I had cried. I had said yes immediately. To me, that smooth band of warm gold was infinitely more valuable than a rock dug out of the earth. It held a legacy of enduring love.
But I knew Claire wouldn’t see it that way.
At our official engagement dinner, hosted by our parents at an upscale Italian bistro downtown, it took Claire exactly eleven minutes to start wielding her knives.
She sat across from me, sipping her Pinot Noir, looking immaculate in a designer cocktail dress. She reached across the table and lightly grasped my left hand, pulling it toward the center of the table under the harsh, modern pendant lighting.
The corners of her perfectly painted lips curled into that familiar, deadly smile.
“Oh,” Claire drawled, her voice loud enough for the tables next to us to hear. She let the syllable hang in the air, thick with manufactured disappointment. “It’s… gold?”
I felt the familiar heat rise in my cheeks. I nodded, forcing a tight, polite smile. “Yes. It is.”
Claire tilted her head, her eyes darting over to Ethan, who was calmly cutting his steak. She looked at him with a mixture of pity and severe judgment.
“Well,” Claire sighed, releasing my hand as if the ring had burned her. “It’s certainly very… vintage. Very quaint. I just always thought that a man who truly, deeply adored his fiancée would want to show the world how much he valued her. You know, give her at least a two-carat diamond. Something that says ‘she’s worth it.’ But of course, Hannah, as long as you’re happy with… this, that’s what really counts.”
I glanced at my parents. My mother immediately picked up her menu, pretending to be deeply engrossed in the dessert options. My father took a long, slow sip of his water, his eyes fixed on the tablecloth.
