June

Ibought Henley a ring from a little shop in Cambridge.Not an engagement ring or even a promise ring, although I suppose it could be used for both. It was an impulse buy. Not something I meant to do. I had an exam on constitutional law and a meeting with one of my professors. Between the two I have about an hour to kill so I kicked around, poking in and out of vintage book shops. A record store. And a place about as big as a broom closet, stuffed with tacky fake Irish shit like faire wind chimes and shamrock tea pots.

That’s when I saw it.

Sterling silver. Nothing fancy.

When she saw me eyeing it, the sales clerk started going on and on about it was handmade in Ireland, and the meaning behind it. Half-listening, I imagined giving it to Henley. Asking her to wear it. Explaining that it could be our secret. No one would know where she got it. She wouldn’t have to tell anyone. But it would be something I could look at, while’s she busy ignoring me in Calculus class or hurrying past me in the halls, and know that she was with me.

Even if no one else does.

So I bought it.

I was going to give it to her that day in the hammock but then Tess showed up. That was a couple of weeks ago and I’m still carrying it around in my pocket, like a chicken shit.

I reason that it’s a big step. That we’ve only been dating a few months. That I don’t want her to get the wrong idea.

What idea is that, Genius? That you can’t stop thinking about her? That she’s the only girl you want to be with? That you’re seventeen years old and you already know that there is no one else for you. That you’re going to love her forever.

Most girls would love to hear that kind of stuff. They’d melt and cry and throw their arms around you if you said those kinds of things to them. It’s been firmly established that Henley is not like other girls.

Like right now, she’s in the kitchen with my mom, baking cookies. I’m in my dad’s study, down the hall, reading and listening to them talk and laugh. I like that she likes spending time with my family. That sometimes, I’ll come home from school and she’ll already be here, hanging out with my mom. Or that if I have a paper due, she’ll still come over to watch the game and yell at the television with my dad while I work on it. I’ve never said she’s my girlfriend and they’ve never asked but I think they know.

I try to keep her as far away from Declan as I can. Sometimes I catch him looking at her. I can tell something about her makes him angry. That he doesn’t like us together and whatever that something is, it goes beyond him not thinking she’s pretty enough or the fact that she’s Ryan’s little sister.

Sometimes, I think he doesn’t like her because she makes me happy.

“What are you reading?”

I look up from my book to find Henley standing in the doorway of the study, a stack of cookies wrapped up in a napkin in her hand. I turn the paperback in my hand, flashing her the faded cover of Gatsby with BOSTON CITY LIBRARY stamped on the back of it.

Her eyes narrow slightly. “That’s my book.”

“We’ve been over this, Hennie,” I say, slipping an old receipt I’m using as a bookmark between its pages. “It’s not your book. It belongs to everyone.”

Now she’s scowling at me to keep from laughing. We do this, pretty much every time she catches me reading it. “Says the guy who stole it from the library.”

“I didn’t steal it.” I set the book on the arm of the chair I’m sitting in. “I borrowed it—that’s how libraries work.”

“Are you ever going to give it back to me?” She shifts around in her shoes. They’re new. My mom bought them for her. She doesn’t know that, though. Mom bought a bunch of stuff—clothes and shoes—and pulled the tags. Ran it all through the wash a few times to wash of the new and stuffed it all in a box. Told her it was a bunch of stuff that belonged to Patrick’s sister that didn’t fit her anymore. Somehow, I’m going to have to figure out how to get her a backpack. One she’ll actually use.

“Probably not.” I scoot across the wide leather seat of the chair I’m in, making room for her “What kind?” I say, glancing at the cookies in her hand.

“Oatmeal butterscotch,” she says. Liberating a cookie from the bundle, she bites it in half.

“They for me?” Oatmeal butterscotch are my favorite and she knows it.

“No,” she says around a mouthful of cookie but she’s lying. They’re for me.

“Can I have one?”

“Can I have my book back?”

“Are you proposing a trade?”

She shrugs and chews.

“Because if you are, you’re doing it wrong,” I cock an eyebrow at her and grin. “You’re not supposed to eat your leverage.”

She shoves the rest of her cookie into her mouth and I can’t help but laugh. God, she drives me crazy. “Come here, Henley.”

She hesitates, like she’s mentally mapping out escape routes but I don’t say it again and I try not to let her hesitation bother me.

Finally, she crosses the threshold and sinks into the chair next to me. “You can have the rest,” she says, holding out her napkin-wrapped cookies. “I’ve had about a dozen of them.”

I look at her hand, pretending to consider her offer, before I raise my gaze to hers and flash her my dimples. “What do you want for ‘em?”

She flushes instantly at my teasing. “You know what I want,” she says, propping her feet up on the ottoman, next to mine. “I want my book back.”

“Still not your book,” I tell her, trying to sound as casual as possible. I shift on the chair a bit to reach into my pocket while she bites into another cookie. “But I have something else you might be interested in,”

When I pull out the ring and show it to her, her chewing slows to a stop, her wide brown eyes latched onto the center of my palm.

“Before you say you can’t wear it, I’d like you to note that my name is nowhere on it,” I say, still light. Still casual. “Also, it was cheap. There’s a good chance it’ll turn your finger green.” When she doesn’t say anything, I glance down at the cookies clutched in her hand. “How many of those do you have left?”

She swallows so hard I expect her to start coughing on the lump of oatmeal butterscotch lodged in her throat. “Four.”

I shrug, like I’m considering it. “When you factor in time and labor, I’m getting the better end of the deal.”

She’s not buying it. “Conner…” She shakes her head. Finally looks up at me, her brown eyes so dark they look almost black. “I don’t think—”

“It’s a Claddagh—” I lift her right hand from her lap and slip the ring onto her middle finger. “They have their own secret language.” I tighten my fingers around hers, holding her hand.  “When you wear it on your right hand, with the point of the heart toward your own, it means you’re committed to someone.”

Jesus, why did I say that out loud?

“Committed?”

“Well, yeah.” I say it to her hand because I don’t want to risk looking up at her. “We’ve already established the fact that we’re dating.”

“We did,” she says. “But dating in itself doesn’t imply…”

She didn’t think it was exclusive. She thinks I’ve been seeing other girls.

I don’t know why it hurts but it does. There have been other girls. More than I like to think about, but that stopped the moment she handed me her calculus notes three months ago. There’s no one else.

I open my mouth to tell her that. That she’s the only one. That there’s never going to be another. Not for me, but she beats me to it.

“Where’s yours?”

“My what?”

“Well, if this is a real thing, then you should have one too, right?” she says, lifting her half-eaten cookie to her mouth. “A commitment isn’t a commitment if it’s one-sided.”

“The shop I bought it in is in Cambridge—we can be there in an hour.” She wants me to wear a ring, I’ll wear a ring. Shit, I’ll tattoo the fucking thing on my forehead if it’ll make her happy.

She studies me and chews, long enough to make me squirm before she shakes her head. “I don’t have any money,” she says, finally settling back in the seat next to me. “And it won’t count unless I buy it for you.”

It’s enough that she wants me to. “Does that mean you’ll wear it?’ I say, brushing my thumb over the top of her middle finger, still trying for light and casual even though I just asked the girl I’m in love with to wear my ring.

She doesn’t answer me but she doesn’t take it off either. “Read to me?” she says, offering me a cookie.

I don’t push her. I just pick up Gatsby and find where I left off. I do as she asks, reading to her out loud. When feel her rest her head on my shoulder, it feels like yes.