A few months into dating, we spent a night around a fire pit asking each other questions. Silly ones at first, flirty ones, the kind you ask when you’re having fun and not trying to go anywhere in particular.
But they got more interesting. Then more honest. No cards, no plan. We just kept taking turns, making them up as the fire got lower. The only rule, unspoken, was that you had to answer whatever you asked.
At some point one of us asked what the other thought about marriage. We both realized we were already thinking about each other that way. Neither of us had said it out loud before that night.
That was twenty years ago. We’re still together. This is the game we were playing that night.