I rub my thumb over the ring, letting the memory settle. “The ring belonged to our grandfather until it was passed down to my sister after he died. He got it in a pawnshop right after the war. Had nothing but pocket lint and a half-healed bullet wound in his leg.”
Her gaze blinks up to me, eyes rounding.
“Yeah. The irony.” I falter, smiling softly, gazing at the smooth band. “Gramps said it cost him a week’s worth of meals, but he bought it anyway. For our grandmother. She turned him down three times before she agreed, but he wore this ring for a year, as if it already meant something. Like he was betting on a future that hadn’t said yes yet.”
Her eyes soften, tracing the ring again. “That’s beautiful.”
“Stella loved that story,” I continue, emotion lodging in my chest and journeying up my throat. “She said it reminded her of that movie and that Gramps was like the toaster—scratched up, stubborn, always burning breakfast, but brave where it counted. Loyal till the end.”
I swallow down the raw lump, watching Annie’s eyes glaze with awareness, with empathy.
“She gave me the ring on my seventeenth birthday, telling me I’d inherited the stubborn, break-yourself-for-love gene. And if I was going to keep throwing myself into things heart-first, I should have something to hold on to when life got too heavy. A reminder to breathe.”
My eyes shutter for a beat.
Then I untwine our fingers long enough to slide the ring off.
Etched into the underside, glinting under the muted starlight:Brave Little Toaster.
“I had it engraved after she died. I’ve worn it every day since.”
Lips parting, Annie zeros in on the band, entranced, moved, caught in the web of pain-laced memory just like me. She watches as I return the ring to my thumb, then blinks up to my face.
We stare at each other, time softening its wheels.
A feeling flourishes in my chest. I can’t pinpoint it, can’t name it. But it’s there, growing with every sluggish second.
With no warning, I tug her to me.
My arms wrap around her waist until she’s flush against my chest and I can feel the erratic beats of her heart. Water sloshes around us. A gasp leaves her.
But she doesn’t pull away.
Everything goes still. The sound of my bandmates laughing inside the house is muffled as the water rides the edge of the pool, and all that exists is the space between us. This delicate, dangerous stretch where everything feels too much and not enough at the same time.
I tighten my arms around her waist, holding her in a vise as her warmth quiets my demons’ roars. Pressure blooms behind my eyes, a tension headache creeping to the surface.
“Chase,” she whispers, her face pressed to the planes of my chest as a tonic of chlorine, summertime, and watermelon tickles my nose. “You’re allowed to let this moment be new. It’s just me. It’s just us.”
Just her. Just us.
The thunder settles, not gone, but not as loud.
My mouth hovers near her ear, breath warm and ragged. “I’m sorry.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “You’re not. You shouldn’t be.”
My fingers tangle in her waterlogged hair.
What I shouldn’t be doing is touching her like this.
Like she’s mine. Like she’s here to stay.
My eyelids flutter, smoldering embers racing through my blood. I scrunch my hands behind her back as her lips paint whispers on my skin.
“Do you feel better?” she asks on a tremoring breath.
A beat, a smile. “Maybe.”
