“Works for me.” He sat up, and I rolled back onto a pillow. “Where’s the shopping bag?”
“By the closet.”
He got out of bed, and I wiggled excitedly under the comforter as I remembered my present. He returned with the box and sat cross-legged on the mattress.
“What is it?”
“I’m not going to tell you,” he said, rolling his eyes. “But it’s not a ring. Not yet. Just open it.”
Too giddy to get evenmoregiddy at the thought of him proposing, I propped myself up against the headboard and unwrapped the box carefully. In my palm sat a small, black velvet box that creaked when I opened it. I gasped at a pair of big, shiny diamond studs. “I can’t accept these.”
He scooted closer, removed one of the diamond earrings from the box, and tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear to slide it in. “Perfect,” he commented.
“David, I—”
“I have an ulterior motive,” he interrupted, moving to the other ear. “I thought maybe if I put something pretty in your earlobes, you’d stop nervously pulling on them all the time.”
I smiled widely and launched forward, crushing his lips to mine. “Thank you.”
“I must say, diamonds suit you. There’ll be more where those came from.” I opened my mouth to protest, but he cut me off. “Don’t argue, just tell me you love them,” he whispered.
“Oh.” I sighed. “I love them, and I love you.”
He rolled me onto the bed and settled on top of me. We remained that way, kissing and whispering softly to each other, until we could no longer keep our eyes open.
22
Only eleven in the morning, and I already wished the day were over. My co-worker Lisa had just expressed that the layout I’d just finished was “a good start.” Instead of plotting out ways to avoid her the rest of my working life, I spent the next twenty minutes fantasizing about how my day would’ve gone if I’d skipped work to stay in bed with David.
I cursed at my desk phone when it seared through my daydream just as it was getting good. “Yes?” I answered.
“There’s a man here in the lobby to see you,” Jenny said.
“Who is it?” I asked. “Can you send him back?”
“He won’t tell me his name,” she said tersely.
I hung up and fixed my hair quickly in the mirror before weaving through the cubicles and out to the front.
A middle-aged man in an ill-fitting suit that reeked of stale cigarettes approached me. “You Olivia Germaine?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He jotted something on the clipboard in his hand. “You’re being served with a Petition for the Dissolution of Marriage,” he said, holding out an oversized envelope.
There it was. The tragic ending I’d been avoiding since the day I’d looked up the worddivorcein the dictionary. As Jenny looked on, my face heated. “That was awfully quick,” I said.
The man’s hard eyes met mine. “I’m here as a favor. Bill’s a friend.”
“Was it really necessary to come to my workplace?” I asked, snatching the packet.
He shrugged and handed me the clipboard to sign. After he left, I took a deep breath and turned to face Jenny, who’d been joined by a concerned-looking Serena.
“Is everything all right, Liv?” Jenny asked.
My hand began to sweat around the envelope. “It’s fine.”
“Was that from Bill?” Serena asked. “Were you expecting it?”
