Page 40 of A Smart Girl's Guide to Second Chances
‘Oh my god, look what’s happening!’ Lucas exclaimed as the second course of our awayday lunch was cleared away. His eyes were lit up, and he was holding his hands up to his face. I turned to follow his gaze across the restaurant.
At a corner table, a man wearing a blazer, almost shaking with nerves, had got down on one knee. A woman, dressed up as if it was a Saturday night, not a Monday afternoon, looked down at him. I guessed that she’d totally expected that this was going to happen today, but now that the moment she’d dreamed of had arrived, she was overwhelmed.
Lucas stood up and started filming them.
‘Should we give them some privacy?’ I asked.
‘Trust me, a girl that wears heels that high for lunch has a strong social media game,’ he whispered, and I smiled. I had no idea if Lucas knew anything about healthcare or pivot tables, but I knew that he would make me laugh if we were stuck together in the office at 2 am – and that wasn’t nothing.
Our whole table looked on. The man finished his speech and then the woman began to furiously nod. He’d asked the question, and it was a yes. The room collectively exhaled, having absorbed the couple’s nerves, and burst into applause. Even Miranda looked a bit dewy-eyed. I saw her whisper to our waiterand knew she’d be sending them a bottle of champagne. Glasses around our table were topped up too, and a lot of people who hadn’t been drinking now said yes. The proposal had created a festive atmosphere around the room. I decided to join in.
I couldn’t help but sneak a glance at Alex. I’d expected cynicism on his face, but he looked wistful, maybe even moved. Had he softened as he’d grown up? Or maybe he was in love with someone – I hadn’t asked him if he was in a relationship. I’d assumed not, because he’d recently moved across the world, but of course he could have been in a long-distance relationship. I made a note to casually drop the question into our next conversation, in a not-weird way.
‘Did your fiancé get down on one knee?’ Lucas asked me, staring at my ring.
I laughed. ‘No, he didn’t,’ I said.
‘So how did it happen? Tell us the story!’
‘We’d been dating for about a year. And one night we were at my place watching a movie together and at the end, as the credits rolled, Matt handed me a ring box and said, “Marry me?” And I said, “Yes.” I opened up the box and inside was a piece of paper.’
‘He proposed with a piece of paper?’ Lucas asked. I couldn’t help but giggle at his very underwhelmed face.
‘Well . . . sort of,’ I said.
People often asked Lily whether, in her professional opinion, it was better to buy the ring before or after someone proposed.
‘Do you know how I know when a couple are going to make it?’ she’d ask.
‘By how expensive the ring is?’ someone would joke, and she’d ignore them.
‘How?’ they’d ask.
‘It’s got nothing to do with how much a ring costs. It’s not whether they’ve picked out something for a surprise proposal, or if they wait to pick it out together. No... I always know when arelationship is going to last when they want to make the choice that will make their partner the happiest.
‘Some people want to buy the biggest ring they can afford to show off their success. Some want to buy the cheapest thing they can get away with because they think the whole thing is unfair. But the ones who are going to live happily ever after just want their partner to be happy. That’s the beginning and the end of it.’
After Lily had shared her engagement ring theory, some people would be starry-eyed while others would be surreptitiously eyeing off their partner’s hands, running their own motive through Lily’s lens. When I’d opened the ring box Matt had given me, I’d wondered if he’d heard her speech. Because it was the perfect proposal. Inside the box was a piece of paper titledQualities Rebecca Wants in Her Engagement Ringwith a numbered list for me to fill out. Matt had given my list to Lily, and we’d bought a ring from her together.
‘He knows I love lists, so he proposed with one,’ I said. Lucas looked bemused, but Adrian, who I was beginning to suspect was a romantic, looked moved.
Had that only been nine months ago? I’d felt so sure about everything then. But that was before every decision we made about the wedding seemed to blow up in our faces. That was before the curse seemed to linger in the background of conversations.
As I inhaled a mouthful of lunch, I snuck a glance at Alex. He was engrossed in conversation with Miranda, whose face was animated. They’d both stuck to water so were probably in the middle of a razor-sharp deep dive into something off-the-charts complex. I’d forgotten what a good listener Alex was, that he was at his most handsome when he was really absorbed in trying to understand what someone was telling him.
I pulled my focus back to the couple drinking the champagne that had arrived at their table, cheeks flushed, totally in theirown world. They were probably also talking about what their dream wedding would look like. I mourned the naive, hopeful version of myself that I’d been at the start of our engagement.
A few courses later, my suspicion that wildly different flavours didn’t complement each other had been confirmed. But alcohol and a corporate AMEXdidgo together. The team had very much bonded at the hands of the bottles of local wine, which had been flowing since the proposal. Most people were flying. I feared for Fiona’s afternoon session.
‘Are you okay?’ Adrian, who I guessed missed absolutely nothing, asked me. Had I got carried away and had a glass too many?
‘You’ve gone a bit... blotchy,’ he said carefully.
As I put my hands on my cheeks, I realised that I didn’t feel very well. I felt hot, and my mouth was tingly. I looked down at my plate and realised what I’d done. While I’d been distracted, surreptitiously watching Miranda and Alex, I’d loaded my plate with food from the communal platter, ignoring the special one that had been put in front of me.
‘Shit,’ I said, my heart beginning to pound. ‘I think I’m having an allergic reaction.’
Chapter 20
