He pushed his chair back, I heard Cecilia gasp, and then Ben was on one knee and looked up at me with a beautiful ring held between his fingers.
“I know we talked about this being down the line someday, but you know how I get when I know something is right,” Ben murmured. “Would you want to leap, if I promise I’ll always catch you?”
With tears streaming down my face, I held my hand to him so he could put the ring on. Then I tackled him to the dining room floor and kissed him in a way not completely suitable for his parents to see.
Even Mr. Harries was laughing, and when we gathered ourselves off the floor, he got to his feet and hugged Ben, then shook my hand.
Smiling, he said, “Congratulations. And thank you for making my son happy.”
Then Cecilia was there, and she was bawling and giggling and hugging us.
* * * *
It was much later in our hotel room when I took my ring off to look at it properly.
“How did you know?” I asked, tilting the ring so I could see the flecks of gold inside the green resin parts of the otherwise wooden ring.
Ben rolled to lay on his side and smiled at me. “Lake might’ve tipped me off when I asked him.” He reached to touch the ring with his fingertips. “I asked him if you could wear a ring at work, and he said it was probably okay, but that you might have to remove it occasionally, so maybe I should get you something meaningful instead of something expensive just in case you lost it. Because it’s easier to replace something with a new message or a memory, and that you’d feel horrible if you lost something expensive.”
I chuckled a bit wetly. Of course he’d gone to Lake, and of course Lake had remembered our talk about rings after I’d graduated from nursing school.
“What wood is it?” I asked, putting the ring back on.
“It’s cherry.”
For a moment, I didn’t remember, but then it hit me. “Because of that table at the antique store?”
He nodded, looking uncharacteristically shy. “You loved it so much.”
We’d gone to an antique store on a whim one day when we were fifteen. There had been a super pretty end table that I immediately thought was the coolest piece of furniture ever. It was rough instead of polished, and not very big, but it had been old and expensive. I’d gone back to look at it a few more times until it was sold one day.
“And the pool,” I whispered, realizing what the color of the resin meant. The aqua was almost identical to the glimmer of the pool at the Harries’ house.
“Yeah.”
I leaned in to kiss him gently. “Thank you.”
It wasn’t as if either of us would ever forget that final day at the pool, swimming and having fun. But seeing this ring on my finger would remind me not only of that day, or that table, but all the love I had for my fiancé and of all the new memories we’d be making for the rest of our lives, if I had a say.
“Babe?” Ben looked at me without making eye contact, which was curious.
“Yes?”
“I…uh…feel needy.”
I smirked. “Oh, really?” I raised a brow at him. “Feeling needy for your fiancé?”
Ben groaned and flushed a deep red. We’d already showered together, but it had been nonsexual and more about connecting after a long day while we could fit in the shower together.
His voice was rough when he managed to say, “I would really like to try something we haven’t yet.”
I hid my surprise well. We’d gotten to a point where he “assisted” me occasionally, and he enjoyed holding me while I took care of myself. Sometimes we rubbed against each other until we both came and I’d given him one blowjob on another night when he’d felt needy.
“Oh? What did you have in mind?” I slid the fingers of my left hand between his and tilted our joined hands just so to admire the ring.
“I was thinking, could we maybe have penetrative sex?” It took so much out of him to get the words out that I didn’t make eye contact to give him space.
“Absolutely.” My cock began to fill at the mere thought. “Just know that neither of us has prepared for it and we ate a lot earlier, so it might get a bit messy if we’re unlucky, but—”
