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I release her hand so I can get up and dig around on the top shelf of my closet. The jewelry store box is dense as a rock in my hand. The leather bracelet seems stiff and clumsy when I hold it out to her, a symbol I’m not sure about.
What if she doesn’t want the reminder? Maybe I should have buried it in the backyard.
But Caroline extends her wrist and lets me put it on her. My name pressed into leather, snugged around her skin.
She traces the letters with one finger. Smiles at me.
“It’s okay?” I ask.
“It’s good.”
She draws close and kisses me, and it feels good. Like I’ve righted a wrong, restored something that was out of balance.
When she eases away, I press the jewelry box into her hand. She takes it with eyes so huge, I wonder for a second what the fuck I did wrong. Then I figure it out and laugh. “It’s not a ring. But good to know it’s too soon for that.”
“It’s not—I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine, Caro. Open it.”
Inside are the heavy silver links I bought her.
“Pretty,” she says, lifting the bracelet out. “What’s this on it?”
The light catches the charm when she lifts it to the light. She answers her own question. “It’s a comb. West—”
“I thought I’d give you both,” I say. “The comb, and the watch chain. It’s … maybe that’s not a good present, but I thought—”
And then her arms are around m
e, so I don’t have to say the rest of it.
“West.”
She’s crying for real now.
“I didn’t mean to make you cry. It just reminded me, is all.”
I’ve thought so many times of her telling me not to write a story over us. Not to give myself a role—good guy or bad guy, sheriff or villain, because life’s more complicated than that.
That conversation was never about the story she read in English. It was about me.
It was Caroline telling me I fucked up, but I could have another chance.
When I went to the jewelry store, I was going to see about silver combs to give her. I thought she should have a keepsake of the moment she offered me what I most needed—what I didn’t even know I needed.
But then I thought, No, I don’t want her to have half.
I want her to have everything.
She kisses me. “It’s perfect.”
When I kiss her back, she drags me on top of her, the cool silver links dripping down my neck from where she’s clutched her fingers around them. “You’re perfect,” she says.
“I’m so fucking far from perfect.”
She kisses my lips, my cheeks, my closed eyes. “Close enough for me.”
I roll to my side, and we lie there for a few minutes, legs intertwined, looking at each other.
