Chapter 2 The Ring Type
the ring type
Sariah
My morning’s been hell. Traffic in this city is ridiculous.
Autumn has the leaf peepers. Winter has the skiers. Summer has the hikers. Spring has the unprepared… that is, the people who experience spring everywhere else in the country and don’t know that it’s still winter here on the Front Range.
Oh, and no one here can drive, but they all think they can and should advise everyone else on how to do it.
So after waking up late, fighting the school zones, and arriving to work well after starting time, I figure my Friday is going to add up to a craptacular day. That’s not the word I’d use to describe it, though. Surprising or astonishing are both more apt.
The CEO and the COO are riding the high of the venture capital coming through and are ramping up for launch. We’re still three or four months out, I assume. Depending on how fast people are willing to work.
The money doesn’t sound like it’ll trickle down to more in our pockets or to fulfill additional staffing needs, though. It’s what I’m thinking about when I find myself in the office kitchen grabbing a snack until my mind drifts back to last night.
And Cian.
When I met him years ago, we were both young and na?ve. He was more na?ve than I was. That’s not a knock. It says more about me than it does about him.
He was handsome, wistful, and wanted to make a difference. But what I remember most about him was his moral compass. It always faced true north. He would do the right thing, at all times, regardless of the cost.
It was refreshing… and it scared me. I wanted someone whose skin I could climb into and hide from the world. He wanted a world I didn’t have to hide from. Gallant of him for sure, but not reality.
Reality is—
“Sariah?” I’m shaken from my stroll down memory lane by one of the product managers. “There’s someone here for you.”
There’s no way I’m walking out there blindly.
“Who is it?”
“You’ll see.”
My face goes hard. I hate this game. I don’t play it well. No, I play and I lose. I do not pass go. I do not collect two hundred dollars. I go directly to jail. And start back at square one.
“Who is it?” My voice matches the eerie cold slime moving through my veins.
“It’s a delivery man.” She cringes like I’m nuts.
We don’t use the word crazy in the mental health space. But, if we did, that’s what her face says I am.
“Will you sign for whatever it is please and leave it on my desk?”
She nods and backs out of the room like I’m a rabid dog foaming at the mouth.
A few deep breaths later and my nerves settle. I’m safe. I’d know if we weren’t. That niggling suspicion isn’t there. I’m okay.
Returning to my desk, I have to make a colossal effort to not look surprised. The vase of flowers is a calling card of the man who sent them. Peonies are my favorites, especially pink ones. I told him once, and once was all it took. And to this day, he apparently remembers.
I slip the card off the clear pitchfork and pocket it, before tossing the plastic piece in the trash.
Cotton candy petals stare at me all day. All the while, the card from the man who stole my heart ages ago burns in my pocket just begging me to open it.
I pretend this is business as usual, that it’s no big deal to get my favorite flowers in an extraordinary arrangement at my place of employment, but nothing about this is normal.
I drive home, balancing the vase in one hand, driving with the other while wondering how this is my life—the torment, the joy, the sheer madness of running into Cian Murphy of all people in a metro area of two million people.
I arrive at home to find chaos. To be honest, it always feels chaotic. And since I was raised so strictly, I’ve never once thought of making it any different.
We do messy. We do shoes where they land. We dance in the living room when we’re stressed and sing when we’re happy.
We work through problems with logic and optimism and extend grace at all times. Because like hell am I doing things how I was raised.
Hell is accurate.
No. Hell is an understatement.
It’s why I’m patient with teenage attitudes and hormone swings.
We live out loud, in technicolor, in surround sound. And choose the life we want.
“Renée. Rosie. I’m home.”
Rosie comes around the corner, looking a little worse for wear. “Hey, hon. How was your—” She spies the flowers, and her eyes blow wide. She tilts her head in question, apparently rendered mute by the peonies.
Me, too, Rosie. Me too.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“Where’s Renée?”
“Emotionally, she’s ‘all up in her feels.’ That’s a quote. Physically, she’s in her bedroom, with headphones on, listening to music.”
“Give me one second?” I set the flowers on the dining table and head down the hall, knocking on my daughter’s door. When she doesn’t answer, I knock again, louder this time. “Renée?”
“Yeah?”
I crack the door and look in. Maybe chaos is too mild a word. Oh well. I’m only willing to fight the battles that are worth fighting, and this isn’t one of them.
Renée drops her bulky headphones from her ears to around her neck.
“Hey, baby. I’m home. Rosie intimated you had a rough day. I wanted to check on you.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay then. Maybe later over pizza?”
She shrugs and lifts her headphones over her ears.
“Love you.” I mouth to her and pull her door shut.
I return to the kitchen to find Rosie sitting at the dining room table staring at the bouquet. “He found you?” Her voice is tentative.
“I bumped into him last night. These arrived at work today.”
“Tell me everything.” Rosie taps the table, both excited and resigned.
I do… every detail I can remember. When I finally pull out the card to see the words written there, I sigh and pass it to her.
You are more captivating than you were when we first met. —Ci
She drops a hand over her chest. “It’s time to stop running, hon.”
“Renée—” I start but don’t get much more.
“It’s time to stop running. Not begin again. This man—” She lifts the card, flapping it in the air. “He was the right one the first time. How many people get this kind of second chance?”
“A year and a half. Less than two more years, and then…” And then, who really knows? Do I think if we get to and past her fifteenth birthday it won’t happen? Do I think fifteen magically saves us and makes the fear and running all worth it? “What if—”
“We don’t do what-ifs in this family.” Rosie taps the table.
This family.
“I love you, Rosie. I don’t want to run anymore either. But what do I do?”
“You tell him. Tell him how you ended up in Fort Collins. Tell him why you left and what happened when you did. Tell him all the things that scare you. And see if he’s the man you’ve always claimed he was.”
“You’re making a huge assumption that he has any interest in me.”
In dramatic fashion, my most trusted friend—the woman who has been my surrogate mother—wildly opens her arms as if presenting the flowers to me behind a curtain. “He called you captivating. That’s not a boy who’s playing games. How old is he now? Is he married?”
I calculate out everything I know of the incredible man who stole my heart and never gave it back to me. “Thirty-six. There was no ring. And he’s most certainly the ring type. And he said he wants to catch up. So…”
“So the man of your dreams is single and interested, and you wonder what? If it’s worth the risk?”
“It’s not that easy. It’s not just me anymore.”
“From what you know of him, you don’t think you can trust him with your daughter?”
“Rosie, please.”
“Think it through, Sariah. If you’re going to play what-ifs, then what if you could have it all?”
With Cian Murphy? I’d risk everything—everything but Renée, that is—for a chance.
“What’s that look?” she asks, trying to pull the smile back into her mouth from where it stretched across her face. “You went all wistful.”
“Just thinking about the what-ifs.”
“I need to get to group anyway.” With a kiss to the cheek for me and a wave to Renée who’s emerged from her room, Rosie leaves about the time the delivery guy arrives with our pizza.
“Nice flowers. They’re your favorites, right?” Renée asks, as she bites the point of her second piece of mushroom and olive pizza.
I really hope this vegetarian thing is just a phase. Yeah, it’s cheaper than a carnivore alternative, but, man, I miss pork on my pie. Then again, if we were back in Chicago, I would’ve insisted. There’s no such thing as deep dish without the meat.
“Who are they from?”
“You know I lived here, well, in Fort Collins anyway, before you were born. I knew a guy there. I bumped into him last night. He sent them.”
“Like a boyfriend?”
No need to make it into some high drama. “Sort of.”
“So are you dating him again?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Lots of reasons. One, we don’t know each other anymore. Two—”
“Was it a bad breakup?”
Brutal. I nod.
“Was he a dick?”
“Mouth. I’m all for creativity, but be creative, not crass. And no, he wasn’t. It was all me.”
“Why then?”
“One day, I’ll tell you.”
“That’s always your answer.” She stands from her chair and leans over the table.
“It’s always ‘someday’ or ‘one day’ or ‘when I’m old enough.
’ But you know what? Eventually I’ll stop asking.
Because I won’t trust you.” Her words pierce me straight through.
Something on my face must say her words hit true, because she looks me over before she storms off.
I clear the table, throw the leftovers in the fridge, and wipe down the kitchen.
She’s right. I can’t protect her from everything, and she needs protection. That’s my job… And I swear I’m screwing up at every turn.
My phone rings with a number I’d know anywhere. I memorized it eons ago and have recited it to myself as a mantra. For crying out loud, it’s even our WiFi password.
But it’s never dialed me. Not at this number for sure.
My thumb hovers over the screen, but temptation gets the best of me.
“Hello?”