had literally been sewn onto my body hours before. The feel of his hand sliding between my legs as the tenor’s voice rose.
Oh, yes, I remembered. I’d never forget any part of that.
“Fucking freeloader,” Calvin sputtered.
Caitlyn flashed her blue eyes at me, then turned to Calvin. I mentally begged her not to say anything.
She turned to Calvin. “My, that is devious of him.”
“Yes,” I said a little too loudly, more for Calvin’s benefit than for Caitlyn’s. “It was. He’s perfectly awful.”
“He’s a crooked, conniving little fucker,” Calvin agreed. “And he has no idea what’s coming to him. No. Idea.”
The sudden violence that rippled through my body caught me by surprise. I wanted to ask what in God’s name he meant by that. I wanted to demand he take it back or suffer the consequences. More than that, I wanted to reach across the table, grab my husband’s tie, and strangle him with it. All that at even the hint of a threat toward Matthew.
Good lord. Who had I become?
“Anyway, let’s not let one bad apple spoil the dinner,” Calvin said. “Happy anniversary, princess.”
He slapped a familiar blue box on the table in front of me. I put down my fork.
“Ooh, Tiffany’s!” Caitlyn crooned. “Aren’t you lucky, N!”
I smiled grimly, still trying to swallow back my rage as I picked up the box. “This is a surprise.”
“Ten years. Thought I needed to do a little something, even if you didn’t. I never even bought you a real engagement ring. You got that ugly thing yourself, remember?”
Caitlyn snorted. “It does look like something we would have picked out when we were twenty, doesn’t it, N?”
I examined the enormous pear-shaped diamond on my left hand. Well, they were right about something. The engagement ring I had worn almost continuously for ten years was legitimately hideous. I had hated it when I was twenty, and I hated it now, and not just because everything it represented was a lie. The only reason I had even purchased it was to protect the pride of the man sitting next to me. Calvin had insisted I had to wear something, and unbeknownst to me, he was broke at the time. But when we had walked into Tiffany’s that day and I had pointed at a much smaller, plainer stone that would be more realistic for a man of his means to supposedly give me, he simply shook his head and found this one instead.
I won’t be embarrassed, princess. Not by you. Not by anyone.
“Open it,” Calvin said. “Come on. It’s an upgrade, I promise. No one will laugh at us now.”
Were they laughing before? I wanted to ask. Whispering, maybe. But Calvin had always imagined so much more.
Conscious of my audience, I slowly pulled off the white ribbon, then removed the ring box and opened it.
It was awful. A strobe light. A very, very pink one. I removed a ring bearing a massive, carnation-colored diamond encircled with not one but three wreaths of tiny white diamonds, all nestled in a setting of flashy yellow gold. It was the jewelry equivalent of Studio 54. And not in a good way.
“Oh…my,” Caitlyn said, quickly recovering the flash of revulsion that crossed her face
“The guy at the store said it was a princess cut,” Calvin said proudly. “It was the most expensive one they had. A princess for the princess. So…how about it?”
I looked up, dumbfounded. “How about what?”
“You. Me. Vow renewal. This September. It’s been ten years, princess, so I figure it’s time to have the wedding we never got. A big horse and pony show at St. John’s or maybe St. Patrick’s. We’ll get you the biggest dress with the longest train or whatever, and really show New York who we are. No one will ever laugh at us again after that. And besides, a little good PR won’t hurt with all this trial bullshit going down.”
I stared at the ring with a different kind of horror. He wanted another wedding? In front of the entire city? Eric and Jane had done the same thing less than a year ago. Was he jealous of the attention? Did he not see how ridiculously tacky it would be to have a similar affair for a marriage that had already taken place? Not to mention that the idea of saying vows again to this man literally made me nauseous.
But before I could find a way to say anything else, another thought crossed my mind.
“You bought the most expensive ring at Tiffany’s?”