Page 43 of The Four Engagement Rings of Sybil Rain
I come up for air and swim, hard, toward the shore, joy and confidence pumping through me like I’ve never felt before.
I race out of the water and onto the sand, grabbing the dress I left lying in a clump on the shore and picking up my towel, sending sand spraying everywhere.
I’m in such a rush, I don’t even have the patience to shake it off and wrap myself up—I just start jogging up the beach toward the resort.
As I do, the wind picks up—there are still gusts left over even though the storm has long since left—and my towel flaps into my face.
I cough sand and twist around, trying to detangle myself from the mess, when I bump backward into a stranger.
I nearly tumble into their arms. “I’m so sorry!” I exclaim, still trying to unwind myself when I look up.
I’m so shocked I almost fall over—again. “Jamie!” I squeak.
He’s standing there, laughing his warm, sunshine-filled laugh. “Where were you off to in such a hurry?” he asks. “Did you find out the breakfast buffet was about to run out of French toast?”
“I… I was—I was actually hurrying to get back to my room so I could check out early, because I was in a rush to see you .”
Jamie beams. I reach out a hand to hold his, as if looking for proof that he’s really here and not just a disturbingly realistic hologram.
“But I thought you flew home to LA—the meeting with the board?” I wrinkle my brow in confusion.
“I did fly home. The meeting was quick, but I really went because I had something else that I needed to discuss with my family in person.” I feel a chill, but it lasts only a moment, as another bright smile breaks out across his face.
“About us?”
He nods. “Sybil.” There are tears in his eyes.
I hold my breath, some tiny part of me still afraid he’s going to tell me that they didn’t approve of his choice.
Even though I know by now that Amelia, at least, has been rooting for us.
“They were surprised, but happy for me.” I’m even more shocked when he goes on to say, “And, apparently, Grandma G laid into each of them before she passed away, blaming them for our break-up and for not being kind and accepting enough toward you.”
“Really?” I don’t even realize there are happy tears trailing down my cheeks until Jamie brushes one away with his thumb.
“Really,” he answers. And then he kisses me.
His hands come around my waist, pressing me to him. My hands twine into his hair, and I don’t know that I’ll ever get enough of him.
But he pulls away and bends down to pick up the towel and cover-up that I dropped in a puddle on the sand.
Except that’s not what he’s doing, I suddenly realize, as he looks up at me, propped on one knee. Right here on the sand. With the sun blazing brilliantly behind him, still low on the eastern horizon.
“Sybil Rain,” he says, taking my hand. Gone are the crazy nerves I had, the rushing anger and the raging insecurities I felt the first time he got down on one knee before me.
I’m filled with a happy sense of calm as I listen to his words.
“I need you to know that I am all in with you. Whether it takes us six months or six years, or forever. I don’t care if or when we walk down the aisle again.
What I know is that I want to walk through life with you, and I don’t have any ambiguity about that.
I’d like to give you this ring—it was Grandma G’s ring, and she would have wanted you to have it—”
“Oh, Jamie.” Tears rush to my eyes. It’s the Toi et Moi ring with a ruby and a round, antique-cut diamond bracketed by two sprays of tiny marquise diamonds arranged to look like branches.
The ring I saw Grandma G wearing the first time I met the Kauffmans.
And I realize now that I’d seen it before then, too…
The gems are smaller than the last ring Jamie got me, but this one has soul that the other one never did.
It was worn for decades by someone else who loved Jamie, and even if Grandma G had gotten it out of a Cracker Jack box, that would make it more precious than the four-karat platinum ring still tucked away in my jewelry pouch.
“Jamie, are you sure? That ring has been in your family for a long time. Are you sure your parents—”
“I went back to tell them about us, and to ask for the ring,” he says.
“Technically, I didn’t have to—Grandma G left it for me in her will—but I wanted them to know why it was so important to me.
Why you are so important to me. This ring symbolizes my promise to never run from us, and to always be waiting for you, no matter what.
If you’ll have me back. If you’ll choose me. ”
His eyes glisten with tears, and I see the hopefulness written across his face, mixed with vulnerability.
And it hits me for the first time just how scared Jamie has been all this time.
Scared of losing me. Scared of not being chosen, or not being good enough to stay for.
Scared of all the same things I was scared of too.
And I know that I can’t let him feel that way for a single second longer. “I choose you, Jamie. I will always want all of you,” I say, repeating the words he said to me yesterday morning back to him. “I love you. To the moon and back.”