Disclaimer: I don't own Castle. The only profit being made is my own amusement (and hopefully yours).
February
On February 15th, Ryan comes in wearing his infamously horrendous tie. Castle makes a quip about how Beckett might have to arrest him for defacing the pristine landscape of New York, but Esposito, buddy that he is, understands at once what this is all about. He slaps Ryan on the back in congratulations and announces grand plans for the bachelor party. Castle volunteers the Old Haunt for the event and starts jotting down ideas for cocktails.
Throughout the entire conversation, Beckett plays with her mother's ring. She realizes that Johanna was her age when she got married. Her mind is torn between she was so young when she died and I'm never going to find somebody at my age, and she hates herself for thinking of something so petty at the same time she should have been mourning her mother.
"You okay?" Castle asks her later, when they're alone in the break room. She's a bit unnerved about how aware he is of her moods.
"Yeah," she replies with a shrug.
"Afraid you'll never get married?"
It's not one of his classic Castle jabs but an honest question, and she feels violated, unable to shake the feeling that he's read her mind. "I don't know," she mumbles, fiddling with the handle of her coffee mug. "I don't want to be one of those women who cuts out pictures from bridal magazines and I don't want to care about whether I get married or not, but yeah, I kind of do."
"I'm sure you'll find someone," he tells her. He purses his lips together in thought. "Would you marry Josh?" he asks quietly.
She rolls the question around in her mind for a moment. "I don't know," she answers finally, both to Castle and to herself. "I've never really thought about it."
She thinks about Josh for the rest of the day. One of their conversations in particular keeps replaying in her head:
"So why'd you become a cardiac surgeon?" she'd asked him.
"I caught the bug," he'd responded.
"The bug?"
"Yeah. The surgery bug. You know your schedule's going to suck and your wife is going to hate you and your kids will cry when you can't make it to their birthday parties. And you try other things." He'd laughed ruefully. "I mean, I tried to get myself to like dermatology and ophthalmology and all those fields that supposedly have better lifestyles. But at the end of the day, I couldn't see myself doing anything else but this."
And she decides it's the same with her. She's been passing time, first with Tom and now with Josh, but she knows that no matter who she ends up with, she'll never be able to get Richard Castle out of her head.