Not wanting the intensity of my love to drive Skylark away, I feigned indifference. I worried that this tactic wasn’t working; seeming bored in my company, she would keep looking at her watch as though impatient to go somewhere far better. Even so, we would always disinterestedly arrange to meet up again. When, besotted, I casually suggested we get married, she shrugged her shoulders and, yawning, said, ‘Whatever.’ I couldn’t believe my luck. The man asked us whether we were prepared to love and cherish one another forever. Skylark said she might as well, and I told him I supposed so.

From Anthropology and a hundred other stories