“Yeah, everyone, except a few people from school.”
“Shit, sorry.”
“How is Alec, by the way?”
“He’s okay, I think. No fever, but he just looked so sad and pathetic, I felt like I needed to stay home.” Something inside Bianca softens. Her sister’s son was sick. Of course she was going to stay home with him. That’s just being a parent. “But if I knew you were getting engaged, I would have . . .”
And the anger is back, tenfold.
“What? Tried harder to make it, to celebrate the biggest accomplishment of my life?”
“Bianca, you know that’s not what I meant.”
“It’s exactly what you meant.”
“You’re right. I know you’re right. It was incredibly shitty to bail last night, but now we have two things to celebrate so you have to let me make it up to you. Come over for dinner tonight. Alec’s going to Chris’s parents’ house for the weekend. We cancelebrate and get to know Xavier. Please? Please, please, please, please . . .”
Raising her hands to make her sister stop, Bianca shakes her head, her rage settling and dissipating. She needs to end this now, while she can, before things get out of control. “I need to tell you something first.”
Lexi shakes her head firmly. “Tell me tonight at dinner. I’m gonna get out of your hair so you can, um, celebrate properly with that absolutely gorgeous man. All this time we were so worried about you not finding someone because you were so focused on your career, but it all worked out for the best.”
And the anger is back, again. She passed her dissertation, she has her fucking doctorate, and the only thing her sister cares about is Xavier.
Fuck it.
She can pretend for a little bit longer.
“Let me just talk to Xavier about it before I say yes. He’s still kind of pissed at you all for not showing up last night.”
That part is the truth at least. He’d been as angry about it as she was, so much so he was the one who came up with the whole thing to begin with. She’d forgotten that until just now. The fengagement washisidea.
“Well, maybe if he’d reached out and told us what was going to happen . . .”
“Lex,” she says, all the warning she needs in her voice.
“Okay, okay, just try to convince him?”
“I will.” She nods toward the door, but Lexi hesitates.
“Before I go,” she wiggles her fingers, “can I see the ring?”
Bianca glances down to where she’s staring at her left hand, but it’s ringless.
“Oh, right,” she says, moving back into the bathroom. “I took it off to shower.”
“You took it off?” Lexi asks, following her.
“Yeah, I didn’t want it to catch in my hair.”
Another lie, obviously, but a believable one.
“Well, put it back on, I want to see!”
As soon as the ring is back on her finger, strange and foreign and a little bit heavier than she remembers, Lexi whips out her phone and snaps a picture.
“Wow, you really didn’t know he was gonna ask, did you?”
“How do you know?”
