Even more vividly, I can imagine Molly Marks laughing at them. Thinking them affected and twee.
I don’t know why I keep thinking about Molly. I haven’t spoken to her since she dropped me off at the airport in LA.
Probably because something about that day hurt. I got on a plane and put on a legal podcast and spent the four and a half hours back to Chicago trying not to remember the way her face crumpled when I said I’d met someone.
The way I’d wished, just for a moment, that it hadn’t been true.
“Do you want to see anything here?” Kevin asks me.
“I don’t know,” I say. “It all seems a bit…”
“Precious?” he supplies.
“Yes!”
“I agree—this doesn’t feel in keeping with the way you’ve described Sarah.”
We leave the store, and I feel like I can breathe again.
“Listen,” I say. “I think maybe we should go to Tiffany.”
Kevin looks at me like I have stabbed him in the heart.
“A lot of her friends have rings from there,” I say before he can object, “and I know she likes them, and I just want to get her something she likes.”
“Sounds like the right move,” Jon says. He turns to the street and flags down a taxi. “Tiffany, on Fifth Avenue,” he says firmly to the driver.
“Maybe afterward we can have tea at the Plaza,” Kevin grumbles, squeezing in next to me. “Take a carriage ride through Central Park.”
“Sarah would love tea at the Plaza,” I say, trying to explain who she is. “And carriage rides in Central Park. And going to the top of the Empire State Building. She’s not cool. And I love that about her.”
Jon pats my knee. “You don’t have to apologize.”
“Tiffany is very classic,” Kevin allows grumpily. “I’m being a snob.”
We walk into the store, and I let out a breath. Immediately I know that I’m right, surrounded by all that iconic robin’s-egg blue. Sarah Louise will see the box alone and squeal with delight.
We find a sales associate, and I quickly pick out an oval halo ring with a diamond band in an expensive-but-not-ludicrous price range. I hand over my credit card and receive a bag in return.
Jon and Kevin clap when I hold it up in the air.
I smile, but I feel strangely flat.
I try to corral my thoughts to the appropriate image: Sarah Louise, diamond ring sparkling on her French-manicured hand, crying with joy.
But instead, I keep imagining Molly Marks, seeing the Tiffany blue and rolling her eyes at me. “How creative.”
I’m relieved when Kevin says, “I’m starving. I want a burger.”
“Let’s go to P. J. Clarke’s,” Jon suggests. “It won’t be too busy yet.”
We walk the fifteen minutes to Third Avenue, and I begin to worry about losing my little blue bag filled with thirty-thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds.
“Should I tuck this into my underwear or something?” I muse. “Does New York still have muggers?”
“Here, give it to me,” Jon says. “I’ll put it in my tote.”
I hand it over and feel strangely lighter.
We get to the restaurant, which is already noisy with midtown types speaking over each other at the bar. It reminds me of happy hour at the spots in Chicago near my office, and I feel more like myself. We order beers and I pound mine while waiting for my burger.
“You all right, chief?” Jon asks, eyeing my second glass as it arrives.
“Great!” I say, reflexively.
But even with a buzz I feel glummer than a guy who just bought his girlfriend an engagement ring should.
“What’s Alastair up to?” I ask Jon, to change the subject.
He and Kevin exchange an odd glance.
“I don’t know,” Jon says. “We … broke up.”
“What? When?”
“Just before Christmas.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
