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I walked back into the shop, my fingernails biting little half-moons into my palms. “I’m sorry. I’m better now. Clearly, I was given some high-end Cracker Jack prize. So please explain to me how it didn’t turn my finger green or fall apart in the last year.”
“Oh, well, the band is fourteen-karat gold,” he assured me. “See this little mark on the inside of the band?” He held it up so I could see the tiny “JM” stamped into the metal. “That means it came from Jewelry Mart. Your fiancé probably bought a costume ring off of a home-shopping network and had the ‘stone’ reset in a respectable band.”
The pawn clerk reached across the counter and patted my hand. “If it makes you feel any better, this happens here a couple of times a week.”
“No.” I opened my eyes, fighting off hot, angry tears. “Sadly, that does not make me feel better.”
I walked out of the shop with two hundred dollars in my pocket. I was sure that the clerk overpaid me for the scrap gold of the setting, but he probably wanted to get me out of his shop as quickly as possible. Surely having a woman pitch the fit of a small emotionally disturbed child in front of the counter had to be bad for business.
Collin was hovering outside the shop door, his expression anxious. “I take it you did not get the price you expected.”
“You could say that,” I said, sitting heavily on the concrete curb, my skirt flapping up in my face.
“Are you all right, Miranda?” he said, crouching beside me in his silly plaid shorts as I tucked my skirt around my legs.
“Damn it, just—damn it!” I exclaimed, springing to my feet. “His mother never liked me. She said I was too flighty and frivolous because I thought it might be fun to go camping on our honeymoon, instead of the traditional Cordner trip to Niagara Falls. Who wants to take the same honeymoon that their parents took? I mean, most people would recognize that’s pretty damn creepy!”
“Miranda, please, calm down. Translate for me.”
I thrust out the four fifties I’d gotten from the pawn clerk for the gold setting. “It was a fake.”
“Your fiancé gave you a fake engagement ring?” he said, incredulous.
“High-quality cubic zirconia, according to the clerk. I should have known. He went on and on about how he’d found it at this great little jewelry store in Louisville the last time he was there. But he knew he was giving me a fake! His mother probably told him that I couldn’t be trusted with the real thing. All that fussing, all that handing the ring back and forth, and it never really mattered, because it was a hunk of nothing!”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, no, I was waiting for an opportunity to reach a whole new level of humiliation, so this is great,” I griped, walking out of the parking lot. “I don’t get it, Collin.” I stopped, whirling on him. Collin nimbly sidestepped me while I ranted. “I am, by nature, a pretty cynical person. I wore silver jewelry around you for the first twenty-four hours, just in case you decided to get frisky. So how does someone go through life not trusting the people around her and still get screwed!”
“You wore silver jewelry for the first day we were together?”
“Just some rings and a bracelet. Nothing personal. I just didn’t know you,” I said, swiping at my eyes before the tears could form embarrassing tracks on my cheeks. “And you know what hurts? If he’d just told me it was a fake, I wouldn’t have cared. If he’d said he was giving me a stand-in ring until he could afford more, or as a backup to my real engagement ring, I wouldn’t have even blinked. Hell, I might have thanked him for not putting me in the position of destroying/losing/garbage-disposaling a priceless piece of jewelry. I’m just—”
I sighed, wiping my cheeks again. “I’m tired of being the fool. So please, please, do me a favor, and if you’re planning to trick me or lie to me or somehow make a giant ass of me in some fashion, just warn me ahead of time so I can prepare the appropriate face. I’m getting tired of making this one.”
“I can’t lie to you,” he assured me as we turned in the direction of Euclid Avenue, where the clerk had told me to look for the bus station. “I’m terrified of you, you crazed, hyperviolent hoyden.”
“I have a feeling that when I look up ‘hoyden’ in the dictionary, I’m going to be really pissed at you.”
The Hader’s Knob bus station was a short walk through a rough part of town. The houses were run-down and dark. The cars were rusted-out and seemed abandoned rather than parked. I dodged piles of broken beer bottles on the sidewalk. I wasn’t worried about us being attacked, because, frankly, Collin could use a snack. He seemed uncomfortable with my silence, unsure whether I was plotting revenge against him in the name of the Batmobile or Jason’s viciously executed testicular “downsizing.”
He kept squeezing my elbow, as if he was trying to gauge my temper or prompt one of his visions. He even followed me into the bus station, staying close as I purchased two tickets to go as far as we could get—Marion, Illinois. There was a bus leaving in the next twenty minutes, which gave me just enough time to take advantage of the bathroom and buy a suspicious-looking turkey sandwich from a vending machine.
“Are we going to be OK?” I asked, eyeing the bus meaningfully as we boarded. “No tire blow-outs or mechanical failures to worry about? No terrorist plots that will result in my being used as a human shield?”
He stepped away from me and stared off into space. A frustrated look passed over his features, and he stepped even farther away.
“We should be fine. Probably … Most likely …” But by the time we boarded, Collin was practically quaking. Even though I was standing right next to him, his proximity to this many people in such a small space had his gift on overload. He saw everything, every possibility, every choice and its consequences. The whirlwind of images must have been nauseating.
“Too loud?” I asked. He nodded, his eyes squinched tight. I slipped my hand into his and thought of all of the hijinks I could get up to on the bus, picking a fight with my fellow travelers, chewing gum while I was trying to fall asleep, having it stick in my hair or choking on it. My personal brand of chaos worked its magic, drowning out the weak, humdrum hijinks of the other passengers. Slowly but surely, the tension bled from Collin’s face, and he was able to relax.
“Thank you,” he said, pressing a kiss to my temple. “Please don’t let go.”
We held hands in the aisle, even if it meant struggling to maneuver around the people slinging bags into the overhead compartments. We settled into our seats, and Collin wedged his case against his legs. Shuddering at the crowd’s potential fates, he leaned his forehead against my shoulder.
The little old lady sitting across the aisle from us glared at him, her dentures flashing. “She’s allowed to walk on her own, sonny. You don’t have to keep ahold of her.”
Collin’s jaw dropped, and his hold on my hand tightened.
