Panic. Absolute sheer panic fires through his entire being. What . . . how . . . shit . . . what the hell is he doing – but his mouth is still running way ahead of his brain and there is no stopping it now.
“No! Yes, I mean . . . not actually engaged. We should just tell everyone we are. Teach them a damn lesson.”
A squeaky sort of laugh escapes from her throat. “They’d lose their minds. Just spring it on them, like, ‘Hey guys, I’m getting married and you don’t even know the guy.’ Absolute nuclear meltdown. It’d be hilarious.”
She leaps up from the chair and nearly trips over the shoes she kicked off just a couple of minutes ago, somehow clumsier in her bare feet than in heels. Catching herself before she topples over, she starts pacing back and forth. Drunk Bianca he didn’t recognize, but this one he does; it’s exactly what happens when she’s working through a tough passage in her research, connecting the pieces in her head, letting that brilliance that’s stunned him every day for the last five years work its magic until finally she’s arrived at the perfect solution.
And when she stops directly in front of him and her eyes sparkle down at his and a slow smile starts to tug at her lips, Xavier feels a tiny sliver of impossible hope start to form in his chest.
“It would serve them right for not showing up tonight, like, ‘Sorry you missed my engagement because you thought it wasn’t important enough to celebrate the actual biggest moment of my life.’ ”
She’s pacing again.
“So let’s do it,” he says, warming to the idea, the beginnings of a plan forming in his head. “I have a ring.”
That stops her dead in her tracks. “You randomly have an engagement ring?”
“I carry it around in my pocket just in case.” She sends him a mildly unimpressed glare. “No, not on me, but at my place. It was my mom’s from when she married my dad. When they got divorced, she kept it, and then she left it to me when she passed away.”
Her mouth drops open again, eyes wide and unblinking. He’s not sure he’s ever seen her like this, back-footed and stunned. She’s always so sure of herself and capable. The change has him reeling, which is the only explanation for the absolute crazy talk he’s been spewing for the last few minutes.
Finally, she seems to collect herself. “Xavier, that’s . . . no, that’s your mom’s ring, it wouldn’t be right.”
He should feel relieved. She’s giving him an out and he should take it. But instead he’s just disappointed. He wants to do this. For her, obviously. No other reason.
“I mean we could just buy a crappy fake one.”
Oh, so she didn’t mean . . . She was just worried about the ring.
He shrugs. “It’ll add some authenticity to the whole thing. Besides, it’s just a ring, and since I don’t plan on ever actually getting married, it’s just going to rot away in its box.”
“You don’t plan on getting married?”
Huh, well, maybe he’s a little drunker than he realized because apparently he’s just saying shit to her now, things he never even admitted fully to himself.
“Who’d want me?”
It’s half a joke, but barely half. He’d seen enough misery in his parents’ marriage, or at least the fallout of it. That’s not something he’s interested in inflicting on himself or anyone else.
“Uh, have you looked at yourself recently?” she asks, and that burrito hasn’t soaked up all of that tequila yet because in the five years he’s known her, she’s never, ever commented on his looks. “Half the undergrads we teach take Archaeology 101 just so they can stare at you for a semester.”
He feels like he should be offended, but she said it so sweetly, devoid of any sarcasm, like it’s just a fact.
Xavier knows he’s attractive. He’s known it since he was in elementary school and all the valentines would pile up on hisdesk and some of the girls used to dare each other to kiss him on the cheek at recess. But Bianca always seemed kind of immune to it and sometimes maybe a little bit annoyed by it, as if it was something he could control.
“I don’t mean . . .” He motions at his face. “I mean who’d want my life? Traveling from place to place, working on grants, finishing one job then moving on to the next, never settling. People who want to get married want the opposite of that, right? Besides that, my parents got divorced when I was five; my dad’s been married four times. The Byrnes suck at marriage.”
And they suck at being anything close to resembling a family.
Him included.
“Most people suck at marriage. The divorce rate is fifty percent. Half my friends who got married are already divorced . . . or should be.”
“This is what I’m saying, so the ring isn’t a big deal. You put it on, take a couple of pictures, post them and let everyone in your life freak out like they deserve for blowing you off. Let them feel bad about it for a day or two and then be like, psych!”
“Psych! Really?” she asks, falling to the couch beside him, letting her head fall back against the cushions with a sigh, and he shifts around in his seat to look down at her.
“Really,” he says. “What do you think?”
