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“Like what?”
“My tape measure.”
“Are you sure? I haven’t noticed one laying around in there. Maybe you left it somewhere else.”
Jon was already down the hallway, leaving me alone with his father. He turned back to me and smiled, opening his arms. I stepped forward into a hug.
“Dad, can you come here? I can’t find it,” Jon called from down the hallway.
“Kid never could find anything,” he laughed. “Make yourself at home. I’ll be right back.”
I could hear his footsteps down the hall and then the sound of their voices, faint against the whir of the fan going in the living room. A few moments later, they returned, with no tape measure to be seen.
“No luck?” I asked.
“Nope. I must have left it somewhere else.”
“Is it your only tape measure?”
“No, but it was my favorite,” he laughed.
“A favorite tape measure. You’re really scaring me now,” I teased.
“You’re just jealous that you don’t have a favorite tape measure,” he replied, looking back at his dad. “Thanks, Dad.”
“No problem, son.”
The exchange made me think there was a lot more to this discussion than a tape measure, but whatever it was, it was none of my business. Perhaps Jon had needed to borrow money. I could only imagine that the house-flipping business was expensive, and perhaps he had to have setup money to get things going sometimes until he turned a house over. I knew he had been working on the house beside Grandma’s for a while, so maybe he had sunk too much money into it up front. Whatever the case, it was none of my business.
“Shall we get out of here then?” Jon asked me.
Walking out to the car, I couldn’t help but note he seemed to be in a much better mood. It felt so much like time had turned back to when we were roaring down the highway in his car to meet our friends at the cliffs. It was easy to imagine that I was sixteen and he was seventeen. In those days, we would have ended up parked behind some of the trees by the river, taking full advantage of the privacy it offered.
Today, we were content to just walk up to the top and look around. Jon looked over the side and shook his head.
“I can’t believe I was ever stupid enough to jump off this thing,” he said. “Come look how steep it is.”
I inched toward the edge, feeling my stomach lurch. I used to jump off the thing as much as he did, but now I only felt ill looking down. I turned to tell him how terrifying it seemed and was surprised to find him standing there holding up a ring. My heart stopped.
“I found an engagement ring,” he said.
I looked at it and knew what he had been up to at his father’s house. I had seen the ring a hundred times, on the finger of his mother in the wedding photos of her and his father. What I didn’t know was what it meant. Was he proposing with his mother’s ring or just offering it up as a temporary aid to our farce?
“I’m not going to ask you to marry me, not right now, Rain. Just know that I do want to marry you, when the time is right and you are ready. For now, this is just for appearances. Should I put it on?”
“Please,” I replied.
I couldn’t deny that I felt disappointed, but in some odd way, I also felt relieved. This was best. Perhaps things would work out between us, but it had nothing to do with our fake engagement, and I knew I would do well not to confuse the two. Our relationship had survived a fifteen-year gap and a lot of personal shit between the two of us. There was no reason to rush anything now.
“It fits you perfectly,” he said.
“I’ll take good care of it. I promise.”
“I know you will. Otherwise, you’ll have to answer to Dad,” he laughed.
“Yikes!”
“You want to go for a walk down the old path since we’re already here?”
“Yes. That sounds perfect.”
“All right. Let’s go.”
It was the perfect ending to the day as we sat down on a slanted rock to watch the sunset. It didn’t escape me that it wasn’t the first time we had sat on this rock or that, somewhere too dark for us to see, our initials were scratched into the other side.
“Let’s get going before it gets any darker,” Jon told me, standing and kissing the top of my head softly.
I knew that I loved him, and I believed he loved me too, but neither of us were brave enough to say it, not yet. It was as if uttering the words might somehow jinx everything. So, we steered clear of the words and just enjoyed our time together. That was perfectly fine with me.
