3. SATURDAY — SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO
SATURDAY — SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO
Now playing: You Be The Anchor That Keeps My Feet On The Ground, I'll Be The Wings That Keep Your Heart In The Clouds - Mayday Parade
The sun hadn’t even fully breached the horizon when I slipped out of bed.
Silas was dead to the world, sprawled like a starfish and half hanging off the mattress. He looked exhausted, beautiful, and completely oblivious to the fact I was about to change his entire life before breakfast.
Wallet and phone in hand, I tiptoed across the carpet. I didn’t leave a note. If this went according to plan, I’d be back before he rolled over and realized I was gone.
Once I hit the lobby, I found the rest of our crew. Evan and Lena were slumped in a pair of velvet armchairs, both looking like they had just been rescued from a war zone. Evan’s offer to room with Lena was a noble sacrifice, given that both of them were terrible roommates.
I marched across the lobby with messy hair and a wrinkled shirt, but I knew I carried a look of manic, terrifying determination.
Evan looked up from his coffee when I came to an abrupt halt in front of them. He took one look at my face, the wildness in my eyes, and the fact that Silas wasn’t with me, and the blood drained from his skin.
“Jesus fuck,” he whispered, sitting up straight. “Cal. The last time one of you showed up alone with that look on your face, Silas dropped the bomb you two had been dating, and he’d just broken up with you. Please, don’t do this to me again. Did you fight? Where is he?”
“I need a jeweler,” I demanded, ignoring his panic entirely. “Right now.”
He blinked once, looked at Lena, then back at me. “What?”
“I need a ring.” My voice was low and frantic. “And I need it today. Before the match tomorrow, because if I wait, I won’t have time.”
Evan’s eyes went wide. He stood up so fast his chair scraped loudly against the marble floor.
“No.” Evan held up his hands as if trying to calm a wild animal. “No! You can’t!”
“Excuse me? Why the hell not?”
“Because…because of the match!” Evan stammered, waving his hands frantically in the direction of the arena across town. “You have an hour-long title match tomorrow! You need to be focused! You can’t be distracted by…by matrimony!”
“Matrimony?” Lena snorted into her coffee cup.
“I’m not distracted,” I snapped, taking a step into his space. “I just told him I would’ve asked him years ago, had we never broken up. I’m not leaving this fucking island as his boyfriend, Evan. He’s it for me, and I’m locking this down. Today.”
“But what about the logistics?” Evan squeaked, backing up until his calves hit the armchair. “You don’t have a plan! You look manic, clearly haven’t slept, and you’re sweating in yesterday’s shirt. You can’t just drag him to a courthouse! He deserves romance, Cal.”
I glared at him. My adrenaline was pumping too hard for me to have patience with his obvious stalling.
“Wilder, you better have an actual, valid reason why I shouldn’t walk out that door right now and buy a ring.”
Evan opened his mouth, then quickly closed it. His eyes darted to Lena, wide and pleading, but she just popped a bubble with her gum and grinned, enjoying the show.
“I…” Evan swallowed hard, sweat beading on his forehead. “Because…because you’ll ruin it.”
“Ruin what?” I demanded.
With a tortured groan, he broke, throwing his hands over his face.
“Because! He’s going to ask you, you dipshit!” Evan hissed, dropping his hands and looking around the lobby in a panic. “He’s going to propose to you.”
I froze. The anger, the adrenaline, the frantic energy…all hit a brick wall.
“What?” I whispered.
“He has a plan!” Evan began, his face aging about five years in a single moment. “He has been harping on about it for months. He wants it to be perfect when you get back to the Reed’s land.”
I stared at him blankly as my brain tried to process the information. Silas…my Silas, who was typically terrified of his own shadow…was planning to propose to me.
“He’s going to ask me?”
“Yes! He told me back in June. We were on the porch at your house, and he looked me dead in the eye. Told me he’s waited ten years for this, and he wasn’t about to wait any longer.”
A slow smile tugged at my lips. “He really said that?”
“Yes.” Evan sighed, rubbing his temples like I’d brought on the world's biggest headache. “If you try to do this now, he is going to give me so much shit about the Man-Man conversation again. And I cannot handle that level of humiliation twice.”
I frowned. “The what conversation?”
Evan flinched. “The Man-Man conversation. I…I made an ass of myself, okay? When he told me he was going to propose, I was confused. I asked him if that wasn’t the ‘Man-Man’s’ job.”
“The Man-Man?”
“You know,” Evan whispered painfully. “The guy. The one who like…drives the car. Ugh, I tried to use straight-people logic and it did not end well.”
Silence stretched between us as I stared at him, entirely dumbfounded, and yet my chest puffed up, proud. Lena choked on her pastry, coughing violently into her napkin, but it didn’t deter the slow, dark, incredibly satisfying smirk that spread across my face.
“You asked him that?”“I didn’t know! Silas laughed in my face and then told me entirely too much.
My entire worldview shattered. I didn’t need any of that information!
” I chuckled, the sound dark and rich. “So, let me get this straight. You figured the ‘Man-Man’ should be the one to propose, and since I’m the Man-Man… ”
“Don’t,” Evan warned.
“So, if I’m the ‘Man-Man’, then technically I’m acting like it, right? I’ll do it first.”
“You are both insufferable,” Evan groaned.
“Google jewelers,” I told Lena, “Let’s go.”
Twenty minutes later, we walked into a small, high-end jewelry shop in Old San Juan.
“I need a ring,” I told the man behind the counter. “Men’s band. Heavy, but not gold. He won’t wear gold.”
The jeweler pulled out a tray from the bottom shelf of the display. “We have platinum, white gold, and we just got in some black tungsten.”
“Tungsten,” I said without hesitation
He grabbed for a heavy-looking, matte-black ring and placed it on the counter. The band was sleek, modern, and practically indestructible. It was perfect.
“I’ll take it.”
“Size?” the jeweler asked.
I froze. My gaze stayed on the ring before flicking back to the jeweler. “Fuck.”
“You don’t know his size?” Lena gasped. “Cal! You know his coffee order, his social security number, and exactly how to press his buttons, but you don’t know his ring size?”
“He doesn’t wear rings! He wears wrist wraps and tape.” My panic rose with every second that passed. This was the last thing I needed right now. “What do I do? I can’t guess. If it doesn’t fit when I put it on him, I will literally walk into the ocean to drown.”
“His entire family lives within a hundred feet of your house. Why don’t you call someone? You can’t tell me the twins don’t have keys.”
I had my phone out instantly to FaceTime Josie. She picked up on the third ring, half asleep and very confused.
“Cal?” she rasped. “It’s… I-don’t-even-know-what-time in the morning. Is Silas dead or something?”
“He’s sleeping. I need you to go over to his house. Right now. I need his ring size. Just find a ring, any ring.”
Josie blinked, then scrambled out of bed. “On it. Let me find my ring sizer. I bought one last summer for my Etsy shop.”
Five minutes passed before she was standing in Silas’s bedroom in North Carolina. A plastic ring sizer in one hand and a gold ring she had unearthed from his nightstand junk drawer in the other.
“Okay, it fits the ten-and-a-half perfectly.”
“Ten-and-a-half,” I repeated, returning my gaze to the clerk as he headed off to wrap up my purchase.
Now sitting on the edge of the bed, a knowing grin spread across her face. “Cal…is this what I think it is?”
“Yeah,” I breathed, relief that I’d managed to actually find a ring washing over me. “It is.”
“Oh my God, finally. Wait. Silas texted everyone yesterday saying he was planning to do it. He told us not to spoil it when we’re there for tomorrow’s match.”
I smirked. “I know. That’s why I’m doing it on Tuesday. I’m beating him to it.”
“Why is everything always a competition with you two?”
“Finally, someone else sees it!” Lena shouted into the phone. “It’s exhausting! They are literally racing to the altar!”
“It’s not a competition,” I said smoothly as I took the velvet case from the jeweler. “Not when I’m winning. Besides, maybe it’s our foreplay.”
“AGH!” Evan shouted, covering his ears in the middle of the store like a child. “Please stop freely sharing about your sex life! I’m begging you!”
“Alright, alright,” I said to my traumatized best friend as I hung up. “Let’s go win a championship.”
My phone buzzed in my hand as I went to pocket the ring.
Where the fuck are you?
We have to be at the arena in thirty minutes to train.
Evan and Lena aren’t answering either.
***
“Shit,” I hissed as I saw at the time. “We’ve been gone an hour.”
Panicked, Evan checked his phone. “He’s awake and texting me in all caps. He thinks we’ve been kidnapped.”
“Let’s move it. And try to look natural. We were getting coffee.”
We practically sprinted through the streets of Old San Juan, sweat dripping from us thanks to the morning humidity, only slowing down when we burst through the hotel doors. Then we just speed-walked.
The doors of the elevator opened before we even pressed the button. Silas was inside already wearing his gym gear and holding a large iced coffee. His arms were crossed over his chest. His brow lowered as his sharp and suspicious eyes swept over the three of us.
No one dared move. Evan looked guilty while Lena looked as if she was trying not to laugh. I tried to look casual, despite the fact I was hiding an engagement ring in my pocket and sweating through my shirt like a hormonal teenager.
“Hey,” I said, breathless.
“Where were you?” Silas asked in a low voice.
“Coffee. We went to that local place down the street. The line was insane.”