The water surrounds and holds me, and for a few moments, I swim under the waves, my hair billowing around me like a mermaid’s, feeling light and free. Surrounded by a huge, unending love, an ocean-sized love. It encompasses all of me: my childhood days of feeling like I didn’t fit people’s expectations, and all of my love stories, which I thought were failed romances, but which I now see were all just stages of thejourney. Maybe it’s divine love, I don’t know, but it feels like something beyond what I’ve ever imagined, this feeling that I’m okay just as I am.
And then, a sense of urgency hits me. This lightning bolt of certainty. I’m ready to love Jamie and be loved back by him. And I don’t want to waste one minute of our second chance.
I come up for air and swim, hard, toward the shore, joy and confidence pumping through me like I’ve never felt before. I race out of the water and onto the sand, grabbing the dress I left lying in a clump on the shore and picking up my towel, sending sand spraying everywhere. I’m in such a rush, I don’t even have the patience to shake it off and wrap myself up—I just start jogging up the beach toward the resort. As I do, the wind picks up—there are still gusts left over even though the storm has long since left—and my towel flaps into my face. I cough sand and twist around, trying to detangle myself from the mess, when I bump backward into a stranger.
I nearly tumble into their arms. “I’m so sorry!” I exclaim, still trying to unwind myself when I look up.
I’m so shocked I almost fall over—again. “Jamie!” I squeak.
He’s standing there, laughing his warm, sunshine-filled laugh. “Where were you off to in such a hurry?” he asks. “Did you find out the breakfast buffet was about to run out of French toast?”
“I… I was—I was actually hurrying to get back to my room so I could check out early, because I was in a rush to seeyou.”
Jamie beams. I reach out a hand to hold his, as if looking for proof that he’s really here and not just a disturbingly realistic hologram.
“But I thought you flew home to LA—the meeting with the board?” I wrinkle my brow in confusion.
“I did fly home. The meeting was quick, but I really went because I had something else that I needed to discuss with my family in person.” I feel a chill, but it lasts only a moment, as another bright smile breaks out across his face.
“About us?”
He nods. “Sybil.” There are tears in his eyes. I hold my breath, some tiny part of me still afraid he’s going to tell me that they didn’t approve of his choice. Even though I know by now that Amelia, at least, has been rooting for us. “They were surprised, but happy for me.” I’m even more shocked when he goes on to say, “And, apparently, Grandma G laid into each of them before she passed away, blaming them for our break-up and for not being kind and accepting enough toward you.”
“Really?” I don’t even realize there are happy tears trailing down my cheeks until Jamie brushes one away with his thumb.
“Really,” he answers. And then he kisses me.
His hands come around my waist, pressing me to him. My hands twine into his hair, and I don’t know that I’ll ever get enough of him.
But he pulls away and bends down to pick up the towel and cover-up that I dropped in a puddle on the sand.
Except that’s not what he’s doing, I suddenly realize, as he looks up at me, propped on one knee. Right here on the sand. With the sun blazing brilliantly behind him, still low on the eastern horizon.
“Sybil Rain,” he says, taking my hand. Gone are the crazy nerves I had, the rushing anger and the raging insecurities I felt the first time he got down on one knee before me. I’m filledwith a happy sense of calm as I listen to his words. “I need you to know that I am all in with you. Whether it takes us six months or six years, or forever. I don’t care if or when we walk down the aisle again. What I know is that I want to walk throughlifewith you, and I don’t have any ambiguity about that. I’d like to give you this ring—it was Grandma G’s ring, and she would have wanted you to have it—”
“Oh, Jamie.” Tears rush to my eyes. It’s the Toi et Moi ring with a ruby and a round, antique-cut diamond bracketed by two sprays of tiny marquise diamonds arranged to look like branches. The ring I saw Grandma G wearing the first time I met the Kauffmans. And I realize now that I’d seen it before then, too…
The gems are smaller than the last ring Jamie got me, but this one has soul that the other one never did. It was worn for decades by someone else who loved Jamie, and even if Grandma G had gotten it out of a Cracker Jack box, that would make it more precious than the four-karat platinum ring still tucked away in my jewelry pouch.
“Jamie, are you sure? That ring has been in your family for a long time. Are you sure your parents—”
“I went back to tell them about us, and to ask for the ring,” he says. “Technically, I didn’t have to—Grandma G left it for me in her will—but I wanted them to know why it was so important to me. Whyyouare so important to me. This ring symbolizes my promise to never run from us, and to always be waiting for you, no matter what. If you’ll have me back. If you’ll choose me.”
His eyes glisten with tears, and I see the hopefulness written across his face, mixed with vulnerability. And it hits mefor the first time just how scared Jamie has been all this time. Scared of losing me. Scared of not being chosen, or not being good enough to stay for. Scared of all the same things I was scared of too.
And I know that I can’t let him feel that way for a single second longer. “I choose you, Jamie. I will always wantallof you,” I say, repeating the words he said to me yesterday morning back to him. “I love you. To the moon and back.”
25
THE FOURTH RING…THE FIRST TIME
IT FEELS STRANGE TO SAY, BUTIDON’T ACTUALLY REMEMBER THE VERYfirst time I met Jamie.
He was friends with some of Nikki’s friends, and apparently when I first moved out to LA, we found ourselves at some of the same parties. But the first time I took note of Jamie, the first time I had an inkling of just how important he would become to me, was at an art gallery in Downtown Los Angeles.
It was a few months after Tokyo, and Sebastian and I had broken up, officially, for the last time. Still, that itch to text him was constantly niggling beneath my skin. I knew I was playing with fire, trying to maintain a friendship with him, but I couldn’t help myself. I kept looking for excuses to reach out just so I could feel the thrill and terror of sending off a text andwaiting for a response. Sometimes, he’d get back to me in seconds. Other times, hours would go by. Sometimes, he wouldn’t respond at all.
One night, when I was finally starting to emerge from the rot-in-bed phase of my heartbreak, my friend Chloe had her first solo show. Normally, I would’ve dragged Nikki along with me, but she’d been cloistered away for her first season ofLovedBy. So, I’d gone to the gallery by myself. It felt good to be out in the world again. The crisp white walls held a dozen of Chloe’s paintings, each a different arrangement of bright, juicy jewel tones splashed across a wet canvas. After taking a heavy pour of free champagne, I came to a stop in front of one with gentle swashes of marigold and periwinkle and one ominous splotch of bloodred that cut through the prettiness of the colors.
