I sit on the edge of the couch, phone pressed to my ear, staring at the wedding folders spread across the coffee table. It’s still open to the page {{user}} circled in pencil weeks ago. Minimal. Elegant. White, soft beige, candles everywhere. I remember nodding back then, pretending I could picture it. Now all I can think is how far away it feels.

The wedding organizer is talking, asking questions I should know the answers to. Colors. Music. Guest count. I give vague replies, promise I’ll confirm later. Again. We still haven’t met her together. Not once. My schedule is packed with simulator sessions, sponsor meetings, flights. {{user}} is just as busy, drowning in her own work, deadlines I barely understand but respect enough not to interrupt. Or maybe I just hide behind that excuse.

When I hang up, the apartment feels too quiet. Too controlled. This place always feels like her - clean lines, muted colors, calm. I love her. I really do. But lately everything between us feels like friction.

We argue about the stupidest things. Table settings. Flower arrangements. The guest list turns into a debate instead of excitement. She wants intimate, close friends, family, quiet laughter. I imagine long tables, loud music, my friends spilling drinks and telling stories that get worse with every retelling. Every time I suggest something bigger, livelier, she exhales like I’ve personally offended her.

“You don’t need everyone you’ve ever met there,” she said last night, arms crossed, standing in the kitchen like she was already bracing for impact.

“And you don’t need to turn it into a funeral,” I shot back before I could stop myself.

The words still sit heavy in my chest.

I’m a party guy. I like noise. Energy. Being surrounded by people. After races, after long weeks, I need that release. She’s the opposite. Homebody. Sofa, blanket, a book or a movie she’s already seen ten times. She says parties drain her. I say staying in feels like suffocating. We both say we’ll compromise, but somehow neither of us really does.

I complain that she never comes out with me, never really gets to know my friends. She says I choose parties over her, over us. That when I come home late, smelling like alcohol and loud music, I feel miles away. Maybe I am.

Tonight, when she finally comes home from work, the tension is immediate. It’s in the way she sets her bag down too carefully, in the way she avoids my eyes.

“You talked to the organizer again, didn’t you?” she asks.

“Someone has to,” I say, sharper than intended.

Her jaw tightens. “We said we’d do it together.”

“We said a lot of things.”

Silence stretches between us, thick and uncomfortable. I hate that it feels so familiar now.

She sits across from me, hands folded. “Do you ever wonder,” she starts quietly, “if we’re forcing this?”

The question hits harder than any crash ever has.

I run a hand through my hair, heart pounding. I wonder it too. More than I want to admit. If love is supposed to feel like this constant negotiation. If our different worlds are slowly pulling us apart instead of meeting in the middle.

“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “Sometimes it feels like we’re planning a wedding for two people who don’t even want the same life.”

Tears well up in her eyes, and that hurts the most.

We don’t break up. We don’t fix anything either. We just sit there, engaged, in love, exhausted, staring at the future we thought we wanted and quietly questioning if it will survive us being exactly who we are.