Kate had a favorite line. She said it so often our friends used to tease her about it. When she quit her job to start a bakery. When she dyed her hair pink at thirty. When she said yes to me, two years ago, on a dock at her parents’ lake house, with my grandmother’s ring.
“Life’s too short to settle.”
My grandmother wore that ring for sixty-one years. It’s small. A thin gold band with a tiny emerald. Kate said it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
We were supposed to get married in October. In August, we threw a little dinner party at our place. Eight friends. Tacos, margaritas, a playlist Kate made. Around ten o’clock, everyone was crowded into the kitchen the way people always end up in the kitchen.
Kate was leaning against the counter with a drink. Somebody asked how wedding planning was going. And she laughed, a little too loud, and said, “Okay, so, funny story. Ryan proposed on Tuesday.”
Ryan was her ex. They’d dated for four years in their twenties. He’d broken up with her right before I met her.
The kitchen went quiet. Someone laughed nervously, waiting for the punchline.
“And I said yes,” Kate said.
She held up her left hand. She was still wearing my grandmother’s ring.
I thought, honestly, that it was a joke. A weird one. I looked at her face. It wasn’t a joke. She looked almost relieved, like she’d been waiting for a room full of people so she wouldn’t have to say it to me alone.
My best friend, Marcus, put his margarita down very carefully. Somebody’s girlfriend whispered, “Oh my God.”
I didn’t yell. I’m not sure why. I just felt very calm and very cold.
“Pack a bag,” I said. “Tonight. And leave my grandmother’s ring on the counter.”
“Babe, can we talk about this?” she said.
“You just did,” I said. “In front of everyone.”
She cried. She said she hadn’t known how to tell me. She said Ryan had shown up at the bakery on Tuesday with a ring and a speech, and she’d “felt something,” and she’d “panicked” and said yes. She said she thought maybe if she said it out loud with our friends there, it would “feel less real.” She said she was still figuring it out.
“Figure it out somewhere else,” I said.
She took the ring off and set it on the counter next to a bowl of guacamole. Then she went upstairs and packed. Marcus stayed with me until 3 a.m. Nobody said much.
Over the next two weeks, I canceled the venue, the caterer and the band. I lost most of the deposits. I didn’t care. I put my grandmother’s ring back in her old velvet box in my dresser.
Fourteen days later, at eleven o’clock on a Thursday night, Kate called me. She was sobbing.
Ryan, it turned out, had proposed the week after his own girlfriend of two years had left him. He’d wanted, as Kate put it, “a win.” Twelve days after she moved into his apartment, he told her he’d “rushed things” and needed space. He’d asked for his ring back.
“I made the biggest mistake of my life,” she said. “Please. I want to start over. I want to come home. I know you still love me. I still love you. We can still get married in October. Please just let me come home.”
I listened to all of it. I let her finish. I thought about the kitchen. The ring next to the guacamole. Eight people staring at me while she held up her hand.
Then I said the only thing I could think of. Her line.
“Kate,” I said. “Life’s too short to settle.”
There was a long silence. Then she said, very quietly, “That’s not fair.”
“No,” I said. “It isn’t. Goodbye, Kate.”
I hung up.
It’s been a year now. Kate sold the bakery and moved back to her parents’ place. Ryan, I heard, got back together with his ex-girlfriend. Our friends were kind to me in the way people are when they don’t know what to say.
My grandmother’s ring is still in its velvet box. I took it out last week for the first time. I’ve been seeing someone for a few months. Her name is Jess. She’s a nurse, and she’s funny, and she’s never once made me wonder where I stood.
I’m not proposing yet. But I put the box back in my dresser, right at the front, where I’ll see it every morning. My grandmother used to say the ring knew who it belonged to. I think she was right. It just took me a while to find out who it wasn’t.
