On the Rocks(86)

“I know how hard it was to remove my engagement ring, so I get it, at least a little bit. But I think it’s a big step. It’s not your fault that this happened, and for what it’s worth, I think you’re being really brave about moving on. A lot of women would have stuck around because they were too afraid to be alone and start over. You should feel good about that. I admire you.”

“He didn’t really leave me much choice. I should’ve taken my rings off the day I found out he was cheating on me.”

I thought back to when Ben had told me that he thought I’d be happy to know the reason for him leaving had nothing to do with another woman. I remembered thinking at the time that it somehow made things worse, that it hurt more knowing I was being left for no real reason at all. Now I realized it didn’t make a difference. Being left behind sucks no matter the reason, although I’d bet knowing it was for your husband’s secretary packs a pretty bitter punch.

“I had no idea your husband cheated on you. If I’d known, I would’ve done something differently. I don’t know what, but something. I’m sorry that whole argument happened.”

“I’m sorry too. I know I went a little crazy. I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that.”

“It’s okay, I think you’ve earned the right to yell a little bit. How’d you find out? Did he tell you?”

“Oh, hell no. He would have continued cheating on me forever if he could. I found a picture she sent him on his phone. She was wearing a leopard bra and nothing else. Not exactly what I thought I’d find when I went to download photos from his birthday party.”

“Then it’s better you found out when you did.”

“He actually blamed me. He said I wasn’t fun anymore, that I never wanted to do anything, that I wasn’t as social as I used to be. Well, forgive me! Living in a strange city with a husband who travels all the time tends to mess with one’s social calendar. I should’ve seen it coming the second he started wearing cologne.”

“I’m sorry, Lara. I really am.”

“What did you do with your engagement ring?” she asked. “Is yours in your underwear drawer too?” Maybe she was wondering if there was some kind of protocol we jilted girls were supposed to follow regarding rings that had been rendered useless.

“I weaponized it.” That was probably not the answer she was expecting.

“What?” she asked, cracking an almost imperceptible smile.

“I threw it at him. Last I saw it, it was on the floor under a table. I shouldn’t have done that, in retrospect. I should have sold it for the cash.”

“I’m not even strong enough to do that,” she said with a shrug. “It feels strange not wearing them, like I just went back in time or something. I’m officially not taken.”

“You’ve been officially not taken since the day you found pictures of another girl in a leopard bra in his phone. The rings are just stupid metal and stones. They don’t mean anything.”

“Yeah, stupid, beautiful, D color, high-quality diamonds set in platinum that I will never wear again. I just can’t believe this is how it ended. When he proposed, I thought he worshiped me. Everything was perfect. I thought things would stay that way forever.”

“Funny, my first clue that something wasn’t right was the way Ben proposed.”

“What do you mean? How did he screw up your proposal?” she asked.

“Well, it’s not that he screwed it up so much as he didn’t do it in a way that I would’ve really expected. It was so . . . not me. I mean, come on, how much thought goes into hiding a ring in a soufflé at a fancy restaurant? It just wasn’t me.”

“That’s awkward, especially if you don’t really like attention.”

“I don’t! Even worse, I detest soufflés.”

Lara laughed so hard that tea came out her nose. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to laugh.”

“Nah, it’s okay. So I should’ve known something was off. But you choose to ignore a multitude of sins when someone’s about to slip a ring on your finger. Even if you do have to brush chocolate sludge off it before you can actually put it on.”

“Makes one hell of a story, though.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a lot of stories, that’s for sure. You know what I think is crazy?”

“Trusting that my husband was actually working late with his twenty-two-year-old assistant while I was home ironing his shirts?”

“Okay, maybe in retrospect you could have used that iron to burn every shirt he owned to cinders, but no, that’s not what I was going to say.”

“What then?” she asked, turning her glassy, dazed eyes to look at me.

“That you can know the entire pedigree of a ring you wear, and yet know nothing about the guy giving it to you. If you ask me, guys should come with authenticity papers, like diamonds.”

“Interesting idea,” Lara said. “If my husband was as high-quality as my ring, I wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“Think of all the stress you could’ve saved yourself if you’d known that. VS1: very screwed up. VVS1, very very screwed up. If the guy gets a grade of A to C, you know he’s a guy you want. D to F is acceptable, but not without concerns, and anything below F is run for your life before he rips you apart like the sales rack at Saks. I think this is genius.”