I closed my eyes, breathed a sigh of relief into the phone. “Leo. I’m sorry. For the last month, for ignoring you. I need you.”
“I’ll be there in a few.”
True to his word, he arrived at my apartment just when I was on the verge of hysterics. I threw myself into his arms, clinging to him like the savior he was.
“Hey, hey.” Leo pulled me back and looked at me with concern. “What’s wrong?”
I held up my hand with the ring on it, my lips turned down. “This.”
His brown eyes grew as wide as saucers. “Holy shit, Add. You got engaged?”
If I thought this situation couldn’t possibly get more humiliating, I was sorely wrong. “No. This isn’t mine and I need to return it. But it’s stuck!” To illustrate my point, I tried to pull it from my finger but it wouldn’t do anything but twist, almost mockingly so.
“Okay, it’s fine. We’ll get it off.” He placed a hand on my shoulder and squeezed reassuringly.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” I blurted. It wasn’t just because of the ring situation, but until he was in front of me I hadn’t realized just how much I’d missed him. “I’m sorry I’m such a dumbass.”
He smiled his trademark Hollywood smile, the one that could get him anything he wanted. I wished I had such a weapon in my arsenal, to make him forgive me. “It’s okay. You’re still my friend.” He said it in a little kid voice, and I laughed. Just like that, my kissing him and ignoring him was forgotten and we were back to the friends we were supposed to be. Just friends.
He held my hand in his and turned it over. “It’s a little swollen. Did you hit a wall or something?”
I thought of the slap I’d delivered to Nathan’s face. “Or something,” I admitted. “Is that why it won’t come off?”
Nodding, he rubbed at the skin around the band. “Probably. But I saw a video on YouTube, I know just what to do.” He strode into my bathroom, returning with floss. “Do you have olive oil?”
“Hell no. I have vegetable oil. What do you think this is, The Ritz?”
Leo laughed and grabbed the oil from where I’d pointed. When we were both settled on my couch, he started wrapping the floss around my finger, just above the band, all the way to my knuckle. I watched the compression on my skin, the way it turned almost purple.
“Hold this so it stays taut,” he said, pressing the end of the floss in my hand. He poured a little of the oil into a cup and dipped his finger in, rubbing over the top of the floss and around my finger. The floss was wrapped so tightly that when he tried to tug the ring over the floss, it slid a lot more easily up my finger. Encouraged, he wrapped more floss right around my knuckle, squeezing my finger. Within seconds, the ring slid completely off and he quickly unwrapped the floss from my finger.
“You’re a genius,” I praised, rubbing the feeling back into my finger.
He was holding the ring between two fingers, examining it. “What’s the story with this?”
I moved to the kitchen sink to wash the oil from my fingers as I contemplated what to say. I didn’t want to reveal too much, but so much had happened in the time that Leo and I didn’t speak that I couldn’t blow him off.
“I met this guy and we’ve been seeing each other for a while now.”
Leo joined me at the sink. “And what? He proposed?”
I shook my head almost violently. “No. I … I found the ring and tried it on. I don’t even know why. But it belonged to his dead wife.” My stomach clenched at the thought. “And we got into a fight. I left still wearing it.”
Leo nodded thoughtfully as he washed his hands. “I’m surprised he kept it.”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “Well, wouldn’t you bury your wife with her ring? Why would you keep it? Unless it’s a family heirloom.”
Bile shot up my throat. “Fuck, don’t talk so morbidly, please.” But what Leo said had made sense. The setting looked old, the gold a little dull. And I’d run out of his house wearing it.
Really, my humiliation was growing by the minute.
But it was no match for the pain in my heart, the pain that had eased some by Leo’s presence and reassurance. When he left later that night after promising to see me over Thanksgiving break, I only cried for ten minutes instead of all night, like I’d anticipated.
* * *
I slept until noon. It was almost stubborn, as if my body had taken initiative to force me to be either incredibly late for Nathan’s class or to skip it entirely. I opted for the latter, but visited campus ten minutes before class was over, the ring sealed in an envelope, and slipped it under his door. I’d held onto the frame of the door longer than I cared to admit, almost wishing he’d end class early and come find me.