It is dark tonight, and unseasonably cold. I vary the times when I arrive at the Belrose house, but I don’t think any neighbors have seen me. I dress quietly, and I wear hats pulled low over my face, but even so I change where I park, and my clothing, too. Tonight, I arrived well after the sun went down, and the cloudy night sky hid me well. Summer is barely gone, but the air already feels like winter. It’s strange. Everyone says it’s due to climate change, because normally at this time everyone would still be wearing shorts and running their sprinklers and lolling about on their lawns with glasses of lemonade on Sundays.
It’s lucky for me that the early cold is keeping everyone indoors.
And there was no one to see me slip toward the dark home.
There are no lights on in the Belrose house.
But when I push on the back door, it swings in, like he was waiting for me. And that is where I am right now.
I stand in the den, alone. I unwrap my scarf from my neck. Something is different.
“Hello?” I call, and I take a step inside. The house isn’t completely dark . . . there’s a faint glow coming from the hallway. I close the door softly behind me, my senses blinking on high alert.
My heart beats a little oddly. Is everything okay? I tiptoe toward the faint light. Why is everything off? Alex asked me to come. Did he forget? Is he gone?
Is Jacqueline somehow back and he wants me to leave?
I move toward the glow, my heart beating thunderously in my ears.
Oh.
Oh.
Several gorgeous, white, long-stemmed candles line the hallway. I follow the path down the hallway and through the little kitchen where we’ve cooked together, and finally, into his living room. And there he is. Alex. He looks at me, over his arm, which is on the back of the couch.
“Come sit with me, Riley.”
No one has ever lit candles for me before. I thought it was something that only happened in movies. Silly movies. But he did it.
I walk to the front of the couch and curl into the crook of his arm, so that my back is against his chest.
“Hello,” he says, smoothing my hair back. “I’m happy you’re here.”
“I am too.”
And I am. The strange feeling in my stomach is all but gone. He wraps his arms around me and pulls me tight. “I have something for you,” he whispers.
“You don’t have to get me things,” I murmur. And I mean it. I’m not the type of girl who needs things. But all the same, I’m excited.
“Close your eyes and hold out your hands,” he whispers in my ear. He untangles his arms, and he places something in my palms . . . something light. “Okay. You can open them.”
My eyes open. In my hands is a small rectangular box wrapped in light periwinkle paper, tied with a pretty white bow.
“A present! What is it?” I turn it over and look at the bottom, as if that will give me some sort of clue that I’m missing.
“You’ll have to open it,” he says. He touches my arm. “I hope you like it.”
I slide my index finger under the paper, opening it neatly. He’s given me something. Something special. He’s lit candles and he’s given me a real gift, something I can hold on to and keep. I unfold the paper, and there’s a dark blue velvet box inside. Is it jewelry? I give him a quizzical look.
He smiles and nods.
I lift the top off the box.
It’s a necklace.
He’s given me a necklace. It is a tiny wooden chess piece on a delicate chain. A king.
My fingers stray to the hollow below my throat, where the little charm will hang when I wear it.
“It’s gorgeous,” I tell him.
He works the clasp apart. “Hold up your hair,” he tells me, and I gather it all up while he drapes the necklace around my neck. The wood is cool against my skin. “I got this at a little shop in Paris,” he says, “just along the Seine.”
I let my hair drop and turn to face him, my fingers running up and down the little chain. “It’s from Paris?” I breathe. I’ve never owned anything from Paris. Not anything from out of the country, until you count the little sand candle my aunt brought me from Puerto Vallarta.
“The man who owns the shop makes the charms by hand, and his vision is slowly failing, but his jewelry, it’s all beautiful. It all has these tiny imperfections, you see, so they’re all completely one of a kind. And I used to love chess when I was little. I played it against my grandfather at night after he closed the restaurant.” He touches the necklace with a knuckle, and then leans in, his lips just barely grazing mine. “Do you like it, Riley?” he asks, his lips moving against mine.
“I adore it.”
I’m not lying. I love it all. I love the candles and the necklace and his lips and his arms and being his. I smile, and I smile with my whole entire heart, in a way that I don’t think I have ever smiled before.
I don’t let myself think about how he originally bought the necklace for anyone else.
“Will you think of me whenever you wear it?”
I nod.
“I’m so sorry I made you feel insecure,” he whispers.
Wait. Insecure? No one has ever—ever—called Riley Stone insecure.
I am not insecure.
I just have standards that do not involve whoever I am seeing high-fiving entire teams of girls who are doing cheers for him, that’s all.
But then Alex’s hands are on my back and his lips are on mine and I forget that maybe, just maybe, I’m a little insulted and I remember he has given me a necklace and we are us again and everything is going to be okay.
I know it is.