Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [109]
She held the box in one hand and gently opened the domed lid. Inside, nestled against navy blue velvet, lay a small uncut diamond.
“See—it’s a diamond. Uncut. Just the stone. You get to choose everything. The setting, the cut. What color gold you want the band to be…all of that stuff. I thought yellow, but he says everyone is into white gold now. Or platinum. Whatever. That’s the point—you get to go and see him and choose yourself. Impact without risk, the guy in the shop said.”
“It’s beautiful.” It was funny how seeing a diamond that way, like it came out of the mine, and not dressed up in its setting, made you realize how ridiculous it was that they cost so much money. Who decided that the little shiny stones they were digging up should be the most valuable thing on earth?
Andy sat down at the table beside her.
“Thank you. But…”
“Listen to me for a minute, Lisa. I’ve got something to say.”
This was the conversation she’d been dreading since December, when he’d proposed on that one amazing night and it had all seemed so stupidly perfect. And she still, in the end, hadn’t been the one with enough balls to start it.
“I’ve been pretty good. You said you’d marry me in December. That’s two months ago. In that time, you’ve only told your sisters. You haven’t let me tell my daughter—and you haven’t told anyone else. Not Mark, or any of your friends. We haven’t set a date.”
“I know,” she began. He raised his hand to stop her. “I’m not finished.” Lisa looked at her plate.
“I haven’t had a lot of experience in this area, but I know this is not how happy, excited brides behave. An engagement isn’t supposed to be a secret. It’s supposed to be something you want to tell people. It’s supposed to be leading up to a wedding. It’s supposed to be a good thing.”
“Andy…”
“Let me finish, please, Lisa. I need to say these things to you. I love you. Very much. I want to marry you. I thought you wanted that, too. I want to set a date. Soon. Now. But if that’s not what you want, Lisa, you need to tell me now. It just isn’t fair to keep going along like this.”
He was right. It was horribly, nastily, cruelly unfair. Lisa took a deep breath. She was getting good at these killer opening lines. Must be her year for them.
“I slept with someone else, Andy.”
“You did what?” Why was that everyone’s standard response to something they didn’t want to hear? They made you repeat it.
“I slept with someone else.” It didn’t sound any more palatable the second time around.
“When?”
“Last summer.”
“Who was it?”
“You don’t know him. Just a guy; I met him through work.”
“Just once? Was it a one-off thing?”
“No.” She wished it was. But she couldn’t stop being honest now. “It lasted for about four months.”
“Four months…!” The time frame seemed to throw him more than anything else. It had been about fifty actual times, she supposed. Fifty occasions she had told herself it was okay to cheat on Andy. Fifty individual moments of betrayal.
“I’m sorry.”
Andy didn’t speak for a minute or two. She could see the pain on his face. His eyes were moving rapidly as he went back over the last summer, looking for clues, wondering about specific days, and times.
“Did you love him?”
“No.”
“Why did you do it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t just not know.”
“I don’t know, Andy, I don’t know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
And then the words came. “That’s just bullshit, isn’t it, though, Lisa? That’s just something people say, isn’t it? It’s one of the great meaningless bullshit sayings. Of course you did. You slept with someone else, while we were together. You knew I loved you. You said you loved me. But you shagged somebody else anyway. You knew what you were doing. You sure as hell didn’t mean not to hurt me.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I want you to make me understand why you would do a thing like that.”
“I can’t.”
“Try. Bloody well try, Lisa.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. “Christ. Four months. Four bloody months.” He stood up, his hands white-knuckled on the table. “I don’t know who you are.”
The front door slammed