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He’s grinning?I take it. “Thank you.”
“Oh yes!”
I lower my hands with the velvet-covered box and look up at him.What’s the matter now?
“This is necessary.” He grabs his throat and swallows several times.
“Do you need something to drink?” I ask helpfully and suspiciously at the same time.
He doesn’t respond to me, instead pointing to his present. “Let me see!”
He wants me to show him what’s inside? Doesn’t he remember what he got for me?Slowly, but surely, I wonder how much of the whiskey he’s already poured into himself. “All right,” I mutter, lifting the lid off the little box.
A ring. A thin, silver-colored ring band. Three square diamonds—one larger, two smaller—embedded in a gold, elongated bezel setting.
Irritated, I look up at him.What am I supposed to do with this antique?
Kevin pulls out his cell phone, taps around on the screen, and holds it out to me.
“…something sparkled silver,” I read off.“‘A wedding ring?’ Klara looked from Lorenz to Sarah with wide eyes. ‘That’s ultra-cool! Then Sarah will be like—’”
Kevin nods at me promptly.
“A wedding ring?” I ask slowly, as jigsaw puzzle pieces arrange themselves into matching places in my head.This is the passage from the Sandra Pulletz novel Kevin and I reenacted three-quarters of a year ago. He remembers that?“But—”
“Shh!” Kevin leans down to me and puts his index finger to my lips. “We don’t have to get married right away.”
I stare at him. If my memory doesn’t deceive me, he has once again quoted verbatim from the novel.
“We belong together,” he continues in his recitation. “Don’t you think so?”
Is this a game now or real?“Yeah?”
To make matters worse, Kevin now bends his knee. “Celine, will you marry me?”
His voice rings in my ears. My brain tries—in vain—to put his words in an order that makes sense.Did he really just ask me that?
He clears his throat. “Celine?”
Ear-deafening silence spreads through his parents’ living room—though the TV continues to bleat. But Mr. and Mrs. Schreck’s gazes weigh heavily on me.
Kevin’s elbow hits me painfully on the knee. “Say it, will you?” he hisses at me. “Yes.”
Obediently, I nod. “Yes,” I repeat.
“You see?” Jumping up, he plucks the ring from the velvet cushion. He grabs my left hand, slipping the ring over my finger. “That took some doing!”
I stare at my hand. Then at him, which turns with an ostentatious sigh and leaves.
His mother comes over. “Alas, little Celinikin.” She spreads her arms and presses me against her heaving chest. “Welcome to our family. You may call me Petra now.”
I still feel like I got on the wrong train somewhere when we enter our apartment a few hours later.
Did all this really happen?
Since the ring on my finger isn’t enough to convince me of reality, I grab my phone from my purse while Kevin disappears into the bathroom.
The red dot in the corner of the social media app announces countless notifications.
