“So, can I see this ring you bought for your sweet little girlfriend?” I say when he walks back into the room. I don’t know why I ask this but I’m sure the wine has made me bolder.
“Why do you want to see the ring?” he looks at me from under his lashes.
Hmmm, because I want to see what could have been mine.
“Curiosity. I’m a girl and I like jewelry. You don’t have to show me, if you don’t want to.”
He disappears into the bedroom and comes back carrying a small blue box. Tiffany’s. How predictable.
“Whoa baby,” I say cracking open the lid. It is a carat past enormous. The most beautiful and obnoxious bauble I have ever seen. Well, aside from Cammie anyway….
“This thing needs its own zip code.”
“Try it on.” He buffers the box at me and my hand automatically pushes it away.
“Isn’t it bad luck to try on someone else’s ring?”
“Bad luck for the bride, I think,” he taunts.
“In that case…” I say reaching for it. “Wait!” I pull my hand back. “You have to propose first.” I hand him the box and sit back waiting for the show.
“Everything has to be a production with you doesn’t it?” he says standing up and turning his back to me. “Ask and you shall receive.” When he spins back around his features are twitchy and nervous.
“Bravo,” I clap my hands.
“Olivia,” he begins. I look at him in mock surprise. Then suddenly he is serious…or he seems so. I catch my breath. “You belong with me. Do you believe me?” I feel my sweat glands open.
Holding my breath, I nod. This is supposed to be for laughs, but it doesn’t sound funny, it sounds like something I will be replaying years from now—when I am sitting alone in a room full of cats.
“Will you marry me, Olivia? You are the only woman I know how to love. The only woman I want to love.” He doesn’t lower himself to his knee and he doesn’t need to. I am rocking on the edge of an emotional meltdown as is.
I know I was supposed to give some sort of response. I grope for my wit, but my mind is as dry as my mouth.
The wine speaks for me. I kiss him, because he is close and there is no other response good enough. It is just a brush of lips, warm and hasty. He freezes and stares at me with his eyebrows cocked in surprise.
“I would have given you diamonds a week ago, if I knew it would get me that.”
I shrug.
He lifts my finger and studies Leah’s diamond. “It looks…..”
“Silly,” I finish for him. “Here, take it,” I tug at the band and it rams into my knuckle. I try again. It is…stuck.
“Crap!” I moan. “I am so sorry Caleb. This was such a stupid idea.”“Don’t apologize. Your fingers are probably just swollen. Give it some time and we’ll try again later.” And then he disappears into the kitchen to see to dinner and I am left on the couch with half a bottle of wine and Strawberry Shortcake’s ring on my finger.
“I don’t get it. How can you think so differently from before?” I ask while we sit eating dinner at his dining room table. I am buzzing from the wine and my tongue feels dangerously loose. “You don’t like the ring you chose, before the amnesia, you don’t like the girlfriend ….or your condo. How can the same person be someone else entirely?”
“No one said anything about not liking the girlfriend. What might have been my taste then is not so now.”
“So the amnesia made you a different person?”
“Maybe or maybe the amnesia revealed that I’m not the person I was pretending to be.”
He is right. The years that he went missing from my life, he’d morphed into a professional bachelor, right down to his cheesy, silk sheets. It wasn’t my Caleb. The one who had put that purple blob of paint on my ceiling.
“Do you love Leah?” The words are out of my mouth before I have the chance to swallow them. My mouth tastes bitter.
“She’s lovely. Very kind and sophisticated. She always says the right thing at the right time. But I can’t seem to summon the things that I’m supposed to be feeling for her.”
“Maybe those feelings were never there in the first place.”
“Do you ever think that maybe you’re crossing the line?” He puts down his silverware and rests his elbows on the table.
“Hey, we’re just two strangers getting to know each other. There are no lines yet.” I push back from the table and cross my arms. My mood had soured like old milk and I wanted to fight.
“Truce,” he says holding up his hands. Before I can agree, he grabs our dinner plates and hustles into the kitchen.
I help him stack the dishes in the washer and then Caleb retrieves some ice from the kitchen and holds it on my finger.
I watch his fingers work through languid eyes. His next move almost makes me faint. He is trying to explain the rules of football to me, which I am pretending to care about, when he reaches for my finger and gently puts it into his mouth. The ring slides off easily this time. He takes it from his lips and replaces it in the box without another word. He carries it back into the bedroom and I clench and unclench my fist.
“I need to go,” I say, standing up.
“Don’t,” he says.
My phone starts ringing and I let go of his eyes to dig around in my purse. My phone hardly ever rings. I only have it for emergencies and Cammie. I expect to see her number when I look at the screen, but instead it’s Rosebud’s.
“Some-a-one breaks your apartment,” she yells when I pick up.
“Calm down Rose, I don’t understand—what?”
“Some-a-one breaks your house!” she yells, like I had asked her to turn up the volume instead of speak clearly.
I shake my head, which is still infused with wine. Then it clicks. Someone broke into my apartment.
“I’ll be right there.” I hang up and look at Caleb. “Someone broke into my apartment,” I repeat Rosebud’s words. Caleb grabs his car keys.
“I’ll drive you,” he says steering me towards the door. He drives faster than I would and I am grateful for it. I think about Pickles, who I had forgotten to ask Rosebud about. I silently pray that she is okay. Caleb walks me to my door where two police officers are waiting.