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I wait for him to say more.
“The black beads can mean a lot of different things. For me, they were for grief and mourning,” he pauses, and faces me. “It was time to take it off.”
“And these?”
He smiles. “These I just like.”
I smile back. “Me too.”
“Where are the rings?” I lift D’s hand and stroke along his fingers. He furrows his brow. “Those gaudy championship things you guys all get and never seem to wear.”
He laughs and points towards a drawer in his dresser, clearly not willing to get them for me. Madison doesn’t lift her head from Davey’s hip, but her eyes follow me across the room, her tail thumping softly against the comforter.
The boxes holding the rings aren’t hard to find. As enormous as the rings are, the boxes are even bigger. I pull them out of the drawer, and something else catches my eye. A tie. A very plain tie. Why is there a tie in here? This isn’t where he keeps them. Was it Luke’s? That would be a strange keepsake. It had to belong to someone he cares about. Cares about remembering. But he said there hasn’t been anyone since Luke. No relationship anyway. Jealousy tries to seep into my veins, and I try equally hard to keep it at bay. I pluck the tie out and let it dangle from my fingers. It really isn’t any of my business who it belonged to, but that doesn’t keep me from pulling it out, my curiosity taking over.
Davey is grinning when I turn to face him. Not the expression I expect.
“Recognize that?” He asks.
“What? No, should I?”
Davey chuckles. “I guess that’s part of the night you don’t remember.”
I stare at him, now thoroughly confused.
“It’s yours. You took it off in my car.”
What?
He adds nothing more. He doesn’t need to. It takes me all of five seconds to know what night he is referring to. The one seven years ago. I left my tie in his car, and he kept it. All these years he kept it tucked away in a drawer, a drawer he likely opens regularly. It wasn’t even hidden at the bottom.
“And you didn’t set fire to it when you found it?”
He laughs and shakes his head.
“Why?” I ask. “Why did you keep it?”
He places the newspaper down on his lap and gives me his full attention. “I don’t know. Because it was yours. Because despite all the hatred I thought I felt for you, even then, my feelings for you were complicated. It was a reminder of a night that I couldn’t forget and as the years passed, I realized I didn’t even want to forget it.”
Wow, I think, and look at the tie and then at him.
He smiles and lazily strokes Madison’s ears. “Do you want it back?” He asks, and winks at me.
I laugh, folding it back up and tucking it away in the drawer. “I know where to find it if I need it.”
Almost forgetting the whole reason I even opened the drawer in the first place, I pull the ring boxes out and move to the edge of the bed to look at them. I’ve seen Brady’s from afar, but he never wears his either.
They are so hideous. And, of course, perfect at the same time. The snarling Grizzly logo is at the center of the ring. Diamonds and sapphires find their way into every nook and cranny. The year of the win and Davey’s name are on the sides. I swear it weighs about ten pounds. The series results and the initials of the teams they beat en route to the title are inscribed inside the rings. For the second of the back-to-backs a Stanley Cup is formed out of diamonds with a smaller version of the bear in sapphires on top of it. The details are quite impressive. The number of diamonds and sapphires usually correlates to something significant. Goals scored, or saves, or a key member of the team’s number.
“Do you ever wear them?”
He shakes his head.
“Seems like a function like tonight would be the right occasion,” I add.
“It would. And I did wear them to certain functions right after we got them. But it’s been more than a few years now and it just seems…weird to wear them.”
I slide one of them onto my ring finger and then quickly yank it off.
