As I placed the globule in my mouth and it slid down my throat, practically making me gag, my first response to his proposal was no.
“What do you mean, no?” he’d said.
“Well, I mean no. Not yet. We’re twenty-three, Oliver!”
“And we’ve been together seven years. It’s time. At least try it on. It was expensive.”
He wouldn’t let go of my hand until he’d forced the diamond onto my finger, which sparkled obnoxiously under the restaurant’s fancy overhead table lamp.
“Wear it for a while. See if the idea grows on you,” he said, before calling the waiter over. “We’ll have a bottle of your best champagne.”
I tried to pull the ring off and give it back. I wanted to ask him for time to think. But he covered my hand and stopped me. “Give it a go,” he whispered. “And don’t make a scene.”
I smiled at the waiter and thanked him when he congratulated me, every little step in the charade entrenching us further along a path I wasn’t ready for. Wearing the ring today is absorbing mental energy I should be throwing at graduating.
My phone beeps with a message from Bree.You did it!itreads.Next grad with the floppy hat I want to be there! Love you! Revel in all your success!
The floppy hat reference is about the PhD I’m about to begin. The idea of starting a doctorate at twenty-three feels much more like me than getting engaged. This was the plan all along, and academia is the one place in my life where I don’t feel totally out of my depth.
Bree, I have other news, I type. I take a quick photo of my left hand and send it to her.
There’s silence at her end for a full minute. Eventually, three dots start blinking. The longer she takes, the stronger my anxiety becomes.
What am I doing with my life?
As I look up, I’m startled by a massive camera flash a couple of rows in front of me. I can’t see anything at first except stars, but, as my eyes adjust, a blurry vision ofDrew Kennedymaterializes.
I haven’t seen him in years!
He wasn’t taking the picture of me. It’s of a girl two rows away, whom he’s smiling at. More widely than I ever saw him smile at school. A broad, open smile that lights up everything, brown eyes dancing as he flirts with her, and I stifle feelings I have no right to experience. Particularly not while I’m wearing this ring.
Drew is here, I update Bree by text.Now I need help with that too!
She and I had workshopped my falling out with Drew, over and over. She didn’t like agreeing with Oliver, but if Drew had had a legitimate excuse for ditching me when I was just trying to help save him from social embarrassment—something to do with his mum, perhaps—why wouldn’t he have told me?
How does he look?Bree types.
My heart hurts and the ring feels heavy on my finger. I think of that night with the bioluminescence and wonder how we drifted this far.
He’s taking pictures of a girl, I write. I crane my neck to get a glimpse of her. Blond hair, super glossy, and falling over her shoulders in perfect waves, the way I always wished mine would.
Pictures of her, and not you? ;-)
Bree’s joke falls flat, and I can’t explain my sense of loss—Iwon’texplain it. I am snared on the path I’ve chosen with Oliver and can’t seem to pull myself free. And it’s unreasonable, anyway. Drew and I were only ever friends, and for a few months, really. He left me at the high school formal equivalent of the altar and never explained why. That should have been the end of it.
I hope he didn’t inadvertently get me in the photos, staring at my trial engagement ring, having an existential crisis about what I am doing with my life. It’s not the look I imagined for this defining experience on my timeline.
And it’s definitely not how I wanted to feel.
50
Drew
I sit back in my seat in the supporters section and flick through the photos on my camera while we wait for the official ceremony to start. Meg is radiant. Beaming smiles. Confidence. I’ve been tempted to make some kind of move but haven’t yet and won’t today. It’s all about her and her graduation. She’s got enough going on without a romantic overture from me detracting from her success.
The lighting is all wrong in here to get good photos, but I can fix the red eyes later, and I’ll get some good images of her outside in the garden party reception after the ceremony.
I’m about to switch the camera off when something catches my eye in the corner of the shot and makes me look over to that section of the auditorium. Is that …Evie Hudson?
