The flashback comes to me with all the force of a heartbreak that never healed.
I'm wearing the blue dress Dem likes so much as the afternoon light goes that syrupy gold that makes even the gas station look expensive. I sit on a bench, taking in the old pier smells of salt, iodine and the end of summer.
From somewhere behind me a speaker is playing that ABBA song I love loud enough to drown the sound of the small crowd of evening wanderers on the pier.
Then I hear people gasp and shout and I turn around. That's when I see him.
Demetrius Thornwood, my boyfriend and the most serious person I have ever met, comes around the corner of the old bait shop just as the music gets into the crescendo.
I blink, confused. What is he doing? Is he dancing?
Demetrius moves towards me, doing something that resembles the hustle to the opening of Dancing Queen. Two people walking their dog stop on the pier and point. A family with a stroller slows down to stare. My face goes scarlet and I press my hands to my cheeks and I am laughing so hard I can barely breathe. Demetrius continues his dancing down the length of the pier.
I love him for it. I love him so freaking much.
Then he drops to one knee in front of me, which makes the dog walkers stop entirely. He reaches for his back pocket and retrieves a small blue velvet box.
I go quiet. Someone in the small crowd shouts something I don't grasp, because my brain has stopped functioning.
He opens the box.
There's a ring inside the box, and a loud ringing in my ear. I know that ring. I have seen it on Agatha Thornwood's hand a hundred times. An emerald the size of a quail's egg, set in platinum and gold.
Ancient. Expensive. Impossible.
"Madison Berwick," Demetrius speaks, his eyes bright with emotion. "Would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?"
I don't answer right away. My throat is closed shut so hard I can't even breathe.
"I've been thinking about this for months. I don't want us to be separated while we go to college," he continues. "You don't have to worry about college applications or scholarships or any of that. Come to Boston with me. I'll take care of everything. You'll never have to work a day in your life, Madison. Not ever. Just stay with me and I'll take care of you. I'll take care of everything."
He says it like he's lifting a weight off my shoulders. Like he's giving me the world. And he is.
"You won't have to worry about money or a career." He searches my face. "I just want to take care of you. That's all I want to do."
And something cracks open in my chest, slow and painful, because I understand what this is. He loves me. He loves me completely and he has thought about exactly what that means, and in his mind, what it means is that he wants to take care of me by sheltering me from the world.
He doesn't understand that I want more in life than being pampered.
I close the box.
"Dem." My voice comes out quiet and low so that our spectators don't hear me. "I love you. You know I love you."
"Then say yes."
"I got a full scholarship to Duke. Their nursing program is incredible." I watch his face. "I've been working so hard for this. It's mine. I earned it."
Something shifts behind his eyes. "But you don't need it if you marry me."
"But I want it." I push the box back into his hands. "I want you and I want to marry you someday, but I can't just not reach for my dream because you don't want us to be apart. Yes, college will be hard, but we'll see each other over the holidaysand for summers. We can talk on the phone every day. We'll make it work, you'll see."
"Maddie." He says my name like a question.
"I'm not saying no to you." My throat tightens. "I'm saying just not now."
He looks down at the box in his hands. When he looks back up, his face is already different.
I watch his face close like a door.
