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I blinked. Then, I blinked again. “Uh, yeah…I love it.”
“Then that’s all that matters.” Ken relaxed against the back of the bench and took another sip from his almost-empty smoothie, the slurrrrrp sound adding some much-needed levity.
No one had ever flat-out refused to compliment me before. Hans had told me I was beautiful every day of our two-year relationship. Every day that he had bothered to call or come home, that is. My parents had been showering me with praise since I was born. My friends and I were constantly feeding each other’s egos. But, somehow, by not telling me what I wanted to hear, Ken made me feel even more special than if he had.
Just then, Ken shifted in his seat, pulling a vibrating phone out of his pocket.
“Hey, man.” His brow furrowed. “Shit. I don’t know.” Looking at me, he added, “Do you want Brooke to come help?”
Brooke.Nobody called me that, except my professors during roll call on the first day of class.
Placing his fingertips over the speaker, Ken whispered, “Allen came with me. He’s looking at rings, and he needs some help.”
My eyes went wide. “Engagement rings?”
Ken hadn’t even finished nodding before I was up and at ’em, practically running in place as I waited for Ken to point me in the right direction.
“Bales Jewelers,” he whispered, flicking his chin in the direction of the mall entrance.
No more than thirty seconds later, I was tackle-hugging Allen as Ken hovered near the entrance of Bales Jewelers.
“What about this one?” Allen tapped on the glass case we were peering into.
“It’s pretty”—I smiled—“but I think it might be platinum.”
“So?”
“So, platinum costs way more than white gold and looks basically the same.”
The saleswoman behind the counter cleared her precious-stone-adorned throat. “Actually, platinum is far more durable than gold and never loses its natural white hue.”
“White gold loses its hue?” Allen sounded alarmed as he glanced from the saleswoman to me. “I don’t want it to lose its hue…do I?”
Poor bastard was so clueless.
“It’s fine. If it starts to look yellow, you can bring it in, and they’ll make it look white again.” I lifted my eyes to the woman with the big fake smile and even bigger fake boobs. “Isn’t that right”—I glanced at the name tag clinging to her ample chest for dear life—“Karen?”
Karen’s plastic smile widened. “Yes, ma’am.”
In the South, ma’am is code for bitch.
“Do you know what kind of stone she might like?” I used a very different tone with Allen. The same one you would use on a frightened animal. Or a child.
He looked like he was about to hyperventilate. Ken, who had wandered over to us, looked like he was about to take a nap.
“Uh…square? I think she likes the square ones.”
I smiled sweetly at Karen. “Will you please show us what you have in a princess cut with a white gold band…” I turned back to Allen. “What’s your budget, honey?”
His large eyes got even larger. “Uh…”
“How much do you make a month?”
“Shit. Like, two grand? Maybe?”
I nodded and glanced back at Karen. “Under four thousand dollars, please.”
As Karen began pulling rings out of the case and placing them on a little velvet-lined tray, Allen turned to me with his eyebrows hiked up even higher than the top of his thick glasses.
