Page 8 of The Trust We Broke
“But we were engaged,” Henry says suddenly.
“To me or her?” I ask. “Both? Wait, no. I don’t want the answer to that.”
“You. Obviously. I bought you that ring because it was the one in the window of Cartier that you said you loved when we walked to Jono and Lera’s wedding breakfast in the summer.”
A solitaire, surrounded with pavé diamonds, with more diamonds on the band. It was beautiful, my only observation, but it was way too big for my narrow fingers. I left it on the kitchen counter.
I think about the small chips of tiny diamonds Grudge spent his money on. He’d been saving to upgrade his motorcycle. But he’d seen the ring on the way to meet his mom somewhere and simply told me he loved how we were entwined forever.
Entwined.
Such a beautiful word.
So, he’d blown all his money on a symbol that was still the most precious thing I owned.
“Are you still there, Lucy?”
“I have no idea why I still am. Goodbye, Henry.”
“Wait, I?—”
As I hang up the phone, I think about how my mother had called late that evening. I had been tucked up in bed in a nice hotel I knew, still reeling from Henry’s betrayal, eating a room service ice cream sundae, when she told me about my father’s heart attack and stroke.
The following morning I’d been on an airplane back here. Again.
This time, my father had been unable to voice an opinion on my reappearance.
“Asshole,” I mutter, but I turn back to the truck and throw my stuff in it.
A day like today requires even more ice cream. Chocolate, maybe. Chopped nuts and sprinkles and fudge sauce. Maraschino cherries. Some marshmallows. Maybe banana slices.
It takes me fifteen minutes to drive back into town to the grocery store. I haven’t been back home very often since the day I left for college, but as I pull up in the small parking lot,memories overwhelm me. Of Zach…of Grudge and I buying local corn for barbecues, or making late-night runs for snacks on the back of his bike.
I throw my bag over my shoulder and grab a basket from the store entry. Much like the town, nothing about the store has changed. Produce to my right, bakery to my left. I navigate to the bananas and throw them in my basket.
My parents likely have some at home, but I’m not taking any chances. I wander past the cooler and pick up some squirty cream that is likely a chemical cocktail, health washed as real cream, but in times like this, when my mind is sour, I don’t care.
It’s late, and the store is quiet. All I can hear is elevator music and the click of my heels on the industrial white-and-gray tile. I scan the shelves and see the maraschino cherries on the top shelf.
Most days, I don’t mind the fact I’m only five foot two inches tall. In heels, I can push myself to a much more sensible five foot five or six, even. But that isn’t going to help my reach. I put the basket and my purse down on the ground and stretch, first with my left, and then with my right hand. I’m not sure why I think I’m able to stretch farther with one than the other.
“Shit,” I mutter when I step away to rethink how I’m going to reach them, and see the waffle cones are on the top shelf on the other side of the aisle.
I crick my neck from side to side as if I’m about to tackle a boxing title fight. Tentatively, I put the toe of my shoe on the first shelf. I avoid the temptation to jump up because I really don’t want the public humiliation of the shelves collapsing.
So, I gingerly hoist myself up, seeing how much more of my weight it can take, seeing whether the upper shelves will take my holding on to them with a death grip as I do.
There’s the faint groaning of metal. And I gasp when it feels like the shelf I’m holding on to gives a fraction. I close my eyesas I stretch one hand over my head, reaching for the maraschino cherries, and I just have my fingertips on the jar when I’m suddenly no longer on the shelf.
Someone has their arm tightly around my waist.
“You trying to kill yourself, Luce?”
Luce.
No man since has called me that. I’ve stopped every single one of them. When they asked why, I would shoot them down with the explanation that I hated it. I blamed my father, that it was a childhood nickname, one I wanted to leave in the past.
No one ever asked any further questions.
