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She shrugs and chews.
“Because if you are, you’re doing it wrong,” I cock an eyebrow at her and grin. “You’re not supposed to eat your leverage.”
She shoves the rest of her cookie into her mouth and I can’t help but laugh. God, she drives me crazy. “Come here, Henley.”
She hesitates, like she’s mentally mapping out escape routes but I don’t say it again and I try not to let her hesitation bother me.
Finally, she crosses the threshold and sinks into the chair next to me. “You can have the rest,” she says, holding out her napkin-wrapped cookies. “I’ve had about a dozen of them.”
I look at her hand, pretending to consider her offer, before I raise my gaze to hers and flash her my dimples. “What do you want for ‘em?”
She flushes instantly at my teasing. “You know what I want,” she says, propping her feet up on the ottoman, next to mine. “I want my book back.”
“Still not your book,” I tell her, trying to sound as casual as possible. I shift on the chair a bit to reach into my pocket while she bites into another cookie. “But I have something else you might be interested in,”
When I pull out the ring and show it to her, her chewing slows to a stop, her wide brown eyes latched onto the center of my palm.
“Before you say you can’t wear it, I’d like you to note that my name is nowhere on it,” I say, still light. Still casual. “Also, it was cheap. There’s a good chance it’ll turn your finger green.” When she doesn’t say anything, I glance down at the cookies clutched in her hand. “How many of those do you have left?”
She swallows so hard I expect her to start coughing on the lump of oatmeal butterscotch lodged in her throat. “Four.”
I shrug, like I’m considering it. “When you factor in time and labor, I’m getting the better end of the deal.”
She’s not buying it. “Conner…” She shakes her head. Finally looks up at me, her brown eyes so dark they look almost black. “I don’t think—”
“It’s a Claddagh—” I lift her right hand from her lap and slip the ring onto her middle finger. “They have their own secret language.” I tighten my fingers around hers, holding her hand. “When you wear it on your right hand, with the point of the heart toward your own, it means you’re committed to someone.”
Jesus, why did I say that out loud?
“Committed?”
“Well, yeah.” I say it to her hand because I don’t want to risk looking up at her. “We’ve already established the fact that we’re dating.”
“We did,” she says. “But dating in itself doesn’t imply…”
She didn’t think it was exclusive. She thinks I’ve been seeing other girls.
I don’t know why it hurts but it does. There have been other girls. More than I like to think about, but that stopped the moment she handed me her calculus notes three months ago. There’s no one else.
I open my mouth to tell her that. That she’s the only one. That there’s never going to be another. Not for me, but she beats me to it.
“Where’s yours?”
“My what?”
“Well, if this is a real thing, then you should have one too, right?” she says, lifting her half-eaten cookie to her mouth. “A commitment isn’t a commitment if it’s one-sided.”
“The shop I bought it in is in Cambridge—we can be there in an hour.” She wants me to wear a ring, I’ll wear a ring. Shit, I’ll tattoo the fucking thing on my forehead if it’ll make her happy.
She studies me and chews, long enough to make me squirm before she shakes her head. “I don’t have any money,” she says, finally settling back in the seat next to me. “And it won’t count unless I buy it for you.”
It’s enough that she wants me to. “Does that mean you’ll wear it?’ I say, brushing my thumb over the top of her middle finger, still trying for light and casual even though I just asked the girl I’m in love with to wear my ring.
She doesn’t answer me but she doesn’t take it off either. “Read to me?” she says, offering me a cookie.
I don’t push her. I just pick up Gatsby and find where I left off. I do as she asks, reading to her out loud. When feel her rest her head on my shoulder, it feels like yes.