Emma Straub - Modern Lovers

She was the one who’d mentioned a ring. It wasn’t exactly in context — they were watching The Bachelor , and the bachelor in question was picking out rings for his two potential brides, a dental hygienist named Kimberly and a medical assistant named Kenderly, and all the rings on display were so gigantic they could be seen from space. They didn’t look like diamonds, they looked like small drinking glasses turned upside down. Ruby had stuck out her tongue and blown a raspberry. “Barf,” she’d said. “I want the opposite of that. A black diamond. A tiny black diamond. Like a poppy seed. Something that no one else could see unless I stuck it right in their eyeball. Who is that even for? How do you live your life with something like that on your finger? Do they wash dishes? Do they wake up with weird scratch marks all over their body? It just seems dangerous , you know? Not to mention a giant waste of money that young couples have been tricked into spending by the patriarchy of advertising.”

So Harry was looking for a poppy seed. There was one sort of crafty place in Park Slope that sold jewelry. His mother had dragged him there a few times after school, when she needed to buy a present for someone, and that was the only place Harry could think of. It didn’t seem exactly like Ruby’s taste, but he’d spent a few hours scrolling through rings on Etsy, and that seemed even worse. How could he describe how big he thought her fingers were? He couldn’t. So he took the train to the Slope and walked down Fifth Avenue until he found the place. Something buzzed when he walked in the door, which made him immediately start to turn around, but the young woman behind the counter was already smiling and waving, and so he was stuck.

“Can I help you find anything?” The woman had dark hair and heavy bangs and an extra-large stud in her nose.

“I’m looking for a ring. For my friend. She wants something little and black. Do you have anything like that? Her finger is sort of medium-sized, I think. Kind of long and bigger than mine by a little.” He held up his hand. “But I don’t know which finger I’m supposed to be talking about, really, so I guess it depends.”

The woman sucked in her lips and nodded. “I think I have a few things that you might like. What’s your price range?”

Harry hadn’t thought about the money. He had his parents’ credit card, which is what he planned to use. It wasn’t exactly kosher, but both his mother and father had forgotten all about him all summer long, and so he didn’t think they’d notice one small charge on their card, especially since it was a place he knew his mother liked. He wasn’t at Tiffany’s. He wasn’t in the city, somewhere fancy. “A hundred?” Harry said. “I’m not really sure.”

The woman reached down and slid open a case. She plucked out a few rings and set them on a square velvet pillow on the counter. One had a little green stone, one had a pink stone, and one was dark red, like a tiny drop of blood.

“You don’t have anything black?”

“We have one,” the woman said, “but I think it might be on the expensive side.” She cocked her head to one side and gave him a look. “Is this for your girlfriend?”

Harry coughed into his hand, trying to hide his proud blush. “Yeah.”

She held up a finger and walked over to another counter. She came back with the ring slung loosely around her pinkie and held it up in front of Harry’s face before she let it slide onto the pillow.

The ring was perfect — a thin gold band that looked like a woodpecker had hammered it, with a million little holes and notches, and a small black pebble on top. It was bigger than a poppy seed but smaller than a watermelon seed, and perfectly flat. “It’s two hundred ninety-five dollars,” the woman said. “I guess it depends how serious you are.”

Harry picked up the ring and put it on his middle finger. It slid down to the knuckle. If that was a challenge, she didn’t know who she was messing with.

“I’ll take it,” he said, and slapped his mother’s credit card on the counter.

It was officially the most horrible time of the summer, when everyone was starting to come back, unpack, do laundry, repack, and go to school, all while noisily updating social media with pictures of everybody hugging each other and their stupid siblings and their stupid dogs. Ruby had been dreading the end of August ever since graduation. When her entire class was off in the Hamptons or the Berkshires, it was gloriously easy to pretend that her life was still perfectly on track, and that nothing had gone disastrously wrong. But soon it would be September, the first September in twelve years (fifteen, counting preschool) that Ruby hadn’t gone back to school, and she wasn’t exactly feeling great about it.

That morning, she had woken up from a sex dream. In it, she and Harry had been at the beach, their beach, only it was completely abandoned, and it was only after Ruby realized that her body was covered in goose bumps that she noticed it was winter and there were huge mounds of snow all around them. She and Harry were kissing, and then they were doing it, and then he was on top of her, but instead of Harry, it was Dust. Harry/Dust opened his mouth and said, in a perfect Harry/Dust voice, “It’s just you and me next year.” And that was so horrifying that Ruby sat up in bed and was awake for good at seven a.m., which was practically a crime in and of itself on a summer morning.

Her phone had been blowing up all night — she almost didn’t want to look at it, but she had to, because she was a glutton for punishment. There were six texts from six different friends, plus group texts — Chloe was inviting her to Bridgehampton for one last slumber party, Anika wanted to go do karaoke in Chinatown, Sully was going vintage shopping on Saturday, and did she want to come? All summer, they’d been off having adventures, and they wanted to squeeze as much of high school as possible into their last five minutes in the city. Ruby didn’t want to get squeezed.

A new text came in — Sarah Dinnerstein: MEET ME IN THE PARK? HAVE A JOINT. Ruby imagined the whole scene: she’d meet Sarah, they’d smoke the joint, and then Ruby would punch her in the face. For Hyacinth. For her moms. It sounded like a pretty good way to spend the afternoon. They made plans to meet by the dog beach and then walk together to the hidden spot behind the natural playground, which was always empty except for sometimes when old men with radios would sit and listen to baseball games.

The walk to the park was sticky — Ruby was wearing as little as possible, but by the end of the summer in New York, you could be naked and still feel overdressed. She should have put on sunscreen; she should have worn a hat. By the time Ruby got to the dog beach, Sarah was waiting, in one of her countless hippie-dippie dresses that showed off her boobs, which weren’t even that impressive.

“Hey,” Ruby said.

“Hey-o,” Sarah said, opening her arms wide for a hug. Ruby could smell the patchouli before they were even five feet apart.

“You know,” she said, stopping just before Sarah’s arms could reach her, “I’m not sure I’m ready for that.”

“Is this about Dust? I’m so glad we’re talking about it. Because he told me that you knew, but then I thought he was bullshitting, and I really didn’t want to leave for school with, like, unfinished business between us, you know?” Sarah put on her concerned face, which looked like the love child of a Gremlin and a pug, squashed nostrils pointing in the wrong direction.

“Fine, whatever, let’s walk,” Ruby said, turning on her heel and walking down the hill into the woods. If she were going to college, if she were leaving New York, Prospect Park would be the thing she’d miss the most. Unlike Central Park, where you could always see identifiable buildings and therefore know exactly where you were in space, Prospect Park felt like the wilderness, filled with dark paths and secret corners. Whenever she came to the park with her moms when she was little, Ruby loved to scare them by running away and hiding behind trees, just off the path but tucked out of sight. Bingo would always find her first, but for a few minutes Ruby could pretend that she lived in a magical forest and that her mothers were witches or fairies and that she alone could save the world.