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She snorts, and I stand and move towards her. “Well, you should be. It’s disgusting how much wealth you have.”
“Disgusting, is it?” I murmur. “Stand up for me, please.”
She does so without even thinking, remaining still as I come up behind her. “Yes, I mean come on, have you seen your own house? What do you even do with most of this space?”
“Hire people to maintain it.” I brush aside a few loose brown tendrils that have fallen down along her shoulders..
“Exactly,” she says, as I snake my arms around her shoulders and drop the necklace against her skin. “You barely even use most of your home, you just have it so that you can have it!”
With the necklace secured around her neck, I take her gently by the shoulders moving us before the large framed mirror against my wall. And as I study her reflection, I don’t remove my hands from her shoulders. Her golden body is mostly surrounded by the silver and white of my frame, her dark curls barely brushing my chin, and I realize that she’s the warmest thing in this room.
“What do you think of it?”
She tucks a few fallen strands behind her ear and turns from side to side, examining the gift from several angles. The necklace sits almost like a collar against her throat, accentuating the lines of her neck and the slope of her shoulders. “It’s really sparkly.”
My lips raise a little further. Sparkly. “Do you like it?”
“Sure,” she says. “Who’s it for?”
“You.”
It takes her nearly three full seconds to digest my meaning.
“Wait…what?”
But when I don’t retract my statement, she turns around to face me, her expression a little more fearful and incredulous than I’d hoped for. “No, no, I can’t. I can’t accept this!”
“Why not?”
“Vahadr, this necklace is worth more than I’ll make in a year!” She sounds almost angry, but her posture is unsure and her eyes are round and wide. “Much more! I thought this was a gift for your mother or something! I—you can’t give this to me!”
I feel my brows pull together in confusion. “Why are you upset?”
She splutters a little but can’t seem to find the words. When she turns to walk away, her fingers lift to fiddle with the clasp. “I can’t…”
I catch her around the waist. “Ana, stop.”
When I come before her once more and take one of her wrists in my hand, pulling it away from the necklace, she doesn’t look happy, but she doesn’t struggle against me.
“Please, I…” I shake my head as I look down at her. “I don’t understand. Have I offended you?”
“No,” she says, and then she looks abruptly away. When she doesn’t seem as if she’ll continue, I put both my hands against her arms.
“Ana.”
“I just—my family is stuck back on a crappy station in an apartment that’s cramped and falling apart. They’ve never breathed anything but recycled air, never seen real daylight, and the amount of credits this necklace is worth…it could do so much for them, but instead, it’s just sitting on my neck. Glittering.”
Her head remains bent while she speaks, eyes cast to the floor as a few curls dislodge from where they’re tucked and fall to partially obscure her expression. I have come to learn that a blush on her cheeks can signal several different things, and as I tuck her hair back, I realize that this one means she is ashamed.
Is this what’s been holding her back? Why she has always seemed equal parts grateful and distressed when I offer her gifts?
She feels guilt for enjoying luxuries while her family continues to struggle?
“We can bring them here now, if you want,” I say quietly. “We don’t have to wait.”
She looks back up at me, and I’m surprised to see a wet sheen to her eyes. “Vahadr, why did you buy me jewelry?”
Why? The same reason I buy her anything, I suppose…
