Chapter 5 The Wrong Type of Ring
The Wrong Type of Ring
— O NE YEAR AGO —
Amelie:
You tricked me. You TRICKED me, you deceitful man.
I gawk at the screen of my phone. I can’t believe Ian lied and I asked him for his number. His number! I asked a handsome man I met at a wedding for his number after he tried to hit on me.
Setting the daisy on the entryway table, I climb down from my heels and unzip my dress. “Frank?” I call. No answer. I haven’t seen him since this morning, but it’s late, so he must be sleeping.
When my phone buzzes, I glance at the screen.
Ian:
One hour and fifteen minutes.
I was thinking about you, too, through most of it.
Amelie:
Mrs. Wilkow sold you out, you doofus.
I KNOW you asked her to sit in your spot.
Ian:
Yes, I helped a fragile old lady who was a step away from crumpling to the floor.
I’m selfless like that.
He’s manipulative like that, he means. I can’t believe he made me think I was flattering myself when I told him I was engaged.
Amelie:
How about telling her I’m the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen?
Ian:
I technically said that before seeing Martha, but I stand by my initial impression. No comparison.
“Jerk,” I say as I rock back on the heels of my feet, then walk to the bedroom. Frank’s dark hair peeks out from the duvet, and, leaning closer, I tuck the blanket under his chin and kiss the side of his head. I’m still angry at him, but I hate it when we fight. Just as I leave the bedroom, my phone vibrates again.
Ian:
Fine. I admit I wasn’t transparent about my intentions, but you asked for my number.
Amelie:
Because of the cake.
Ian:
Cake as in… you’ll give me a piece of that cake?
Amelie:
Cake as in cake.
I was ONLY going to send you the name of the bakery.
Of course, at the time, I wasn’t aware you were a deceitful liar.
Ian:
Oh, yeah, of course. Makes sense. Totally.
Except…
I wait for another text, but it doesn’t come. No matter, because whatever he’s about to suggest is way off. Sure, we got along, and you’d have to be blind not to notice how handsome he is. But I’m basically engaged, aren’t I? I’m not about to throw the last fifteen years of my life out the window for a twenty-minute conversation with a stranger.
I was just trying to be nice.
Amelie:
Except what?
When no answer comes, I set my phone on the coffee table and slip into my pajamas, then enter the bathroom and brush my teeth.
I’m pretty sure he’ll answer at some point. Maybe he’s trying to make me beg for it. He wants me to send him a hundred messages asking him to explain what the hell “ Except… ” means. He must be laughing at his screen right now, taking his sweet time answering.
I glance at the dark living room, my teeth sinking into my bottom lip. The temptation to check my phone is strong, but I won’t play his games. I don’t need to. My boyfriend is in bed, and all I truly desire after such a long day in heels is to curl up beside him and fall asleep to the rising and falling of his chest.
Once I turn the corridor light off and walk to the bedroom, Frank’s heavy breathing is the only noise in the apartment. Fitting under the blanket next to him, I inhale his comforting smell of pine and sandalwood, the aftershave I got him on his last birthday. He doesn’t wake up when I kiss the tip of his nose, only moves a little.
With a satisfied exhale, I rest my head on the fluffy pillow and close my eyes.
Except… that’s not why you asked for my number.
Maybe that’s what Ian will say. Well, to that I’ll say he’s a cocky idiot. Or I’ll block him. Problem solved.
Except I know you work as a chef and that’s why I brought the cake up? Except I could see how much fun you had with me? Except I could tell my weird-ass opinions made me irresistible in your eyes?
What the hell is he going to say?
With a grunt, I push the blanket away and head to the living room.
He texted.
I sit down on the couch and rub a hand over my face. I shouldn’t look. If I read it six minutes after he sent it, I’ll make him think I’m interested. And I’m not.
“Fuck me,” I say, unlocking the phone. I need to know. My heart’s beating out of my chest in anticipation.
There’s a screenshot. It’s my contact. Beautiful , with a red heart. He saved my number.
Amelie:
So? You can save my number as “wife number three” for all I care. It doesn’t change the fact that I’m not interested.
Ian:
You’re missing the point.
When you asked for my number, you didn’t know I lied. But when you texted me, you knew. Yet you texted anyway.
And now I have your number.
Ian:
Good morning, Amelie.
I think I was promised the name of a bakery?
I drop my phone on the counter and continue whisking the eggs. It’s Sunday, the sun is shining bright, and I found an excellent ’90s playlist I’m currently dancing to. Though I have to work later today, I’m looking forward to spending some time with Frank before that. It’ll be a great day.
“Good morning,” Frank says, entering the kitchen.
I turn to him with a full smile, showing off my wifely apron. “Good morning, love.”
When my lips softly graze his, he steps back, his chestnut-brown eyes softening from behind his thick glasses. “Looks like you’re in a good mood.”
I am, though I understand his surprise. The last words we said to each other before I left for Barb’s wedding weren’t kind, and I don’t usually get over our fights without some sort of reconciliation.
Of course, all that went out the window when I found out I accidentally gave my number to a guy who turned out to be hitting on me. The bastard made me an involuntary part of a sketchy situation.
“How was the wedding?”
“Great,” I say in a forcefully chirpy voice as I shake the thought off. “Barbara and Ryan were the portrait of happiness, and everyone missed you. Especially me.” As I walk back to the frying eggs, my phone dings again, and I pick it up with a tsk.
Ian:
You’re really not going to tell me the name?
But the raspberry jam. And the lemon ganache. And the macadamia nuts!
What is he talking about? Raspberry jam and lemon ganache? Nuts ? Oh my God, this guy didn’t even eat the damn cake. The idiot totally played me.
Once I set the phone down, Frank says, “I’m sorry I didn’t come. And I’m sorry about the fight we had. I should have told you about the move before accepting the position.”
Or maybe asked?
I turn the stove off and walk over to where he’s sitting. I bend forward so I can wrap my arms around his neck and stare into his eyes behind the black-framed glasses he started wearing a few years back. “Thank you,” I whisper on his lips, and, pressing a kiss on his cheek, I continue, “You know I’ll always support you. I just want to be part of the decision.”
Our mouths meet for a moment, and after quickly brushing my tongue with his, he leans back so his face is out of reach. “So you’re okay with it? With me going?”
I walk to the counter, then set bacon and eggs on two different plates and bring them to the table. I can’t say I’m thrilled about it, but I understand better than anyone that ambition comes with its healthy dose of sacrifice. “I am, yes. Just six months, right?” When he nods, I smile. “I’ll miss you, though.”
“I’ll miss you too.”
I sit down and watch him dig his fork into the scrambled eggs. I guess it’s time to bring up my own uncomfortable topic. “So, I met this guy at the wedding yesterday.”
“A guy?”
“Ian. I think his dad is friends with Barbara’s.”
“And?”
“And we talked for a while. He was really nice. We were supposed to get cake, but I got called for pictures.” I wave the thought off. “So I asked him for his number. I figured I could find out the name of the bakery and send it to him.”
He nods like he’s waiting for me to get to the point.
“Well, turns out he was—” I break off, fidgeting with the fork in my hand. “I don’t know. Interested.”
“Interested in you ?”
I take a sip of coffee, avoiding his gaze. “Yeah.”
“Oh my God, Ames.” His shoulders drop. “I’m so relieved to hear you say that.”
Relieved?
Before I can ask, he keeps going. “I went out with the guys from work last night, and this woman gave me her number.” He sputters out a chuckle. “I was feeling so guilty.”
My teeth grind as I force out a smile. I don’t care about a woman giving him her number: he’s a handsome guy, it’s bound to happen. But why was he feeling guilty? “Well, if you did nothing wrong, you shouldn’t feel guilty.”
He hesitates, and under the weight of my stare, his teeth pinch his bottom lip. “Well, you asked some guy for his number. Is that not wrong?”
“What did you do, Frank?”
Avoiding my gaze, he digs into his eggs again. “Nothing, Ames. I just… I thought it was kind of… nice.”
“Nice how?” I ask as my chest tightens. I guess there’s nothing wrong with enjoying being desired. It’s human, even. And he knows I’m not typically a jealous person. So there’s definitely more to this story.
“Just… I liked the chase, I guess? The thrill?” He licks his lips, throwing me sheepish glances that do nothing to hide his discomfort. “I enjoyed flirting a little with someone new. I had a crush on you by the time I was ten; you know you’re the only woman I’ve ever dated, kissed. Anything.”
Setting my fork down, I inhale and exhale much quicker than necessary until I’m lightheaded. I think of my conversation with Ian at the wedding, of how I spent most of it discussing Frank and our pre-engagement. All the while, he was playing single dude at a party.
It’s hardly the same thing.
“You know why I asked Ian for his number?” I ask, pressing my lips together tightly.
He shakes his head. “You said something about cake?”
“The cake was a thank-you for listening to me whine about Martha and being kind about it.” I raise my index finger. “Oh, and for informing me of the fact that Le Love Bijoux is not a jewelry store but the place where you buy your cock rings.”
His jaw snaps open, but he says nothing for a moment as his eyes bulge out. “A—a jewelry store?”
“Yeah,” I confirm. “Instead of shopping for inventive masturbation techniques, I figured you might be thinking of proposing.” I bite the inside of my cheek. “Turns out, you were too busy enjoying being single.”
“Ames,” he groans. His hand finds mine on the table, and when I pull it back, he follows, not releasing his grip. “Come on, stop it. This is exactly what I’m talking about!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I stand, grab my plate, and shove it in the sink. “I was asked twenty-seven times why I wasn’t engaged last night.” With a squeak, I turn to Frank. “Twenty-eight, actually, because Ian asked too. Did you tell your lady friend that I exist? Because you’re the first thing I told Ian about. Even before my name.”
“Ames, you want me to propose, but we’ve never experienced anything else.” He comes to stand in front of me. “I know I want to end up with you. Fuck, I love you. But I also want to know what else is out there, or I’ll wonder my whole life.” His lips purse into a straight line. “Now that I’ll need to relocate to Mayfield for a while, maybe you’d be willing to let me… experience something else?”
My fingers press against my forehead, now slick with sweat. This isn’t happening, is it? He can’t be serious. It’s all just a nightmare I’m about to wake up from.
“Ames?” His hand is warm on my shoulder. “Look, I know that I’m asking for a lot here, okay? I understand that. But it’d be good for you too. This guy, Ian, did you like him?”
“I—no!”
“Would you have slept with him if I wasn’t in the picture?”
I scoff, panic swirling in my chest. My first instinct is to answer no . That I wouldn’t have. But the truth is, I didn’t even consider it, because I can’t imagine a life without Frank. It’s not something I want. What I want is to be engaged, to marry my boyfriend. “This is a stupid conversation,” I blurt out. “If you want to break up, then just do it already.”
“Of course not!” He cradles both sides of my face. “Of course I don’t want to break up with you,” he insists. “I’m just saying, since I’m meant to spend six months away…”
“No.” I push his arms away and leave the kitchen, tears pooling in my eyes as I smother a sob against the meaty part of my hand.
“Ames, please. Don’t walk away.” Frank follows me into the bedroom, and once I realize I have no reason to be there, I sprint around the bed and head back out to the living room. “Okay, listen. Listen to me.”
I halt when he steps in front of me and holds both hands up. He inhales deeply, then throws me a cautious look. “If we do get engaged… can you plan the wedding in six months?”
I sniffle, rubbing the back of my hand under my nose. I never thought it’d get to this point, but I really don’t want to talk about our hypothetical wedding right now. When he keeps staring at me, I shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
He attempts a light smile. “So, until the wedding, we could do our own thing. I’ll have to move out anyway, right? We could use this time apart to… experience a little of the single life we’ve missed out on when we were younger. Then we get married.”
My stomach drops, the same free-falling sensation as a roller-coaster ride.
“Plan the wedding of your dreams, and in six months I’ll be there, in a tux, waiting for you at the altar. I’ll be yours forever and you’ll be mine. No looking back. No regrets.”
Squirming away from his hold, I ask, “And what happens in the meantime?”
“We’re still together. But I’ll be in Mayfield. New colleagues, big city. If I go out, and a woman flirts with me—”
“You’ll sleep with her,” I say, gingerly cutting him off.
“No, it’s not about that.” He runs his fingers through his hair. “It’s about knowing that if I want to, I can. About experiencing being single. But I won’t start sleeping with a new girl every day, Ames.”
“But it might happen,” I insist.
With a sigh, he nods. “But we’ll both know that no matter what goes on in the next six months, we’ll be back here.” He pushes his glasses up, his eyes softening in that way they always do when there’s something he wants. “It’ll make us even stronger, because we’ll still choose each other over everyone and everything else.”
I study the white-and-black pattern of the rug. Never in a thousand lifetimes would I have imagined that I, Amelie Preston, the woman who’s been obsessed with weddings since she attended her first at age nine, would be proposed to in the way it just happened. Even less would I have expected she’d consider it. In fact, I’m not even sure Frank realized he’s done just that: proposed.
“No, Frank. I—this is crazy.” My fingers are in my hair, grasping it at the root. This has to be a shitty nightmare. There’s no way my boyfriend turned my dream into a weapon used to placate me so he can get his way. “What if I say no, huh? What happens then?”
He brings his arms out wide, a pinched expression on his face. “I don’t know, Ames. Then I’ll need to think about whether I really do want to commit to a marriage when I’ve never known anything else. We’ve been together for half our lives, and I want to spend the rest of it with you, but not if I know I’ll never stop wondering. It’ll ruin our marriage, too, eventually.” He joins his hands as if he’s praying. “Do you really want me to marry you when I’ll be doubting and pondering forever? Knowing that I could resent you for it?”
I let my hair go when my phone vibrates against the kitchen counter, loud in the otherwise silent apartment. I can’t be sure, but I know it’s Ian. Throwing a look at Frank, I strut toward the kitchen with a rolling heat in my stomach.
“Ames?”
I pick up my phone and hastily skim Ian’s texts.
Ian:
Fine. If you just ignore my messages, this friendship is never going to work.
I hope you can live with the awareness that a bakery somewhere is losing an order of a delicious raspberry-lemon-macadamia cake I intended to eat with a spoon.
Showing the screen to Frank, I warn, “You understand that if you can flirt and text and sleep with other women, I can do the same with other men?”
“Yes, I do,” he says, his eyes focusing on the screen for a few seconds before he looks back at me. “Text him back if you want to.”
“Oh, so it doesn’t bother you at all.” I shove the phone closer to his face. “Ian is a big guy. Tattooed arms. Handsome, fun. You don’t mind him wrapped around me and rocking my world?”
Shoulders sagging, he purses his lips. “I mean, I don’t exactly want to hear the details, but… I’m okay with it. I don’t just love you because I’m the only man you’ve ever slept with, Ames. That’s never been important to me, and it’s not now, as long as in six months you’re walking down the aisle, toward me, in your wedding dress.”
My heart aches at the awareness that it feels easier to accept this idiotic agreement than to let go of the man I’ve spent half my life with. I can’t lose Frank. I don’t know who or what I am without him at this point. Which, I guess, to some extent, is what he means. “I’ll think about it.”
His lips part, a small smile tugging at his lips. “Really?”
“Yeah,” I mumble. I don’t even feel in control of my mouth, my face numb as I speak. I figured today I’d spend the day with my preancé. That maybe we’d go out for dinner or watch the game on the couch. What I didn’t expect is his confessing to flirting with a stranger, then agreeing to marry me after an open relationship. How long has he been thinking about it? Are there other girls he flirted with before? And if I’d never met Ian, never asked for his number, would Frank have confessed to what he did and how much he liked it?
“Ames, thank you so much.” His arms envelop me, but they feel like a straitjacket instead of the usual comforting hold. “I swear it won’t be so bad. In six months we’ll be promising each other forever, and we’ll mean it even more than now.”
Slipping away from his warm body, I smile stiffly. “Sure. Unless you fall in love with someone else. Or I do. But hey, should that happen, we can totally invite them into our marriage, huh?”
“Jesus, Ames…”
“Nah, sorry,” I say, holding up my phone with a fake smile. “I’m busy. Getting ready for my precious six months of freedom so I can find out what a cock ring feels like with Ian.”
He rolls his eyes. “Seriously, if you’re going to be this way—”
“Can’t hear you. Too busy texting.”
He stares at me with his arms folded across his chest and a look in his eyes that implies I’m being ridiculous. Petty. Childish. I know I’m being all of it and more, but the awareness does nothing to stop me from theatrically unlocking my phone and tapping on Ian’s contact. “I’m texting him.”
He sweeps his hand through the air. “Go ahead.”
“Great.” I look at the screen, then think for about two seconds. Then two more. Until eventually I’ve got nothing to say and I’m looking like a fool, so I type the first thing in my mind and send. “Done.”
“Okay.” We stare at each other in total silence for a while. Then my phone pings and I’m done with this game.
“I’m going out.”
“Ames—”
“Bye.” As I walk to the door, I look at my text conversation with Ian.
Amelie:
Unpopular opinion: the worst thing at weddings is the groom.
Ian:
Especially if he brings the wrong type of ring.