Chapter 30

Saturday, September 21st, 2013

The flight was painless, just over an hour from wheels up to touch down. I was seated towards the front of the plane. The person next to me was an older woman who ignored me in favor of her romance novel, which was great. I also chose to spend the hour reading, working my way through the first few chapters of the next book that Riley and I were reading together.

I was out of the plane about a minute after we got to the gate, pulling my phone out of my pocket and turning it back on as I walked up the jet bridge. My first order of business was to text Cece and let her know I’d landed, and the next was to call Kevin.

“Hey bro, you landed?” he asked as soon as he answered my call.

“Yeah man, just got off the plane. I didn’t check any bags, so I’ll be outside in a few minutes.” I lengthened my stride, weaving through the crowd of people in the airport terminal. The smells coming from the various restaurants lining the terminal walkway reminded me that I hadn’t eaten lunch yet, but I was sure I could just get Kevin to stop somewhere on the way back to his place.

“Sweet. We’re in Sara’s car. See you soon,” he said before hanging up.

When I made it outside, it didn’t take long for me to spot Kevin standing outside his girlfriend’s blue Honda Civic. His sandy-blonde hair was shorter than he usually kept it. Probably just got a haircut in preparation for tonight, I thought. He looked like he’d been hitting the weights and had filled out a bit in the couple months since I’d last seen him, but not enough for me to stop calling him a scrawny punter.

He met me with arms wide open, and I completed our bro-hug with a couple solid slaps on the back. “Thanks for picking me up, brother.”

“No problem at all. It’s really good to see you again, man.” He stepped back from our hug and gave me a slap on the shoulder. “Shit, dude. You’re looking bigger than you have in years.”

“I could say the same to you.” I gestured up and down at his new physique.

“Out of the way,” Sara said, pushing her boyfriend aside so she could take her turn giving me a hug. I picked her up, causing her to squeal before she gave me a kiss on the cheek.

“Happy early birthday,” I told her as I set her back down.

“Thanks! I’m so glad you could make it. I’m sorry about Cece, though. I was really looking forward to meeting her,” Sara said with a pout. She was a striking girl, about 5’5” with a slender runner’s build and long brown hair that fell down past her shoulders in waves, matching the color of her eyes.

“Yeah, she was too. We’ll find another time to visit, though.”

A horn honked from behind Kevin’s car. “Whoops,” he said, “we should probably get going.” He hurried around to the driver’s seat, while Sara ushered me into the passenger seat before getting into the back. Kevin pulled away from the curb and merged into the outgoing airport traffic.

Sara leaned forward in her seat, bringing her head between me and Kevin. “So, how are you doing? Tell me everything.”

“What do you want to know?” I asked her.

“I just told you, everything! But mostly I want to hear more about this new girlfriend of yours. Is it serious?” Her eyes flashed with unbridled curiosity.

“I think it’s getting pretty serious, but it’s only been about a month. We still have some things to figure out. It’s not like we’re going to be moving in together any time soon.”

“What do you like so much about her?” Sara asked in a sing-song voice, like we were kids on the playground.

“She’s smart, fun, hardworking, generous, caring,” I said, counting out her virtues on my fingers.

“And she’s gorgeous,” Sara added.

“Yes, there is that too,” I said, smiling. “I think we want the same sort of things in life, have similar values. I just really like her.” I paused. “We actually both said ‘I love you’ for the first time yesterday.” Technically the second time for Cece, but Sara didn’t need to know about the first time she’d screamed it out during sex.

“Love! That’s amazing!” Sara squealed in excitement. “I’m so happy for you, Ryan. You deserve nothing but the best.”

“Well, you were already taken, but Cece’s a pretty good consolation prize,” I said, grinning.

“Stop it,” she said, giving me a playful smack on the back of the head, but she smiled at my comment before leaning over to give Kevin a kiss on the cheek. She turned back to me. “This girl must be pretty special if she finally convinced you to get on social media. We’ve been trying forever.”

“She was holding pictures of us together hostage, so I had to give in if I wanted to see them. Plus, she made the point that now that I’m down in San Diego it would be easier to keep up with everything you guys are doing up here if I was on Facebook and all that.”

“Well, whatever the reason, I’m glad you did it. I spent probably an hour stalking your girlfriend’s Facebook and Instagram,” she said, unashamedly. “That girl’s got some serious money, or at least her family does. Nice catch.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“How have you not noticed? Just from looking back at some of her pictures, it’s plain as day that she’s loaded. Her vacations in Europe, the restaurants she eats at, some of those dresses she has are seriously high-end, and so on.”

“I don’t know, I guess I haven’t really seen that part of her. The house she lives in with her dad is pretty modest, and we haven’t really gone out on any super fancy dates. Even if we did, though, I’m not sure I’d be able to tell you anything about her clothes besides the fact that she looks damn good in them. I had an inkling that her family had some money, but it’s really not something she broadcasts.”

“That’s good, I guess. Better that’s she’s down to earth rather than super materialistic and high-maintenance. Maybe all the glam was just part of fitting into whatever crowd she had before she moved to San Diego.”

“Maybe. Honestly, she’s probably one of the lowest-maintenance girls I’ve ever known. It could be because she’s more focused on taking care of her dad right now than anything else.” My stomach gave a small rumble. Turning to Kevin, I asked “Do you mind if we grab some food on the way to your place? I haven’t had lunch yet.”

“No problem, I could go for some food too,” he said. He switched lanes to exit the freeway and drove through a Jack in the Box so we could get something to eat. I ordered a cheeseburger with seasoned curly fries. Kevin and Sara had eaten on the way to the airport, so they didn’t need anything besides a bottle of water for Sara, which I paid for. With my food secured and the car back on the road towards their apartment, I was munching on fries when I realized I had something else I needed to ask them.

“Hey.” I chewed and swallowed to buy myself another second of time. “Do you guys know if Amanda is going to be there tonight?”

“I dunno, man. She was invited.” Kevin made a face. “Sorry, we just told everyone about the party when we were all hanging out.”

“It’s fine, I didn’t expect you to not invite her. I just wanted to know if I needed to mentally prepare myself.” I thought that I’d be fine with seeing her again, but if I was being truly honest with myself I had no idea how it would actually make me feel.

Sara took her phone out. “I haven’t talked to her about it, but I bet Aubrey has. I’ll text her.”

Sara tapped away on her phone for a few minutes while Kevin and I talked baseball. My Padres were a game-and-a-half up on his Giants, though both were well out of playoff contention with just over a week left in the regular season. The Padres would actually finish their season in San Francisco next week. It would have been nice to go see a game together if the schedule had lined up.

“Here,” Sara said, handing me her phone, which was open to her conversation with Aubrey.

“Thanks,” I said, handing the phone back to Sara.

“Are you okay with that?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s fine.” I sighed. “Really. Just good to know ahead of time so I’m not blindsided.”

“I’m sorry, I know it’s awkward.” She gave me a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

“She sent me a friend request on Facebook this morning,” I said.

Sara’s eyes went wide. “Did you accept it?”

“No, it was right before I got on the plane. I just left it alone. Should I?”

Sara tapped her lips with a finger as she thought. “It might be good for her to see your relationship status and your pics with Cece, but it also opens up the opportunity for her to message you. How would Cece feel about that?”

“I don’t think she’d freak out about it. She’s always been really understanding when it comes to stuff with my past relationships. Last week we hung out with a group that included four other girls I’d slept with and she was fine.”

“Wait, what?!” She reached forward and grabbed my shoulder. “Explain!”

I explained everything that had happened with the game night at Tori and Melissa’s apartment. Kevin laughed out loud several times, but Sara just sat back with her mouth hanging open.

“Ryan Dillon, I didn’t realize you had become such a manwhore in the past couple months!” She smacked Kevin. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”

“My man was just making up for lost time,” he said.

“I can’t believe Cece didn’t chop your balls off,” Sara said, but then she laughed.

I just shrugged. “I told you, she’s pretty chill about that stuff. She knows that just being around those girls doesn’t mean I’m not going to cheat or anything, so what’s the big deal?”

“Still,” Sara said, shaking her head, “I think she might care a little bit more than you think. Her jumping your bones the second you got back to your apartment tells me that the whole thing had at least some effect on her.”

“Maybe she just thinks it’s hot when other girls want her man,” Kevin said. “Like when we were at the bar last week and-”

“KEVIN GARETH SIMMONS!” Sara yelled as she smacked him on the back of the head again. Kevin just laughed and winked at me. She huffed. “Anyways, I’d at least talk to your girlfriend before you accept Amanda’s friend request, give her a heads up. Maybe Amanda just wants to talk in person tonight and you can figure out what’s going on then.”

“Yay, that sounds fun,” I said in a deadpan tone, not looking forward to such a conversation at all.

“Where are you staying tonight? You know we have a second bedroom in our apartment,” Sara said. I caught Kevin subtly shaking his head no at me.

“I’m just going to crash at Nate’s place,” I told her. “It’s your birthday, I don’t want to impose on you guys.”

“Really, it’s no problem at all,” she said.

“Thanks for the offer, you know I appreciate it and love you guys, but I’ll be fine at Nate’s.”

“If you say so,” she said, but she didn’t seem convinced. I couldn’t tell her the real reason why, though.

When we made inside Kevin and Sara’s apartment, I plugged my phone into a kitchen outlet to charge and then joined them in the living room to hang out. They caught me up on some of the stuff that had been going on in our friend group since I’d been gone. I was tempted to ask if anything had come of Brad asking Amanda out, but decided I didn’t want to know. Sara told me that Aubrey had been picking up vibes that Marco was getting close to proposing, so she went snooping and found a ring in his sock drawer.

“She called me crying,” Sara said. “She felt so bad about ruining the surprise.”

“That’s what she gets for snooping,” Kevin said. He gave me a look on the sly.

“Marco still doesn’t know she found it, but hopefully he asks her soon or she’s going to explode. He’s been on a really big case recently though, so he probably at least wants to make it to the other side of that before he does anything.”

We continued to chat and catch up for a while, but eventually Sara had to leave—Kevin had purchased a fancy salon treatment for her birthday, so she was going to get her hair done, as well as a manicure and pedicure before the party. She gave Kevin a big kiss and thanked him again for her gift, then gave me a kiss on the cheek as well.

“I’ll meet you guys at dinner. Have fun doing boy stuff!” she said.

As soon as she was out the door, Kevin popped up out his seat and went over to the window, checking to make sure she was actually gone. “Okay, we’re in the clear. Come on.” He scurried off towards their bedroom, beckoning me to follow him, so I got up off the couch and did so. He went to the closet and pulled out a gym bag. “I need your help setting up,” he said.

“Setting up what?” I asked as I walked over to him.

He dropped the bag on the bed, unzipped it, then reached inside before pulling out a handful of rose petals and tossing them into the air. He turned around and looked me in the eyes. I’d never seen him so serious.

“We need to make this room romantic as fuck, bro.”

We spent over an hour getting the room set up with the rose petals, battery-operated tea light candles—Kevin had initially wanted to use real candles but couldn’t work out a good plan for the logistics of getting and keeping them lit safely—romantic music, and putting champagne on ice. When we finally finished, Kevin dug into the gym bag for one last item.

The ring.

“Check it out, bro,” he said, pride pouring out of him. He opened the velvet ring box and turned it toward me.

It was an impressive ring, certainly much more expensive than the one I’d given to Amanda. It was in the halo style, with one large round-cut diamond in the center surrounded by several smaller ones, set on a yellow gold band. The main diamond was definitely way bigger than the one-carat diamond on Amanda’s ring, but I was operating on a teacher’s salary while Kevin had a good bit more money to work with as a computer engineer.

“That looks great, man. Quite the rock.”

“Thanks,” he said, still staring at the ring.

“How’d you get her ring size?” I asked.

“Took one of the cheap rings that she wears sometimes. It should be close enough, but we can always get it resized.”

“Did she talk to you about what sort of ring she wanted?”

“Nah, man. We haven’t talked about rings at all. I didn’t want to tip her off,” he said. “I did talk to her sister, though.”

“Nervous?”

Kevin closed the ring box and stuck it in his pocket, then sat down on the end of his bed. “Yeah, I’m pretty nervous. Way worse than anything I ever felt before or during a game. I feel like my pulse has been running wild for the past few days straight. Sara even asked if I was okay last night, she could feel my heart going crazy.”

“Do you think she suspects this, or is it going to be a total surprise?”

Kevin laughed. “Well, hopefully it’s not a total surprise to her. We’ve talked about marriage, vaguely, but I think she expected that it would take me a while longer to be ready.” He smiled at me, his face lighting up. “I don’t want to waste any more time, though. She’s the one. No need to wait on it. I’m ready to spend the rest of my life with her.”

I sat down next to him and put my arm around his shoulder. “I couldn’t be any happier for you, brother. Sara’s amazing. You really won the lottery with her.”

“I really did,” he said, smiling.

“Are you proposing at dinner, or here?”

“At dinner. She loves being the center of attention, and I know she wants all of her friends nearby to scream and jump around with her afterwards.”

Happy as I was for Kevin, I couldn’t help but feel wistful as I thought back to when I proposed to Amanda. She was the opposite of Sara in many ways—there was no way she wanted me to propose in public with lots of people around. She was much too shy for that. Like Kevin, I had used her birthday as an excuse for a day of celebrating her that masked my true plans. Her birthday—October 15th—had been on a Monday last year, so I planned everything for the night before. We went out for a nice dinner at her favorite restaurant in San Francisco—Aziza, a Michelin-starred Moroccan restaurant in the Richmond district—and then went on to one of Amanda’s new favorite activities, an escape room.

Amanda loved puzzles. She’d spend hours doing Sudoku and crosswords and any other sort of brain-benders she could find, usually while I read or graded papers as we sat on the couch together. One of her friends told her about escape rooms that were just starting to pop up, and it quickly became her preferred date night activity. Luckily San Francisco was one of the best places in the country to find them, so we would go every couple of weeks. I had gotten to know the guy who ran one of the escape rooms, David, pretty well, so when I went to him for help with my plan, he was more than happy to assist.

Working together, David and I planned out a special room just for Amanda, filled with puzzles and clues that tied into our lives and relationship history. She was excited at the “coincidence” when one of the combinations for a lock ended up being 101588, also known as her birthday, October 15th, 1988. She started to get suspicious when another was 041307, our first date. By the time I opened the last locker and pulled out her engagement ring, she definitely knew what was coming, but she still started crying when I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me. She was nodding as she cried, but it took her a few seconds before she was able to get out a verbal ‘yes’ and I put the ring on her finger. She spent the entire drive back to our apartment holding up her hand so she could inspect the ring from every angle, and when we made love that night she said ‘I love you’ probably a hundred times.

It was, even now, the happiest I had ever been.

Fuck.

I think Kevin could sense that I was starting to go down a mental rabbit hole. “Bro.” He gave me a couple pats on the back and then stood up. “Okay best man, let’s go frag some noobs together for a bit before we need to head over for the dinner.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said. I stood up and followed him back into the living room. “By the way, you aren’t planning on keeping that ring in your pants pocket, right? Because I don’t think you’re just happy to see me.”

Kevin looked down at the obviously ring box-shaped bulge in his pocket. “Ah, man.”

A few hours of video games later, it was time for us to go. Kevin wanted to get to the restaurant a little early just to make sure everything was set with our reservation. As we were leaving Kevin’s apartment, I grabbed my phone and charger from where I had left it in the kitchen. There was a text from Cece telling me to have fun, that she wished she was there, and that she looked forward to talking to me about it later. Unfortunately, I also noticed that my phone had not actually been charging that whole time.

When I told Kevin, he gave me an apologetic look. “Shit, I’m sorry dude. We’ve been having issues with the kitchen outlets.”

I shrugged. “It’s not the end of the world. Hopefully it lasts through the night. I can just charge it at Nate’s.” I texted Cece to let her know about my phone’s battery situation, and if she couldn’t get a hold of me it was probably because of that and not because I was dead in a ditch somewhere. Probably.

We arrived at the restaurant and confirmed our reservation. It was a decently large party. There was of course Kevin and Sara, me, Marco and Audrey, Nate, Will, Brad, and Amanda from our usual friend group, plus several of Sara’s other friends and coworkers who I didn’t know very well (or at all, in some cases). All told, we had fifteen people who were expected to show up.

Sara showed up about ten minutes later, looking like a million bucks after her spa treatment, with her hair shiny and freshly curled. She ran up to her boyfriend and threw her arms around him before planting a giant kiss on his lips. “Thank you so much for my present, baby. I feel amazing.”

Kevin kissed her right back, his arms around her waist. “You look amazing. I’m glad you enjoyed it.” After they kissed a few more times, they disentangled, allowing Sara to come over to me.

“Did you boys have fun while I was gone?” she asked, sitting down next to me on the bench.

“We did. It was nice to get to just hang out for a while.” I put my arm around her shoulder and gave her a quick side hug before letting her go. “I really missed you guys. I’m glad I could make it up for your birthday.”

“We missed you too. It’s not quite the same without you here. Especially on trivia nights,” she said with a laugh. “We haven’t won once since you left.”

“That’s something I haven’t done down in San Diego yet. Maybe I should try to get a group to go out and find one. I know Cece would love it.”

One of Sara’s coworkers arrived, so she stood up to go greet her, and others began showing up soon after. I hugged Marco and his girlfriend Aubrey together, wrapping my arms around both of them. Marco was short, only around 5’6”, and Aubrey was downright tiny at 5’ on a good day. Marco seemed a little beat, and when I asked him about it he told me that he was in the middle of a particularly stressful immigration case.

I gave Nate a handshake and a pat on the back when he showed up. “Hey man, it’s great to see you. You still good with me crashing at your place tonight?” I asked him.

“Yeah, for sure.” He gave me a light punch in my chest. “I hear you’ve got yourself a new girl down south.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, I do. She was going to come with me, but some family stuff came up. What about you? Any ladies in your life right now?” Of all of my friends, Nate was the one who’d been single the longest. He’d had a girlfriend during our senior year at Stanford, but they broke up around Christmas. Since then he’d only been on a handful of dates, but they never really went anywhere.

He glanced over at the group of girls surrounding Sara, chatting excitedly about something. “You see the girl in the yellow top?” I nodded. She was curvy and well-proportioned, with long dirty blonde hair and a light tan. “That’s Emily. She works with Sara, and she’s been coming around to hang out with the group a bit recently. We’ve been talking. Nothing solid yet, but I’m hoping I can make something happen soon.”