the (fabricated) story of my ring: part 1.

Sometimes I look down at my engagement ring and imagine the woman who wore it before I did. My ring is an antique, did you know that? My mom and I found it in our favorite little town, Micanopy. When I showed it to Jeffrey, I had a feeling it would be the ring that ended up on my finger.

I like to think that the woman who wore it before me had a grand, romantic love story. Nadine was in love with George, who was 10 years her senior. They met in a hardware store, where George was immediately struck because Nadine looked more purposeful than he did. She was wearing a sweet floral skirt crouched down, examining the screwdriver heads. Little did he know she was decorating her newly rented apartment, just above his. She had rented it because the sun spilled in just perfectly at 4 pm. She always made sure to be home at that time to sit in complete and total relaxation with her sweet cat, Matilda.

Nadine was an employee at a theater, where she was always eager to audition for the parts, but could never quite work up the courage. Her boss, Gerald, was kind enough to let her leave for one half hour daily at 4 pm to enjoy the aforementioned spilling sunlight.

George was a writer. The kind of writer hopelessly indebted to his characters -- so indebted that he rarely left his apartment. Except on that fateful day, when he walked into the hardware store to ask an employee about how easy it would be to self-repair a broken typewriter. And that was when he saw Nadine, her hair pulled back just so. He stood in shock and awe -- he felt as though he was witnessing a sweet and perfect creature from one of his stories, the kind of woman that could only be true if she had been written that way.

Nadine was trying hard to look as though she knew what she was doing, although she really had no idea. George caught her eye because his hair was perfectly tousled. It reminded her of her childhood friend, Raymond, who had gone to war and never returned. She cocked her head in disbelief. Alas, it was not him, but she instantly felt comfortable without even talking to the man in the hardware store. She liked the way he was wearing a dress shirt without a tie, and the way his pants were too short and revealed bright red socks. She wanted to know this man, befriend him, walk with him in the park. What a silly thought, she said to herself. George wanted to hold this woman's hand, show her his first draft stories, and buy her a coffee on a cool, bright evening. Nonsense, he said to himself.



{Part 2 here.}