Page 47 of Man Hands
The ring inside is beautiful. It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen before. Smooth gold surrounding a simple, frosted orb. It’s not a diamond, which is great because diamonds always look like just glass to me. This globe thing seems luminescent. I love it topieces.
Shit!
I love it. And I want it on my hand now. And maybealways.
“It looks vintage,” I say to cover up my own yearning. It occurs to me that there is no way he found something like this at a jewelry store chain. He removes the ring and slips it onto my left hand. It floats onto my finger. “It fits. Wow,” I say stupidly. Donotcry, I order myself. I refuse to make this any weirder than it already is. “It’s so pretty. It will be, uh, no hardship to wear this for a littlewhile.”
“It’s a moonstone,” he says, “It…” He stops and I wonder what he’s going to say next. “It’s not abigdeal.”
“It looks like a big deal,” I whisper. “Like atreasure.”
His big brown eyes soften. “You’re the treasure here.” He leans over and kisses my forehead. “Anyway, we have a flight tocatch.”
I look at the ring, and I’m sort of bursting inside. I want to ask him where he found it, but I can tell he doesn’t want to talk about it. And this is the perfect ring. It’s some. And I can’t even say so. I can’t tell Tom how much I love it, because it’s never going tobemine.
And neitherishe.
Tom takes my hand in his. He admires the ring on my finger. I feel the weight of his gaze, but his expression is completely unreadable. Then he curves his hand over mine, and the ring disappears from view. “Thank you,” he says quietly. “Now let’s go toNewYork.”
27FlyingHigh
Tom
Usually,I fly to New York in business class. It’s only a couple of hours to get there. There’s a little more legroom in business than in coach, and a guy like me can use that, and it’s a little less pretentious than first class. I’ve never been a suit-and-tie kind of man. I’m a dusty jeans and T-shirtdude.
But today, with Brynn, I’ve sprung for the first-class cabin. She seems delighted by this and that makes me…well, delighted too, Iguess.
“Oh, they give you blankets!” she cries as we reach our seats. Then she unfurls one. “Blankets for little, tinypeople!”
“Or an arm,” I say. “I find that one arm always has the vent blowing on it, so it’s really useful for that.” She snuggles in next to me, and I wouldn’t mind if there was a littlelessroom in first class, if you know what I mean. Just one little tug on that bow on the side of her dress and she’d benaked.
I shift in my seat. Feels a little less…roomy in here all of asudden.
When we are buckled in, the flight attendant, Tish, brings us two glasses of champagne. (Easily arranged beforehand by my publicist Becky.) “Congratulations, you two!” Tishdrawls.
Brynn has this big smile on her face that doesn’t quite ring authentic, but it’s okay. We clink glasses and say cheers. “Would you mind…” I say quietly to Brynn once she’s taken a sip of the not-exactly-cheap champagne. It’s harder to ask than I imagined. She looks at me, perplexed. I try again. “Can I, uhm, post a picture? Of your hand?” She still looks confused. “With the, uh, ring on it? So that…you know…followers,” I say, hoping she gets what I mean. This is humiliating. Why did I ever listen to Becky? It’s because of all her fucking exclamation points. These were herinstructions:
Make sure you take a pic! Of her ring! To show you’re engaged!!! But don’t say you’re ENGAGED, obvs, cuz social media will do that for you! Keep theMYSTERY!!
Eesh.
I snap the photo of Brynn’s hand holding the glass of champagne, and I caption it “Flying High.” With a filter, that fucking ring practically glows. Oh, it does without thefiltertoo.
Weird.
I hit the little button to post it. Becky says by the time we land, the whole world will know about my engagement. Our engagement. My engagement toBrynn.
Fuck!
Myfakeengagement toBrynn.
Then, out of nowhere, my dick whispers,Fake or not, she’smiiiiiine.
He’s a creepy fuckersometimes.
* * *
Brynn
