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He didn’t kiss her even though he was almost close enough to. She could tell he was being careful to give her room to slide away from him if she wanted to, but with him looming over her in that delicious way he had, she had no interest in going anywhere.
“You really thought I’d deliberately ruin the best thing in my life?”
“I – thought you’d found someone you liked better, and couldn’t bring yourself to tell me.”
He barked a laugh, blinked, looked at the ceiling, then back at her, as though he couldn’t believe what an idiot she was.
“And I thought you’d found someone who could give you a pretty life.”
“I thought our life was pretty but then you stopped calling and you were always at work. I was so far away, and stressed out all the time from my classes, and my roommate told me you had to be screwing around. I didn’t want to believe it, but then…I did.” Shame and grief flooded her.
“Fuck, Leelee,” he said, looking sad and lowering his forehead to hers. “Why didn’t you just ask me?”
“I…sort of did, but you were being all mysterious and evasive.”
“I didn’t want to tell you about the ring until it was paid for and I could propose for real. Four more payments, then I had to save for a plane ticket. But then…you were gone.”
“Oh my god,” she whispered. “I kept picturing you kissing some other girl and it made me crazy.”
“No.” He laughed in what sounded like self-derision. “I stayed faithful to you for like a year after that, hoping you’d change your mind.”
“Oh.” Tears welled in her eyes, making them prickle. She raised a hand to his cheek and stroked the rough stubble there. He leaned into it like a cat. “And you kept the ring because I’m an idiot and I never deserved you in the first place.”
“Don’t say that. You know you were always too good for me.”
He kissed her then, and they somehow ended up kissing like goofy teenagers on the floor in the small foyer of her mother’s house.
She pulled away after a few minutes, needing to catch her breath and come to her senses before she dragged him up to her old bedroom, which would make things pretty awkward for her mother.
He stared at her, like she was magic – the way he always used to. How could she ever have believed her stupid roommate?
“Why did you keep it, though? Honestly. The ring.”
“I couldn’t bear the thought of some other woman wearing it.”
She sobbed once, but then got it under control. “And why was the box sitting there open on your bookcase?”
“It reminds me not to settle for anyone who doesn’t make me feel as good as you do.”
She dragged his face back down to her own and kissed him.
“Three extra goats,” Riley’s mother yelled from the back of the house. “And that’s my final offer!”
***
The sun, hot and newly risen, baked the desert beneath Riley’s feet, sending waves of heat through her sandals and up the skirt of her modest gown despite the early hour.
Hollywood chic and elegant, yet white, virginal.
She had been virginal before he came along. Fitting that he’d been her first and now he’d be her last.
Her best friend, Jack, straightened her veil and grinned at her through the haze of it. “You look perfect. He’s going to cry.”
“I doubt it.”
“You don’t see how he looks at you.”
“Kind of how Adam looks at you?”
