won’t, actually. It won’t fix her right up. She can apply as much Vaseline as she wants, can make out with a whole jar of it, smearing her face with petroleum jelly like a child with fingerpaint, but she still won’t stop picking. A part of her is convinced she’ll stop when he proposes. Once he does, she’ll finally have a reason to quit. No girl wants chapped, bleeding lips on her wedding day. However, she would pose for a thousand close-up shots of nothing but her chapped, bleeding lips if it meant knowing she would even have a wedding day.

“It feels like I’m kissing a tree,” he says.

“When are you going to ask me to marry you?” she asks, her words running over his. Silence coats them like a glob of Vaseline.

“What?” he says.

“When are you going to ask me to marry you?” she asks again, in the exact same tone.

He opens his mouth. Takes a breath. He’s a mouth breather. Always has been. He acts like she’s the only one with hangups, but he has problems, too. Lots of them. Including but not limited to the fact that he got socked in the mouth by the guy he once called his brother. “Okay,” he says slowly, his hands still on the wheel. He reaches for her sometimes, mid-drive. She hates when he does that. Driving is scary enough with both hands in their rightful places. “Okay, well…I mean, we’re…I mean…”

She purses her lips. “Good talk.”

“I’m trying, okay?” He pulls one hand from the wheel, not to touch her but to rake his fingers through his hair. “I’m trying.”

She studies him for a moment. She hates that, too. The frustrated hair-raking. He’s going to go bald if he keeps doing that. She spends a lot of time thinking about his inevitable baldness, she realizes now. She’s not bothered by it. It’s not like he can help it.

See? She gets it. There are some things people can’t help.

Mouth breathing, though. He could definitely do something about that.

“I just don’t know how…realistic that is,” he says. “I mean, we haven’t even…I mean, you’re still a…”

He looks up at her, the expression on his face so tortured, she almost wants to laugh. “You can’t even say it, can you?” She lifts her chin. “Sex? We’ve never had sex, and I’m still a virgin? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? As if that’s news to me?”

“Well,” he says.

That’s it. That’s all. He’s never going to finish that sentence.

“I mean,” he says, a clumsy attempt to start over, “didn’t you say you wanted kids? We can’t do that—have them—have kids—without…I mean, you know.”

SEX, she wants to scream. YOU CAN SAY IT. SAY IT! “SEX!”

She crosses her arms. “If you’re not mature enough to say it, you’re not mature enough to have it.”

“Come on,” he says. “You know how babies are made, don’t you?”

Fluttering her lashes, she places one hand to her chest. “Oh, I’m not sure. I might have missed the entirety of the fifth grade.”

“Can you stop joking around?”

“Can you stop being a joke?” She crosses her arms tighter over her chest, but upon catching him staring at her cleavage, she uncrosses them. “I’m not asking you for much. Just—”

“A lifelong commitment. To have and to hold. In sickness and in health. Forever and ever. Amen.”

She sends him a look. “Now who’s joking?”

“I’m not joking. I’m just—”

“Stringing me along. Telling me you love me. Swearing we’ll get married someday.”

“We will,” he insists. “Once things calm down.”

“What do you mean?” She gestures at nothing, her knuckles nearly crashing into the passenger’s side window. “Things are calm.”

“You aren’t,” he points out.

She narrows her eyes at him, her jaw clamped so tightly she can feel her teeth coming loose. Outside, a couple and their tottering child head for the lobby. The ruddiness of their cheeks suggests they’ve just come back from a walk.

He’s right. She does want kids. She’s already dreamed of them, their Asian, chubby-cheeked babies. They would have her eyes. His nose. His lips. She would teach them Japanese. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’d learn. She wants their babies to be bilingual—the kind of kids she envied growing up. They might turn out anxious messes, but hey, join the club.

He jabs a thumb against his phone screen. “We have to go or we’ll be late.”

She nods, still picturing their babies. Then, frowning, she says, “Actually, I’m not going.”

He inhales deeply. “Let’s not do this.”

“Do what? I’m not doing anything.” She licks her lips. “I think you can go to this engagement party all on your own. Maybe once you see the happy couple, once you spend some time alone, you’ll realize what a giant mistake you’re making.”

“What giant mistake? Not asking you to…” Another sentence left unfinished.

She tilts her head back, her laugh drier than her lips. “What? Now you can’t even say ‘Marry me’? Is there anything you can say?”

His brow furrows. “You’re being really mean.”

“Yeah, well, so are you.”

His expression hardens. “I’ve been very nice to you.”

“Oh, yeah,” she says, bobbing her head with a neck-breaking amount of enthusiasm. “Refusing to marry me. Locking me out of the car. Criticizing me for my disorder.”

“Come on.”

“You come on.”

“We’ve been together for how long already, and I haven’t pressured you at all. I barely even make you kiss me.”

“Because I’m disgusting. Yeah. So you’ve said.”

“I didn’t say that. I never once said anything like that.”

She closes her eyes. She thinks he might have closed his, too. Despite everything, they’re still in sync. Just like her and her college roommate, the two of them lending each other tampons and sharing their bags of emergency chocolate.

Her roommate’s engaged now.

She slowly opens her eyes. “You’re never going to marry me,” she says softly. “Are you?”

He’s quiet. Very quiet. Aside from his mouth breathing, that is.

“Do you even love me?” she asks.

More silence. She imagines time has frozen, the car filling with resin, trapping them in place.

“I think we love each other,” he says. “I just don’t think we like each other anymore. I’m not sure we ever did.”

She swallows, her throat tight. “How long have you been thinking about this?”

He shrugs. “Not long.”

She knows better than to trust his perception of time. He would’ve let her wait forever, dangling that someday in front of her like a carrot on a line.

“Okay,” she says.

“Okay?” he echoes. “As in, we’re breaking up?”

She stares out the window. The walking family has left, back in their happy, loving home. “Okay.” They stay there for a minute, in his epoxied car. “Okay,” she says again. “I’m going to get out now.”

“Okay.”

She flips the lock. Shoves the door. Tumbles out. Slams it behind her. She doesn’t mean to, but she does. The car quivers in fear. She stands by the curb, her lip caught under her teeth. She considers knocking on the window, considers saying something more, but nothing comes to mind.

She slowly walks away.

She then fast-walks through the lobby, barely holding it together. In the elevator, she lets go, tears streaming down her face. They had mirrors in here once, on each of the side walls. They were infinity mirrors, innumerable copies of her studying her eyebrows, picking her lips, making herself ugly in the hopes of being pretty. She doesn’t know why the mirrors were taken down. Because of maintenance, perhaps? A lot of mirrors to clean. Because movers kept breaking them, corners of new sofas and coffee tables cracking the silver glass? Because they freaked out all the babies, wails leaking out from between the jaws of the elevators and spilling out across the carpeted floors like rotten milk?

Sometimes, though, she thinks they did it for her. They—a nebulous They—took it away for her own good.

When she gets back to the apartment, her head pounds from the crying. Making a beeline for the bathroom, she flicks on the yellow light. She looks pale, haggard. Her eyeliner has smudged.

She feels used, dirty. Like no one ever wants her.

Holding her breath, she pinches a piece of dry skin between her thumb and index finger and pulls. Slowly, painfully, blood beading on her lips, she peels off every part of her that he ever touched. Then, raw and aching, she steps back.

“A whole new woman.”

No. That’s not really true. She’s still the same old girl, ugly and bleeding out.

He’s right. He’s right. No one else would wait for her. No one else would be content with chaste, chapped-lipped kisses.

Pressing the back of her hand to her lip, she makes her way to the apartment window and pushes the curtain aside. She can see him there, on the road, fifteen seconds from the freeway. When he switches lanes, she sees his arm hanging out the window. She swallows hard, her vision blurring once again from the tears, leaving her with double vision. She watches him, still aching, still bleeding, his arm dropped in a last goodbye.

That’s a great way to lose a limb, she thought when she first approached him, not even ten minutes ago. Now she’s the one who feels as though she’s lost something.

She returns to the bathroom. With shaky hands, she opens the medicine cabinet. Breathing slowly, through her nose, she takes out the jar of Vaseline.

“What am I doing?” she asks.

Getting better, the jar whispers, the way you knew you would one day.

She unscrews the lid, caked-on jelly kissing her skin.

Aren’t you ready now? it asks. Don’t you want that? To get better?

She raises her head, meeting her own gaze.

Then, skimming the surface, she says, “Why, yes, I do.”