Page 163 of Unconditionally Yours

She’s missing an earring. That won’t do.

I find a pair of heart-shaped diamond studs, delicate, warm-pink sparkle. Not childish. Just soft. Just her.

“I’ll take two pairs,” I say.

The woman behind the counter blinks. “Two?”

“Yeah. She’s got a matching set with me already. Pink diamonds. But this…” I pause. My voice goes quiet without asking permission. “This is one heart for each of us.”

Benji and Jett are suddenly still behind me. Listening. Feeling it settle.

We don’t say anything.

I pick out an anklet next. Slim, rose gold, dotted with soft pink stones. There’s a matching toe ring because my brain is full of her in a sundress with bare feet, licking a popsicle, ruining lives. It’s too much. I buy them both anyway.

Then we raid the candy store.

It’s absolute anarchy.

Benji gets distracted by a wall of artisanal fudge samples. Jett finds a basket and just starts dumping chocolates into it like he’s bulk buying for an army. I find an old-school saltwater taffy mix and grab three. I don’t know if she likes taffy. I want to know. I want her to like it because I picked it.

Jett’s eating truffles straight out of the box before we even get to the counter.

We’re glitter-slick, sugar-dazed, smell like hookers, loaded down with bags, and high on some fucked-up kind of joy when Jett says, casually, “What else?”

I should say, “That’s enough.” I should say, “We’ve already spent a fortune and I think I might be partially covered in edible glitter.”

But Benji just grins and says, “We gotta get holes in our ears.”

And Jett, without missing a beat, goes, “Piercing Pagoda. Let’s go.”

And that’s how I end up, sitting between two men I never thought I’d trust, clutching a tiny bag of her candies in one hand while a teen girl with blue hair and a questionable license shoots a needle through my earlobe. Twice.

We don’t say what this is. But I think we all feel it. The reckless, glittering gravity of her.

And the dangerous, maybe beautiful truth of us.

The girl with the piercing gun gives me a lollipop like I’m five. I take it.

Benji’s grinning like a lunatic as he examines his ear in the mirror. “I look hot. This is my villain arc.”

“You looked hot before,” I say, because it’s objectively true and I’m too sugar-drunk to lie. “Now you look like you steal girlfriends and cry about it.”

He beams. “Delilah’s gonna bite this.”

Jett’s squinting at his own reflection, tugging on his new stud. “This better not get infected. If I go down from mall plague after all this glitter, I’m gonna fuck someone up.”

“I got two holes,” I say, pointing to my ear. “Because apparently I’m a sentimental bitch and I need room for both her diamonds.”

“You got a matching set with her,” Jett says, like that’s the problem.

“Jealousy doesn’t look good on you,” I say.

“Everything looks good on me,” he says.

“True,” Benji cuts in, already walking backward toward the food court. “Ice cream.”

“What?” I ask.