The Heirloom

One

Up until the moment John proposed, I didn't know the human body was capable of feeling two opposite emotions in the exact same second. The tips of my fingers tingled with elation, and yet my legs felt like newly hardened cement. I was squarely inside pure joy and somehow watching it all unfold from above, so tense I felt dizzy. On one knee before me was the man I loved, asking a question I'd hoped was coming for months. He'd picked the perfect spot-the quietest corner of the High Line, my favorite five square feet in all of Manhattan. He'd somehow found a way to get us here from Los Angeles without me suspecting a thing. And the universe delivered him a pink-skied July where the city air was still somehow crisp. But more than all that, John was choosing me as the one person in the world he wanted to commit to for the rest of our lives. Tears clouded my eyes. Yes was what I should have been screaming as I leapt into his arms. But instead I was staring at the only bad part of the surprise, the one in his hands.

"Shea . . . you haven't answered me," John said, words absolutely no man wants to say after Will you marry me? He held the ring box up to my still-frozen face. Inside its silk-lined top were the three words that had triggered my panic: Hudson Vintage Collectors. They sat above what should have been the more important item inside: a gleaming emerald-cut engagement ring. But it was not shiny with brand-newness, according to the vintage in the jewelry store's name. It was an heirloom passed down from another woman-from another marriage. A stranger's marriage, because I knew there wasn't any jewelry being passed down from John's family. That made this a deeply meaningful piece of jewelry with a completely unknown origin. An object filled with a lifetime of karma that I was now expected to wear into my own hopefully happily-ever-after. And most important, my personal proposal nightmare.

Two

This was not supposed to be happening this way. In fact, I'd done my part to prevent it since the day John and I met.

"There are four, and only four, truly nonnegotiable things about me," I'd said on our first date. "Do you, John 'Middle Name' Jacobs, want to know them?"

We hadn't gotten to middle names by that point. We were three hours into what would be a twelve-hour date that started because my mouth was, per usual, working faster than my brain. I saw a man reading No Country for Old Men several stools down the coffee bar from me and couldn't resist telling him I thought the movie was better. It turned out the book's reader was the most attractive man in the room, if not all rooms. Meanwhile I was a sweaty post-workout mess. That was rare; I always gym-showered post-workout. And my coffee bar sit-down was rare; I'm a preorder-on-the-app type. But oddest of all was John "Middle Name" Jacobs's reaction to my unsolicited comment: he picked up his coffee and said, "Prove it."

I did, or at least I proved something, enough for John to suggest we keep the conversation going with a stroll to a second spot: a bookstore with a wine bar, the right kind of cheeky. It was one of the many gold flags I'd clocked, golds being the opposite of reds. There was the magnified blue of his eyes. The fact that he had some-but-thank-God-not-too-much product in his wavy hair. The way he tucked his corporate-ish shirt into his tight-ish jeans but knew adding a belt would have been one step too far, especially for a Saturday. And actual important stuff too, like how polite he was to the server who came by our table a bit too often and his responses to questions he asked me about my life while still sharing just enough about his own. That's why I decided it was time for me to share the four life-defining things-or the conversational thread I'd been using as first-date detective work for a decade.

"Fine," John said. "But if one of the four is that you're cats, not dogs, I'm out."

It was the kind of response I was always finger-crossing to hear: cute, but not in a condescending way-a Harrison Ford-character response.

"I'm dogs," I said. "And thing number one is that I will live in Italy someday."

John's eyebrows did a little rise-and-fall. It made me want to kiss him immediately. "Why's that?" he asked.

"First, I'm one hundred percent Italian on my mom's side. Second, if I could live inside a movie it would be Roman Holiday. But mostly because my nonna and pop once took my sister, Annie, and me there for an entire month. We stayed on Nonna's family farm outside Salerno, picked wine grapes every day, and made pasta every night, and I swore on the plane ride home that I'd live there someday."

"Noted. And approved," said John, then quickly, "Not that you need my approval." This guy is good.

"Moving on to number two," I said, sliding ever-so-slightly closer to John in the circular booth we were sharing. "If I had any real singing ability-and I do not-I would be a singer. Like drop-out-of-college-to-tour-shitty-bars-across-the-country style."

"But you said you work at a film festival. Why not in music?" John asked, demonstrating excellent listening skills.

"Too painful," I joked.

"Gotcha. So this second one is more a warning if you someday wake up from a coma with the voice of . . . ?"

"Kelly Clarkson," I said.

"Kelly Clarkson," John repeated, eyes honest-to-God twinkling. "All right, so far, I'm not running away. Gimme number three."

This was where the rubber usually met the man never calling me again.

"Three: I think extreme wealth is immoral. Or is it a-moral? I never remember."

"I think it's i-, not a-, and how rich are we talking?"

"Bezos, Musk, and Zucks, obviously. This hedge-fundy cousin Stew on my dad's side. Essentially people who've amassed more than they'll ever need and hoard it. That's one reason I love my job: we take money from big brands and use it to help small filmmakers."

"Interesting," John said. My mind rushed back to the details he'd shared so far: middle school math teacher hadn't screamed trust fund. Then a second stat flashed: hometown, Costa Mesa, California. Orange County. His parents probably owned a chain of luxury car dealerships and sat on the board of "the club." In that case, this was potentially the last moment John "Middle Name" Jacobs and I would share together. I considered smooching him before it was too late.

"Well, I spent seven years working for a hedge fund run by a guy like this cousin of yours before the market crashed," he started. "Probably seven years too long by your standards, but the whole thing was so gross that I went back to school to become a teacher."

"Oh good. Very good!" I said.

"Are these things of yours some kind of test?" John asked, wisely.

"Yes," I said, because I was too buzzed off sauvignon blanc and this man's pitch-perfect answers to lie. "Now, I want to issue a disclaimer for the fourth and final thing: it's about marriage, but don't read into it."

John leaned his very solid body in, squinted his baby blues, and said, "Try me." My heart actually fluttered in my chest. I'd always thought that was just an expression.

"Number four: I am superstitious about many things, but most important among them is heirloom jewelry. I don't like it. I don't trust it. So if someone was to propose to me with an heirloom engagement ring, I would say no."

"What's an heirloom engagement ring?" John asked.

"An antique ring you buy at a vintage jewelry store that was previously worn by an unknown woman in an unknown marriage."

"And what is there to be superstitious about?"

"Bad karma. I believe the ring carries the energy of the previous wearers' marriages."

"And then what? Gives it to you?"

"Exactly!" His quick grasp of the concept was reassuring.

"Okay, but why?" John asked.

"I'm not one hundred percent sure. In my mind the energy needs to move and so it sort of jumps-"

John laughed. "No, I mean, why do you believe this?"

"Oh. Because of my nonna. She was the queen of superstitions. No shoes on the table, no owls in the house, if you gift someone a knife you have to also gift a penny. But her rules around marriage were legendary."

"More legendary than the penny/knife thing?" I had never seen a man's brow furrow quite so adorably.

"Oh, every Italian knows that one. But Nonna owned a bridal shop, Bella Vita, and the rumor in town was that if a bride followed all her rules, she'd end up happily married. Never wear a gown without a veil, never wear pearls with your gown unless they're your mother's, never say your new name before I do, and never accept an heirloom engagement ring."

"And you believe in all these?" John asked. His tone suggested curiosity, not judgment, but either would have been fair. I'd had plenty of people question my "belief system" over the years, including my mother, who had believed Nonna's rules were optional, and my sister, who became fully anti-superstition after a degree in psychology.

"Well, veils are pretty, I already hate pearls, and I don't want to change my last name, so we're just left with the heirloom thing, which actually makes the most sense to me." It had always been as simple as that to me-a fact as true as the sky being blue. John nodded, taking it all in. Then he said the six words that sealed our fate: "I guess that does make sense."

I tipped across the booth and kissed him just long enough to know that the longer version would be very, very good. We parted and smiled teenage smiles, then I looked deeply into John's eyes. He had amassed so many gold flags by this point that I'd lost count. But this was my favorite, the sense that I could see all the depth, warmth, and pure goodness at his core. This is the feeling I've been waiting for, I realized in that moment. This is the kind of man who could be my person.

Three

Shea? You're freaking me out . . . ," said John.

The willows in the planter box beside me were poking against my arm, nudging me. And out of my left eye I saw a few tourists gawking. Even they looked nervous.

I could see straight through John's anxious eyes down to his cliff-teetering heart: he was dying inside and doing so while holding a piece of jewelry that would make any girl swoon. He must have been saving money for months, I thought. Maybe that's why he took the job coaching his school's Science Olympiad team? I focused back on John's sweet, hopeful face. His purchase was suspect, but my silence was rude.

"My answer is yes. I want to marry you," I said. "It's just . . ." I couldn't exactly say what I was thinking: Why did you pick this ring? Were you just not listening when I said no heirlooms no less than five times over the course of our relationship!?!?

John somehow stood up and scooped me into his arms in one motion. "Okay! Yes! But shit was that scary! Okay, I'm good. We're good." Then he stopped, looked directly at the ring, and closed the lid on the box. "Right. I should have said this first: I know the ring is vintage."

"An heirloom . . . ," I said, still reeling.

"Right, and I know what you've said about them." So he heard but ignored me? "But I searched for months, and I'm telling you, Shea, this is it. I saw dozens of rings. I even bought another one and returned it because it didn't feel right. I was looking for one connected to a sign because I know that's how you would have made this decision. That's why it had to be this exact ring, because-wait for it-I found it at the shop where you first said 'I love you.' Remember? That jewelry store in Hudson?" Now that Hudson Vintage Collectors inside the box made sense.

"That does seem like a sign," I offered slowly.

"No, wait, it gets better," said John, on a roll now. "I wasn't even supposed to be in Hudson, but my tire blew out on the drive from Saratoga to Manhattan, remember? I stopped for lunch at Baba Louie's while it got fixed. And earlier that day-I swear to God, Shea-I had booked our flights here, to New York, because I knew I was going to propose, but I still didn't have the ring! I walked up and down Warren Street, waiting for the car, until I just randomly stopped in front of the I love you spot. Just like you did that day. Remember? I had been talking about some field trip I was taking my students on? You grabbed my arm to stop me and said, 'I love you,' then we looked to our left, saw a window full of engagement rings, and died laughing." Of course I remembered. "Well, it was that window where an old man put this exact ring onto a stand the exact minute I walked by! And it was this rectangle cut like you told me you like! I mean, come on!" he finished. One of John's finest qualities was his inability to lie, or even exaggerate. These events had happened, all of them, and I could not deny that it was the kind of impossible coincidence that I'd follow almost anywhere. Almost.

"Emerald cut," I said. "And I will never forget telling you I loved you for the first time."

I took the black velvet box from John's still-trembling hands and opened it again. Perched inside was a positively gorgeous diamond surrounded by tiny baguette stones radiating outward, like a very organized starburst. I hadn't been sure exactly what kind of ring I wanted to wear when it was my turn, even after a decade of examples via every friend's bling-shot moment. For a few years, I even wondered if I could ask my future fiancé to propose with a watch like my best friend Rebecca had with her wife, Teres. But now that I saw this one, I understood the appeal.

"I knew you'd love it," John said confidently, if not 100 percent correctly.