By Francesca
I’m keeping a secret from my best friend.
This won’t be published until after the secret is out, but as I write this, I’m in the midst.
It’s terrible.
No, sorry, keeping the secret is terrible. The news is wonderful:
Her boyfriend is going to propose.
“Please keep the following completely secret,” began his email to me last week. I opened the attachments on my iPhone and was temporarily blinded by the photos of drop-dead-gorgeous diamond rings.
My first reaction was pure joy. I love her current boyfriend as a person and I love how he treats my friend; she’s never been happier since they got together, so I was positive the “yes” was a lock.
But my elation curdled to anxiety when I realized he wasn’t just letting me in on a fun secret, he was asking for advice on her favorite style, setting, cut, size, etc.
And I drew a blank. In our decade of friendship, I thought we’d discussed every topic on earth, twice. We love hypotheticals. I know which type of professional athlete she thinks would make the best husband (tennis pro), her top three cities to raise children (Providence, New York, Boston), and the breed of dog she would get (Bichon Frisé) if she liked dogs, which she doesn’t.
Yet somehow, we hadn’t discussed hypothetical engagement rings.
And now I’d discovered this glaring error in my best-friend duties too late. How had I not anticipated this scenario? As her in-case-of-romantic-emergency contact, I should have this information!
What if I pick something she hates and she has to wear it for the rest of her life? Could we even be friends anymore?
I’d definitely get cut from the bridesmaids roster.
If she even gets married, that is. What if I pick an ugly ring and she blames him for it, thus mistakenly believing that the love of her life doesn’t “get” her? And it’s all my fault!
It suddenly felt like I was the one proposing. Our entire relationship and future happiness were riding on this question!
Clammy hands on my keyboard, I did my best to answer each of her hopeful fiancé’s questions. There was only one area I felt confident about—carat size. He suggested several options to me, but expressed concern my friend would find them “too flashy.”
Oh yeah, women hate flashy diamonds.
After I’d written an appropriately tasteful preamble about how they were all gorgeous and how my friend is so in love with him she’d say yes to a shoestring, I was unequivocal: “Bigger is better. It’s a no-brainer.”
Just in case my friend ever saw this email exchange, I wanted her to know I had her back.
The only conversation I did remember having with my friend was about how the real charm of an engagement ring lies in imagining the man you love most in the world taking the time and care to choose a ring that shows that love returned.
So I told him not to worry about it.
However, I was worried about it.
The email was just the beginning. I pride myself on being an absolute vault when it comes to secrets, and my friends can vouch for that. But that’s just it: I keep secrets for my friends, not from them, especially not my best girl.
Our friendship is defined by the telling of secrets, not the keeping of them. It’s a closed circuit, so no one else is included or exposed, but between the two of us, stories, chatter, news, and gossip constantly flow.
Telling me this secret was like asking me to blow-dry my hair in the bathtub without getting shocked.
And she isn’t making it easy on me.
A few days after I’d responded to her boyfriend, my friend happened to email me about celebrity engagement rings, specifically Mary-Kate Olsen’s unusual vintage Cartier ring. We talk about dumb celebrity news all the time, but now this was loaded.
I needed insight into her preferences, but I was terrified of being too obvious and revealing too much. “It’s cool, but also a little out there. It looks like it would get caught on sweaters. Do you like it?”
She replied within minutes, as usual.
Our BFF emails are High Priority.
She wrote, “At first I was like, what is this weird ring? But then I realized it is so Elizabeth Taylor and awesome!”
Okay, got it: weird is good, assuming it’s “Elizabeth Taylor” weird.
Wait, I don’t get it.
Then she forwarded a slide-show of celebrity engagement rings, again asking my opinion while offering none of her own.
I sensed this was my last chance. I drafted my reply three times to calculate a casual tone:
“Angelina’s is amazing with the emerald cuts smushed together, but do you think emerald looks as good in solitaire? I tend to like the simpler ones, like Keira Knightley’s classic solitaire. But it’s like, how much do you personally care about having a ring that no one else has?”
She replied, “I don’t care about having a super unique ring, but I like the THOUGHT that comes with it.”
The thought I was supposed to be thinking!
Then she moved on to speculating on what happened between Beyoncé, Solange, and Jay-Z in that elevator, and I was safe.
Beyoncé makes everything better.
I considered forwarding the whole thread to her boyfriend, but since she didn’t answer any of my specific questions, I feared it would only confuse him like it had confused me. I had failed at the recon mission.
Maybe I’m not cut out for the CIA.
That said, I’m no dummy. My girlfriend-Spidey-sense guessed that the “coincidental” timing of her interest in celebrity rings might have been her testing me. So far, I’d passed. But I had no idea how I’d hold up in person.
So I avoided her.
For two weeks—a lifetime in our friendship. I didn’t want to spill the beans, but I also decided that I would not lie to her. When we finally did get together for lunch, I could tell something was up.
She told me that her boyfriend recently asked her about her ring preference, completely hypothetically.
“Ohmigod! Do you think he’s going to propose?” My feigned surprise was less Lee Strasberg and more Lucille Ball.
“He said sometime ‘in the next five years.’”
I gulped my iced tea. I definitely couldn’t keep this secret that long.
“But I think he’s trying to throw me off the scent. I know he went to Tiffany’s because he showed me some pictures of rings, and I have to ask…”
My heart thundered in my chest.
“… is it your hand in the pictures?”
“What? No!” I squeaked. I thought fast. “Tiffany’s isn’t ready for these Nicki Minaj nails.” I flashed my trashy bubble-gum manicure as evidence.
My friend’s eyes narrowed. “Really? I’m shocked. I was sure he’d asked you for help.”
A bead of sweat formed at my temple, but I still managed to avoid perjuring myself: “It’s not my hand in the picture.”
I’m not the daughter of two lawyers for nothing.
Then I saw my opening: “But now that you mention it, he might ask me for help. So you should tell me exactly what you want.”
She did so, and I was relieved that her preferences were perfectly in line with my recommendations to her boyfriend, soon-to-be fiancé.
I was riding high. All the possible crises had been averted. She wanted to marry the boy, she was sure to get her dream ring, and I would go on record as being a great friend.
But I got cocky.
As I said goodbye to her, I asked, “If he had asked me for help but had sworn me to secrecy, would you have wanted me to tell you?”
She paused for a minute, then laughed. “Yeah, definitely. I’d want to know.”
Grateful for my polarized sunglasses, I said goodbye and ran away.
Thankfully, her boyfriend didn’t wait five years. I only had to sweat it out another month before he popped the question in Hawaii. My friend came home blessed-out and in love with her ring—and her new fiancé, of course. I was fully prepared to take the secret of my input to the grave, but her fiancé had a different idea.
“And he told me how you helped him so much!” my friend said. “He said he couldn’t have done it without you.”
He absolutely could have. But I’m glad I earned his trust by keeping his secret, and I’m touched that he gave me any credit at all.
He’s going to be a wonderful best-friend-in-law.