41 | Plastic Stone
TESSA
Morning came in through the curtains that had never quite fit the window.
I was awake before he was.
That felt significant somehow—lying there in my childhood bed, in this room that still had the same lamp and the same too-low bookshelf and the poster I’d been meaning to take down since I was nineteen, with Theo asleep beside me like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I watched the light change on the ceiling.
His arm was across my waist. His breathing slow and even.
I didn’t move.
At some point he stirred—a small shift, his arm tightening slightly—and then he was quiet again. After few seconds his eyes opened and found mine, he smiled before he was fully awake.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
He pulled me closer and kissed me—slow, unhurried. I kissed him back and didn’t think about anything else for a while.
When we finally broke apart I rested my forehead against his.
“Okay?” he asked.
“Very okay.”
He was quiet for a moment, his thumb moving slowly against my side.
“I need to say something,” he said.
I looked at him.
“After everything—last night, all of it—” He stopped.
Started again. “I need you to know that I’m serious about this. About you.”
His voice was steady, unhurried, the way he said things that mattered.
“I love you. And I know it’s early, and I’m not asking you for anything yet—but I want you to know that I’m ready. Whenever you are. Whatever that looks like.”
I held his gaze.
“Theo,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Is it insane that I’m ready right now?”
He went still.
Then—carefully: “What?”
“I’m just asking,” I said, smiling lightly. “Hypothetically.”
“Tessa—”
“Or not hypothetically?”
He looked at me for a long moment.
“No, we need to get you a ring,” he said breathless. “A real one. I can’t just—this isn’t how I should do it—”
I turned over.
Opened the drawer of my childhood nightstand.
Pushed aside a hair tie, a dead pen, and what appeared to be a friendship bracelet from 2013.
And pulled out a ring.
Small. Metal band, slightly tarnished. A pink plastic stone that caught the light with absolutely zero dignity.
I held it up.
Theo stared at it.
“You knocked down six cans to win that,” I said. “At the county fair. You were eleven.”
Something shifted in his expression. “I remember.”
“You gave it to me and said—”
“I said if you wear it, it means you are my wife.” His voice came out quieter than I expected. “And you laughed and ran away.”
“I ran away,” I confirmed. “But I didn’t give it back.”
A beat.
“I put it in my pocket,” I said. “And then I put it in this drawer. And sometimes—” I stopped. “Sometimes when no one was looking, I’d put it on.”
The room was very quiet.
He looked at the ring for a moment.
Then he took it from my fingers—slowly, like he was handling something that required care and looked at it.
Then he got out of bed.
Knelt down on the floor of my childhood bedroom, in yesterday’s clothes, with a pink plastic ring from a county fair game, and looked up at me with pure love in his eyes.
“Tessa.”
My heart was doing something completely unreasonable.
“This is not the ring I planned,” he said. “And this is not how I planned it. And I’m going to buy you something real, something that—”
“Theo.”
“—that actually reflects how I feel about you, because this doesn’t, this is a plastic stone—”
“Theo.”
He stopped.
“Ask me,” I said.
He stayed kneeling for a second, looking at the ring in his hand.
Smiled.
Then he looked up at me.
“I’ve loved you since we were kids,” he said. “Since before I knew what that meant. And I watched you grow up and I kept thinking—maybe now, maybe this time—and then I’d lose you again, or I’d think I did, and I’d just—” He stopped. Exhaled.
I didn’t say anything.
“And now you’re sitting here,” he said, “in this room, with this ring, and I can’t—” He shook his head slightly.
“I don’t know what I did to deserve this. I genuinely don’t. But I’m not going to question it.”
His voice dropped. “I just want to spend the rest of my life making sure you never regret it.”
The room was dead quiet.
“Theo,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Ask me already.”
He took a breath.
“Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” I said. “Obviously yes.”
Something broke open in his face—relief, disbelief, something too big to name—and he slid the ring onto my finger, adjusting it carefully until it sat right.
He stayed kneeling for a moment, just looking at it.
Then he looked up at me, and I had to look away for a second because what was in his expression was too much to hold all at once.
“I’m getting you a real one,” he said.
“I don’t care.”
“I know.” His mouth curved. “That’s why I love you.”
He climbed back onto the bed and I kissed him, and for a moment there was nothing else—just the morning light and the plastic ring on my finger and the complete, unreasonable certainty that this was exactly right.
----
The knock came ten minutes later.
Three soft taps.
We both froze.
“Tessa?” My mom’s voice, careful. “Everything okay in there?”
I looked at Theo. He looked at me.
“Fine,” I called. “Just—yeah. Fine.”
A pause.
The door opened anyway.
My mom stood in the doorway in her robe, taking in the scene with the particular efficiency of a woman who had raised me and was therefore unsurprisable.
She looked at Theo.
“I thought I heard you,” she said.
“Good Morning Mrs. Carter,” Theo said.
She glanced at me. “I take it things are sorted out between you two?”
“Yes,” I said. “Actually—” I held up my hand. The pink plastic stone caught the light heroically. “We’re engaged.”
My mom looked at the ring.
Then at Theo.
Then back at the ring.
“Mark.” She turned toward the hallway, her voice carrying the frequency that meant immediate attention. “Mark, they’re engaged.”
Footsteps. Fast ones.
My dad appeared in the doorway beside her, hair slightly messed, still in pajamas.
He looked at us. At the ring. At Theo.
“I thought,” he said, “we agreed you’d do this at Christmas.”
Theo cleared his throat. “I couldn’t wait.”
My dad looked at him for a second.
Then he laughed—short, surprised, real—and stepped forward and shook Theo’s hand, holding on a beat longer than necessary.
“Son—”
My mom made a sound that was either crying or laughing and pulled me into a hug that knocked the breath out of me.
“Okay,” my dad said, after a moment. He put his hand on my mom’s shoulder. Looked between us. “We’ll leave you to it.”
My mom pulled back, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her robe.
My dad kissed her cheek.
Then he reached for the door handle, and just before he closed it, he looked at Theo one more time—something quiet and certain in his expression.
He nodded once.
Theo nodded back.
The door clicked shut.
We sat there in the sudden quiet, my mom’s laugh still faintly audible somewhere down the hall.
I looked at the ring on my finger.
Theo looked at it too.
He shook his head slightly. “I can’t believe you said yes to a plastic ring.”
“I would marry you with a paper one,” I said.
He looked at me for a second.
“This is ridiculous,” he said.
“It's perfect,” I said.
His mouth curved.
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe it is.”
His hand covered mine, the plastic ring between our fingers.
I looked at it for a long moment.
Then I got up and turned toward the window.
The morning light was pale and even, the street below still quiet, the familiar row of houses exactly as they'd always been. The oak at the end of his backyard. The gap in the fence. The low wall where we'd once dared each other to jump and both chickened out.
Across the narrow strip of grass—his window.
Dark. Curtains still down.
Because he wasn't there.
He was here.
I felt his chin come to rest on my shoulder, his arms wrapping around me from behind, his breath warm against my temple.
"What are you looking at?" he asked quietly.
"Your window," I said.
A beat.
"It's empty," he said.
"I know." I leaned back into him. "That's the point."
His arms tightened around me.
Outside, everything was exactly where it had always been.
Except us.