It was true: the sommelier returned and filled her glass as well as his. It was eerie how deferential everyone was to him—not with the typical smooth, professional politeness of waitstaff, which Kacey knew well, but with hushed honor. Kacey supposed he was a longtime patron and that money did weird things to people, including helping them ignore when a girl was too young. Yet there was no knowing glint in the eye of any other person in the restaurant, no sly smile hastily covered, no twinge of discomfort quickly suppressed. Everyone smiled upon her and him as though nothing were more natural than an eighteen-year-old girl with a (how old was he?) grown man being served a bottle of wine that cost a stupid amount.
Uncomfortable, she said, “You think you’re above the law?”
“I think that certain people get to make their own laws.”
She stared at the full glass.
“Try a sip,” he encouraged. “It’s delicious.”
It was. She had another, and another.
Later, in the parked car, she brought her mouth to his. He went utterly still. His lips did not move beneath hers. His hand rested on the gearshift. He moved away. “I want to wait,” he whispered.
“Because I’m drunk?”
“You’re not drunk,” he said, which was true.
“Yougave me the wine,” she reminded, frustrated, notknowing how to articulate all the ways in which he had paved a path for her to kiss him—to do more, even.
“I don’t want you to feel indebted to me,” he said, which felt like a lie. Why else had he left those hundred-dollar bills by his plate? She was doing what he had clearly requested. In the light cast by the streetlamp, it was impossible to see the color of his eyes, their expression. He said, “I want to wait for you.”
“You don’t even know me.” She suddenly felt trapped, realizing, even though she had chosen to come—hadwantedto come—that she was entirely in his power. The car doors were shut, the roof closed. He could keep her in this car. Or he could leave her and drive off, letting her figure out how to get back upstate. Was there a bus from Port Authority? Should she call her mother?
If she called her mother, would her mother come rescue her? Would she even answer, or would she just glance in defeat at the incoming call, close her eyes, and let it go to voice mail?
He said, “I feel like I’ve known you forever.”
He drove her safely home.
Then came the ring.
“Holy moly,” Rosanna said. “That diamond is as big as my eye. As big as my head!”
“Don’t you think it’s strange?”
“It’s like a lake landed on your finger! I can’t stop staring.”
Kacey knew that. No one could. Evenshecouldn’t stop. “That’s what I’m saying. Isn’t it strange that some rich, hot, older guy dates me for a month and then proposes?”
“It’sincredible. Kacey, you deserve this. You’re like, I don’t know... like Belle fromBeauty and the Beast. Studious. But so pretty. Such a hard worker. And you’ve got a good heart. I know things haven’t been easy. But here he is, whisking you off your feet.”
Kacey didn’t understand how everyone around her could be happier than she was.
Rosanna flapped an impatient hand. “You just can’t believe your luck.”
Kacey looked at the pear-shaped diamond. It was an old-fashioned cut, he said, because it had been in his family for generations. The diamond shone back at her with its watery gaze.
As big as my eye, Rosanna had said. A feeling crept over Kacey’s skin. She had the idea that the diamondwasan eye, hard and glittering, and that any minute, it might blink.
“Youdidsay yes,” Rosanna said. “Didn’t you?”
The funny thing was, Kacey couldn’t remember how he asked her, just the ring sliding onto her finger, shining with a jewel that wouldn’t take no for an answer.
The ring captivated even her mother. It woke her from her stupor. “Kacey,” she breathed, and Kacey hoped that she would say,Are you sure?orBut I haven’t even met him. In the quiet that followed, interrupted only by Sam making takeoff noises as he flew a paper airplane around thetiny motel living room, Kacey said, desperately, “Mom.” But when her mother looked up from the ring, Kacey couldn’t find the words to explain her worry, to list all the things she didn’t know about this man. She gripped her mother’s wrist.
Her mother’s eyes cleared. She looked, for a moment, like who she used to be. “Is he good to you?”
“Yes.”
