Page 39 of This Might Hurt
Andrew sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Anything that doesn’t look like garbage. It doesn’t matter at all.”
“I guess.” He’s right, but it doesn’t feel great. Even if the marriage only lasts a week, I don’t want to do a shitty job of it.
“Hi there, sirs.” A middle-aged woman wearing a lot of turquoise and a flowy dress emerges through a beaded curtain and gives me a skeptical look. “What are you looking for today?”
When I glance over my shoulder, Andrew has somehow teleported to the other side of the room and is pretending to be absorbed in a long, lit-up case of jewelry. He’s such a fucking dick. “A wedding ring,” I admit.
“Congratulations!” She perks up. “Does she have an engagement ring that we want to match, or are you looking for both?”
“I’m not, uh—” Damn, she already has a velvet-lined tray of women’s diamond rings out on the counter and dollar signs in her eyes.
I edge closer and pretend to listen to her spiel while I study the men’s wedding rings half-hidden behind her tray.
They’re all flat silver bands that look about as heartlessly generic as Andrew could hope for.
I wait for her to take a breath, so I can call him over to look.
Andrew clears his throat loudly from the other end of the room, under a sign that says Estate Jewelry, and we both stop to stare at him. He taps the case by his hip and raises his eyebrows at me with a bossy tilt of his head.
When I come over, he pokes the glass again, pointing at a row of gold rings.
They’re old-fashioned and elegant, flat on the inside and rounded on the outside, and instead of shining they have this glowy patina of wear and polish like an antique.
Puzzled, I lift my eyes to his. His mouth is pinched in a flat line, like he’s trying to block me from reading his face. “You like these?”
He shrugs. “My rule is: if you can’t buy the best of something, go with quality vintage if you want it to last.”
When I stare at him, he realizes what he said and makes a face like he bit into something nasty. “You want them to last?”
“No. I was sharing a general principle.”
“Fine.” I study them again, the perfectly worn edges like they’ve traveled a long way to get here. “But you want these specific ones?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he snaps, flushing a little. “Yes. Whatever. Figure out your size and see if they have it.”
“I like them too.”
He looks vaguely tortured. Digging out his wallet, he slaps it on the counter, then grabs my phone out of my shorts pocket. “Tell her my size; I don’t need to be fitted. I’m waiting outside.”
The owner looks pretty confused when she realizes why I’m actually here, but she pivots smoothly and works on helping me find the two that fit our sizes closest. She slides a few on and off my finger using hand sanitizer like lube, which is hard not to laugh at.
I watch the back of Andrew’s head through the large front window as I pay. He’s plastered up against it to hide from the rain. “When’s the wedding?” the lady asks as she rings me up, smiling when she catches me staring at him.
“Oh, it was like an hour ago.” I shrug, trying not to gag at the price on the screen. “At the courthouse.”
“Congratulations. Didn’t you kind of do this backwards, though?”
“Yeah.” I watch her put the rings in velvet boxes and place them in a fancy little gift bag. “I don’t even know if he likes me yet.”
She almost drops the bag, then stares at me like she’s searching for the part of me that’s kidding. Collecting it, I thank her and push out into the rain that’s slowly starting to let up. Andrew lowers my phone when I hold the bag in his field of vision. “Here you go, princess.”
“Don’t you dare call me that.” Leaving me holding the bag, he shows me the phone screen, open to a map with a three hour driving time. “Take me here. I want to sleep near the airport so we can leave early tomorrow.”
“Do we need a hotel?” I prop my shoulder next to his.
“I can’t find any that don’t look like they’d harvest my skin to make lampshades.
” I’m sure they’re all perfectly nice by anyone’s standards that aren’t his.
I wonder what he’d say if I showed him some of the benches and underpasses I’ve used to pass the night.
“The thing is…” He shifts his weight uneasily.
“My family has a property very near the airport. I don’t really want to go there, but it would be the easiest.”
There’s some goofy internet meme about everyone having two wolves inside them who want opposite things.
Right now, I really do. One wolf wants to drag him by the back of his neck as far from his family as we can possibly get, stash him in a cave somewhere, lie on top of him in the deepest, darkest corner.
The other one wants to go prowl around their creepy mansion and piss on everything.
I probably shouldn’t be the one making this decision.
Pulling out the key fob, I gesture toward the car. “I’ll start driving, and you can have three hours to think about it.”