She doesn’t get up and pace, doesn’t do anything except look at him. He’s not entirely sure what she’s looking for in his eyes, so he just stares back and lets her consider, until finally, she seems to decide.
“Let’s do it.”
He only lives a few blocks away from her and so he heads out into the night to go and get the ring. Shoving his hand into the pockets of the cargo jacket he threw on when the evening temperature dipped below normal for LA in May, he lets the cool night air do its thing and sober him up a bit.
Five minutes ago this felt like a great idea, like a way to spend just a little more time with the only real connection he’s made in his years in LA.
But with the concrete under his feet and with every stride that carries him further away from her, reality starts to set in.
There’s a reason he pulled away the last few months, and while their dissertations and upcoming defenses were a convenient excuse, really he just needed some space, needed to keep the feelings of respect and admiration and attraction from coalescing into something way stronger than just friendship.
The distance helped . . . a lot.
And now he’s just diving in head first again.
But it’s just to help her out, to get her friends and family to see that flaking on her was a shitty thing to do.
He’s leaving soon, too soon for it to become anything more.
Letting himself into his apartment, he navigates around the boxes stacked in the living room. He’s still got a couple of weeks until he has to move out, but his sublet is up at the end of the academic year and most of his shit is headed to storage while he hopes he can find a few couches to surf on before he leaves for Greece. His mentor, Paolo, has a job waiting for him there, helping in repatriation efforts of some artifacts that have been sitting in museums and private collections for a few hundred years, when they should be back where they belong in their home country.
Bianca’s Greek. At least her last name is, and he’s pretty sure that’s where her long dark curls – that he’s spent more time than he’d like to admit imagining twisting around his fingers or spread out over his pillow – come from. Maybe she’ll appreciate his efforts on behalf of her ancestors.
The ring is exactly where he left it, in a box labeledMiscellaneousthat also holds some of his childhood things thathaven’t left the crate they arrived in since his mom passed away five years ago.
Opening the small velvet box, he studies the ring carefully. He doesn’t have any memories of his mother actually wearing the thing. Can’t even picture it on her finger. It definitely doesn’t look like the sparkling monstrosities he’s seen some women wearing. It’s old, he knows that. His dad bought it in the late eighties, but it’s probably a hundred years older than that. The band is thin and pinkish gold, with a circular diamond, maybe a karat in size or a little more, in the center, surrounded by much smaller diamonds.
Elegant and original.
A lot like the girl he’s going to give it to.
He lifts it from the cushion holding it in place and slides it on to his pinky, but it doesn’t even go past his knuckle. His mom was little too, like Bianca. Hopefully it’ll fit.
Shit.
His mom.
She would not love this idea.
His mom believed in love. She’d loved his dad even though his dad is a complete asshole.
You don’t get to choose who you love.
It’s something she’d always tell him.
He’d read a book back in undergrad where that supposedly happened to the hero. The poor bastard fell in love against his will and then spent the rest of the book trying to figure out how the hell to live without her because she didn’t love him back.
Xavier never really bought into it. He’s a grown man and fully capable of controlling his emotions, no matter how attracted he is.
So, he puts the ring in its box and heads back out into the night, back to Bianca’s apartment. Maybe by the time he gets there, she’ll have changed her mind. Maybe she’ll have soberedup a bit and laugh herself silly when he shows up at her front door with this ring. Maybe she’ll have passed out on her couch and won’t even answer the door.
And despite just how in control he is, that would probably be the best possible thing to happen.
He could go home, pack up the rest of his shit, send her a text to congratulate her one more time and then never see her again aside from the occasional post online. And eventually she’ll end up with another guy. Some guy who’ll take one look at her, with those curves, wild hair and bright sparkling eyes and her brilliant mind and decide not to let her go, and then she’ll post a picture with a different ring on her finger and he’ll try to be happy for her and that will be that.
Jesus Christ, he’s definitely still a little drunk.
He only gets like this, depressed and maudlin, when he mixes alcohol and his fucking feelings.
