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I start to close the door.
Laney gasps, and I stop. “Wait!”
I watch as she roots through her purse and pulls out a small box.
“I saw this and thought of you.”
My heart leaps just knowing she’s been thinking about me. Moves through the world andseesme in it. “For me?”
She nods. “Open it.”
No wonder she was acting funny all night. Laney was itchy. That’s the best way I can describe it. Ticking with an inexplicable nervousness as I walked her out of my apartment.
We’ve been together barely three months, only a month of that actually an established boyfriend and girlfriend. I tried to resist, remain in some sort of situationship with her.
I always imagined my twenties as being untethered, free from what I assumed was the burden of a girlfriend.
And then I met Laney. Tried to resist her.
Who can resist that grin of hopefulness? Those beautiful, shining blue eyes?
I tried to keep away from her as long as I could before I realized that trying to remain some slick, single guy was punishing. Giving in to what was developing between us was freedom. Freedom to be myself and give pieces of myself to someone who valued each and every bit of me.
Now, we’re in the doorway of my apartment, I open a box like something might jump out of it and bite me.
“A necklace,” I say.
I don’t wear jewelry. It seems like an odd choice. But I have to admit, it’s beautiful. A little tarnished silver ring, attached to a cord.
“I know it’s a little weird, but I was out. Thrifting. I saw it and–” Laney cuts herself off with a laugh. She twists the ends of her hair, so long. All the way to her waist. “It was just you to me.”
My heart leaps. This is me.
The silvery circle. Stalwart and everlasting. Maybe. Regardless, it could be a fucking tiara, and I’d wear it every day. Because to hear her say that she was thinking about me, out in the world, seeing me reflected in her reality, brings swelling love into my chest.
I’ve never said the word to her. “Love”. And I’m certain it’s too early.
But I’m also certain I feel it for her, standing in the doorway of my apartment with the small jewelry box in my hand.
Laney cocks her head to the side, smiles. “Can I put it on you?”
I haven’t taken it off in almost five years. I wear it no matter what. When I go to bed. When I shower. The only time I take it off is when I walk through airport security.
Without it, I feel naked. It’s a new limb, an organ without which I’m not sure I could survive.
The circle.
To me, it meant something never-ending between Laney and me. Cycles. That we would go through, grow through, a lifetime that would never end, even into eternity.
A cosmic correctness between us.
I can’t bear to accept I was wrong about that.
I’mnotwrong.
Laney and me. We’re not finished. I just know.
If I have to go through Nate, so be it.
