Beach Glass (2 page)

Everyone says, “To Katy.” At least, I think they do. All I can hear is the word
girlfriend.

HOURS LATER, I am a combination of slightly drunk and really, really full. I ate two pieces of birthday cake, carefully pressing each bite into the roof of my mouth as I scanned for baked-in jewelry. I let this go after Daniel looked at me strangely and asked, “Do your teeth hurt or something?” After that, I shoveled cake in with dejected abandon.

Now, back at my apartment, Daniel comes up behind me, takes my coat off, and starts massaging my shoulders. “Wow, birthday girl, you’re really tense,” he says.

“I’m happy-tense,” I answer, glancing at the clock. Less than two hours left.

“Can I make you a little happier and less tense?” he says.

His full, soft lips touch my neck. Instantly, my shoulders relax. I love making love with Daniel. After five years together, we know each other so well, but maybe because we don’t live together and see each other every day, sex is still really exciting. I’m sure it’ll be even more exciting when we’re engaged and newly married. And, just like what happened to my friends and my sister, the moment things get a little, well, predictable, there will be a baby to shake it all up. I can’t wait to experience that. But now I have to lasso my mind back from my imagined future and return Daniel’s kisses, which are becoming insistent because I’m kind of ignoring him while I fantasize about, ironically, him. The husband and father version of him, that is.

Daniel walks me to the bed, a very short walk considering the size of my studio apartment, but as usual, we don’t lie down yet. We have a sweet pre-sex ritual where I stand before him and he slowly undresses me. He loves doing this. It’s part visual stimulation, I’m sure, but the bigger feeling I get from it is nurturing. Somewhere along the way, two pieces of our puzzle fit naturally together; I like being cared for, and he likes taking care of me.

Daniel unzips my peach-hued silk dress, a designer souvenir from my days of working at a fashion magazine before I was laid off. He caresses it off my shoulders, letting it fall to the floor. He unhooks my bra, his maple syrup-colored eyes locked with mine and filled with love. I put my hands on his shoulders for balance as he pulls off my panties. We kiss as he takes off his clothes with a lot less care than he removes mine, and then we’re on my bed, our mouths sensual and slow, our hands hungry but taking their time.

I know how this will feel, how Daniel will kiss me as he holds my body against his, how we’ll touch each other. Somewhere along the way there will be a giggle as one of us makes an intimate joke whose origin we can’t even remember. Our lovemaking is familiar and comforting. I always take that as a sign that our love will withstand time. I know it will. It has to.

Daniel breaks away from me. “Katy
 . . .
oh, my sweetheart, why are you crying?”

I felt it coming, a combination of love and hope that started in my chest and rose up. The hope is the part that hurts. I hate that I have to hope. “It’s just,” I sniffle, “I love you, Daniel.”

“I love you too, Katy. I love you so much.” He pulls me closer, the two of us becoming one.

“DID YOU HAVE a nice birthday?” Daniel asks.

I don’t lift my head from his chest, where the beating of his heart drowns out the ticking of my antique Kit-Kat clock, its rhinestone eyes and tail moving back and forth in a way that should be cute but is becoming ominous. Twenty to midnight. “I did,” I tell him, my throat tight.

Daniel kisses the top of my head. “Well, it’s not over yet.”

Fireworks! Suddenly that was the best sex we’ve ever had because it’s the last time we had sex before we got engaged. My tiny apartment is a palace, the kitty clock is a treasure, that garbage truck outside is music. It’s not over yet!

Daniel gently extracts himself from my arms and walks over to his messenger bag in my hallway. I regard his naked form, lean and wiry-muscular, and think he is the cutest he’s ever been. He will only be cuter when he’s wearing a wedding tux. Or maybe a vintage suit—that would go better with his rock n’ roll aesthetic. I’m straining to see what he’s holding, but he quickly puts it behind his back. “No way, close your eyes!” he says.

I do, and my teeth ache from grinning. Oh me of little faith. How could I have doubted my Daniel, my sweet boyfriend, my moments-away fiancé? He is going to propose. He is going to marry me. And I will love him ’til the day I die, which might be only seconds away because I may combust from joy.

I feel Daniel sit back on my bed. “No peeking,” he admonishes. “Hold out your hands.”

Uh, shouldn’t he be taking one of my hands? Like, the left one, which I was already holding out? I should cut him some slack. It’s his first proposal. In fact, this is the first big, long-term relationship for both of us. The way he’s doing this only makes the story cuter.

I hold out both my hands. My face hurts from squinting my eyes shut tightly and smiling so wide. Then Daniel places something in my palms and says, “Happy birthday, Katy.”

My heart thuds, I open my eyes, and—it’s a jewelry box!

It’s
 . . .
kind of a large jewelry box. Not huge, but definitely more velvet-covered real estate than an engagement ring would need. Confused, I keep my happy face on as I open the lid. The look crashes and burns when I see what’s inside.

A watch.

Tiny diamonds wink mockingly at me from each number on the mother-of-pearl face that tells me it’s ten minutes to midnight. It’s a beautiful watch, probably expensive, and definitely the worst gift Daniel could possibly have given me. It’s so mind-numbingly wrong I can barely wrap my brain around it: The man I want to marry has given a watch to me, a woman who feels like her marriage-and-baby clock is ticking.

Ding.
Time’s up.

Daniel’s looking at me with a big schmoopie smile, waiting for approval like a loyal dog that’s just performed an excellent trick. And I could still perform the trick I’ve perfected over the years, which is quietly accepting everything, even though I want more. I can squeal
It’s gorgeous!
put it on, make love with him again. And wait until tomorrow morning, after he leaves to go back to his apartment, to cry.

“Well? What do you think?” He’s still beaming at me.

“Daniel,” I sigh, “I don’t know what to say.”

“Do you like it?”

“It’s
 . . .
it’s beautiful.”

But when I close the box, he looks at me with confusion. “Katy, what’s the matter? Is something wrong?”

The truth and I are not friends. We haven’t been on speaking terms for years, not since the time I said something honest and horrible to someone I loved more than anyone in the world. Once it was out I couldn’t take it back, and one day it was too late to try. But the truth, having been repressed for too long, comes flying out of my mouth. “I was hoping for an engagement ring.”

“An engagement ring?” Daniel repeats.

He says it like this is so totally shocking that I get angry fast. “Yes, an
engagement
ring
,” I repeat. “As in, you asking me to marry you and me jumping up and down and saying ‘Yes! Yes, of course I’ll marry you, Daniel North!’ As in us having kids and spending the rest of our lives together.”

Part of me hears this as though I’m standing across the room, and if I were, I’d be frantically mouthing
Katy, no! Stop talking, you’ll ruin everything again!
But the words are out, and I can’t put them back.

There is a pause that makes me sick to my stomach, still too full of birthday tiramisu and nerves. Then Daniel looks away from me, his hair falling like a curtain to shield his eyes. “Jeez, I’m sorry I didn’t get the script. I thought the party and the cake and the champagne and the love and all that was going to be acceptable. If I’d known—”

“If you’d known?” I’m incredulous. “You know how I feel about you!”

“And I thought you knew how I feel about you,” he shoots back before climbing off my bed. He grabs his grey boxer briefs off the floor and puts them on hastily. “Katy, where is this coming from all of a sudden?”

“Five years together isn’t all of a sudden.” I gather up the sheet in front of me because I feel more than naked. I feel bare, like I’m peeling my own skin off.

“Five amazing years,” Daniel counters, “five years of me thinking everything’s the best it could ever be! You never said anything about wanting to get married, Katy.”

“I shouldn’t have had to.” I can’t look at him because this sounds weak, even to me. “I just thought it would happen.”

He blinks at me. “After everything I’ve told you about my parents’ horrible marriage and their even worse divorce. Years of them arguing, my college fund freakin’ devoured by their lawyers’ fees, them tossing me back and forth across the country with every custody battle. Katy, you knew all of that, and you still figured I’d be up for marriage and kids?”

“Well, why not? My parents divorced, and I’m up for a do-over.”

Daniel is slowly shaking his head. “You didn’t go through what I did. And I told you I’d never put a kid through that either.” He starts picking his clothes up off the floor and putting them on haphazardly.

I climb off the bed, itchy from the desperation that’s starting to crawl all over me. I shouldn’t have told him the truth, or I should have found a way to ease into the subject. Now everything’s spinning out of control too fast. I hold the sheet around my body, lifting it to keep from tripping on it. The white fabric billows around me, a little girl’s make-believe wedding dress. “Daniel, we can do better. We’re not your parents or mine.”

He won’t look at me. “Right. Your parents may not have been playing Death By Divorce like my folks with me as the chew-toy in the middle, but your mom hated your dad for years and years after he left you.”

I swallow the sting of the words
He left you.
Daniel looks immediately repentant, knowing how talk of my father’s departure hurts. “Katy, I’d never leave you that way. You know that. This is the best relationship I’ve ever had. We’re amazing together.”

“We’re not really together,” I say carefully, “And it’s the
only
relationship you’ve ever had.”

“That’s another thing,” Daniel says, a pleading tone in his voice. “This is my first serious relationship. And the only one I ever want to be in,” he adds, his eyes going all buttery at me. “But Katy, I can’t picture getting married and becoming a dad now. I’m only twenty-seven.”

I hardly felt the three years of difference in our ages when Daniel and I met, him a sweet twenty-two, me a not-exactly-worldly twenty-five. But now, at thirty, I feel like I’m looking at him from across an ocean. Was I ready to settle down at his age?

I know the answer in my bones. “Daniel, I want to start a family. You know how long it took my mother to have me and my sister to have Celia. And that was with help.”

“There’s no guarantee you’d have trouble getting pregnant,” he mumbles nervously.

“I will if you’re putting off having kids or don’t want them at all.” I stop when he clutches his head, looking like I’m battering him. “Daniel,” I say, trying to find words that aren’t sharp, that won’t harm either of us. “I love you. I want to be with you.”

“And I want to be with you,” he says, framing my face with his hands. “Always, Katy. Always.” He leans forward to kiss me.

Before he can, I say it. “Then let’s get married.”

Daniel stops. I can feel his defeated exhalation on my chest. His hands slowly fall away from my face, and he takes a step away, looking at me like he doesn’t know me, and I have to say I don’t know this truth-spitting woman too well either. He finds his T-shirt and pulls it on. “Katy, let me make sure I understand you now, because apparently I’ve been a total freakin’ idiot for the past five years.”