I smile and stand, touching a finger to her tiny ballet shoe.
Bringing her in had been a whim, a rare nod to sentimentality, and it’s an impulse I’m regretting. How could I have left her in the conference room like that?
Carrying her carefully back to my office, I set her in my top desk drawer next to the blue-light-blocking glasses we got as a company gift, which I never wear.
Then I close the desk drawer without a second glance.
See, that ballerina ornament?
Precious, yes.
But also, a painful reminder of all the reasons I came to hate Christmas in the first place.
FOUR
TOM
December 23, 11:20 a.m.
“It’s absolutely stunning.”
The saleswoman says this with a touch of flirtatiousness that feels misplayed, given it’s her literal job to assist men in getting engaged to other women.
“Seriously,” she continues, touching my sleeve just briefly. “This is the one. She’s going to love it.”
I force a smile and nod because the woman isn’t wrong—Lolo is going to love it. I know because I sent links to three options to her mother and sister, and both had unhesitatingly confirmed this one.
I adjust the knot in my tie, trying not to chafe at how contrived this all feels.
It was, after all, me who asked for input from her family.
It was me who decided to forgo the family heirloom route this time and get Lolo something brand new, something just for her.
So why does this feel so . . . wrong?
I was supposed to get it right this time, fixing all the missteps of my proposal to Katherine.
The ring I tried to slip onto Katherine’s finger was a half size too small and didn’t slip so much as skid on down to just above her knuckle and get stuck. This one? Sized to Lolo’s exact ring measurement, which she oh-so-casually dropped into conversation a few months ago.
And I’m getting the timing right with Lolo as well. The men in my family have a long-honored tradition of proposing on Christmas Eve. Something that didn’t even cross my mind the last time around.
With Katherine, it was all impulse and instinct, and look where that got us.
And really, I should have known better.
I’ve been a planner ever since I asked my parents if I could take the reins on my own birthday party. I presented a color-coded itinerary (thank you, Crayola), right down to specifying that pterodactyls be excluded from the dinosaur theme because they are not, in fact, dinosaurs.
I was five.
But apparently there is a difference between planning a birthday party and planning a proposal because something feels distinctly off about this whole process.
Shouldn’t this whole thing be more . . . spontaneous? Dare I say . . . romantic?
I shake my head. I don’t do spontaneity. Not anymore. And a plan is romantic.
More to the point? I can’t afford this ridiculous flight of whimsy. Not to keep harping on my age, but prematurely gray temples aside, I’m not one of those guys who start referring to the impending forty as “over the hill.” I know what I want out of my life, and wife and kids—a family—are at the very top of my list. Always have been.
And I want those things now. Hell, I wanted them years ago.
I simply can’t afford to get it wrong. Not this time.
I roll my shoulders, trying to ignore the unwelcome memory of last time, when I didn’t get it right. Not with the ring, not with the proposal, certainly not with the woman.
But man, do I remember the buzz of that moment. That breathless anticipation when you’ve just put your heart, your entire future, on the line, when nothing in the entire world matters as much as the next single word that will come out of her mouth.
Yes.
A yes with thorns, as it turned out. That almost unbearable burst of happiness had been followed by what would eventually degrade into the darkest, most frustrating years of my life.
“Christmas proposal?” the woman asks, jarring me back to the present, to this proposal.
“Yeah,” I say, forcing a smile her way. “The men in my family always propose at midnight on Christmas Eve.”
Not always.
“Oh, that is so cool,” she gushes. “So many people think proposals these days have to be lavish and over the top. And those have their place, but there’s something meaningful about the quiet ones, especially when there’s a tradition behind it.”
I can’t help the laugh. “I’m not sure how quiet it will be. My parents and siblings all know my plan, so I’ll be lucky if she can even hear me ask the question over them trying and failing to stay silent.”
“You said family tradition . . . how far back does it go?”
I have to think for a minute. “I’ll be the fifth Walsh man to carry it on, though my brother-in-law asked my sister on Christmas Eve as well, so I guess this will make five Walsh marriages and a Bowman.”
The woman places a hand just below her throat as though overwhelmed. “Best story I’ve heard all day. And that includes a guy who’s planning to do it while skydiving.”
Good God. For his sake, I hope that guy won’t opt to pull out the ring during the skydive because these things are not cheap. I’ve been factoring this into my budget for months now, but seeing just how tiny an object you’re getting for such a whopper of a price tag . . .
The saleswoman seems to sense my hesitation, and even though I’ve already bought the damn thing—this is just the pickup—she moves to close the deal. “Tell me about her. How’d you know she was the one?”
I know who she’s talking about, obviously, but for a horrible split second, my mind goes to someone else entirely, to the first “one.”
I knew the first moment I saw her outside an exclusive restaurant holding up a complete stranger’s leg like he was a horse, using her business card to scrape gum off his shoe. She pointed right at me and ordered me to go find some legume butter—which may be labeled as peanut butter—to help with the process. I fell in love.
“We met at a bar,” I say. “She was there for after-work drinks with her colleagues, I was there with mine. Our two groups were next to each other. We bumped elbows. Started talking . . .”
I trail off.
It’s not the first time I’ve answered that question. It is the first time I’ve realized how lame it sounds.
But the saleswoman knows her craft, and she lets out a happy sigh over my tepid response. “Those are always the best starts. The ones that start out quiet, right smack in the middle of real life, when you don’t realize what’s happening.”
I hope she’s right. She probably is right because I’ve learned the hard way that the other kind of meetings, the ones that are anything but quiet and where you think you know exactly what’s happening . . . those leave a mark. When they start and when they end.
But if you’re lucky, very, very lucky, you find someone who can smooth over the edges of your mistake, someone who will wait for the memories and pain to fade.
I’m very, very lucky.
I’m claiming my do-over. My second chance.