When I slip off the necklace and hold it out for him, Torrin steps back. “I can’t take your grandma’s ring.”
“Yes, you can.” When he doesn’t reach out for the necklace, I slip it over his head. “Hold on to it for me. As long as you have it, you have a part of me. And as long as you have a part of me, you can never really lose me.”
The necklace is shorter on him. The ring falls just below my chest, but on Torrin, it swings just above his heart.
He looks down at where it hangs. His forehead creases. “It’s a family heirloom. I can’t take it.”
I study it on him too. My grandma specifically wanted me to have it. She picked me over my five girl cousins, and I’m not sure why. Now that she’s dead, I guess I never will. But I love that ring something fierce, and I love this person something fierce, so it’s right where it needs to be.
“You can give it back to me one day,” I say, shifting. It takes a lot to make me shift, but I guess hinting at exchanging rings one day is up to the task. “You know, when the time’s right.”
I hear the screen door at my place whine open again. I’ve already earned myself a weeklong grounding by being what I guess is fifteen minutes late. I don’t want to tack another week on by being another minute late. “Good night. And thank you.”
I pop up onto my tiptoes and press a quick kiss onto his mouth before jogging down the sidewalk toward my house. After tonight, I feel more like I’m floating though. Run-in with Caden aside, this has been the best night of my life. It always will be. I know it.
He cups his hands around his mouth and shouts at me, “Wave at me when you get to your house, ‘kay?”
I flash a salute back at him. “Yes, sir.”
I’m in front of the vacant house beside mine when his voice rolls over me again. “Jade?”
“Yep?” I spin around, continuing to back down the sidewalk.
The look on his face stops me.
“Will you marry me?” Hands stuffed in his front pockets, barefoot, and his dark hair shining in the moonlight, he smiles at me. It almost looks apologetic. Almost but not quite.
“What?” My voice breaks over that one syllable.
He doesn’t blink. “You heard me.”
My heart starts firing like it’s trying to escape. “We’re seventeen. I must have misheard you.”
Right? I can’t have heard what I think I did. Right?
He shakes his head once. “You didn’t. I’m asking you to marry me.”
My throat runs dry. I’m not sure I can reply. “Torrin . . .”
“Not today. Not tomorrow.” His voice is so calm, like he’s been planning this for years and has been certain of this for decades. “But someday. I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
A breeze rushes over me, playing with the hem of my skirt and the ends of my hair. I know my answer. I know I want him. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to know this at this stage in my life, but I do. I want to spend the rest of my life with him too.
But I can’t just say Yes or I do or I will or whatever girls in this kind of a situation do, because I’m seventeen and I’m me and Jade Childs can’t be a teenage bride. She can’t even be a teenage fiancée. Can she?
God, I’m so confused. But I’m not confused about Torrin or loving him or wanting him forever. That’s the clearest thing to me in the whole world.
“Are you just asking that because we”—I clear my throat—“you know and the good Catholic boy you’re not is making you feel all guilty?”
He’s at least fifty feet away, but I don’t miss his smile. I couldn’t miss it if we were an entire solar system apart.
“No.” He pads a step closer. “I’m asking you to marry me because I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”
The wind keeps playing with me, toying with my mind the way it’s messing with my clothes. “Not today. Not tomorrow.”
Torrin’s head shakes. He steps closer. His eyes never leave mine. “Someday.”
When the next rush of wind hits me, I move. Toward him. Before he can get a few footsteps forward, I throw myself against him. He falls back a few steps then steadies himself.
My legs wind around him and my arms rope around his neck, then I’m kissing him. For anyone to see. For everyone to see. Right here on the sidewalk I grew up riding my bike down, drawing chalk hopscotch squares on, scraping my knees on. I kiss Torrin like my life depends on it, and in a way, it kind of does. Our lives have been tangled together for a long time—this is when I know that they’ll always be tethered together.
This moment, right here, is somehow even better than the one we just shared upstairs in his bedroom because this is when I feel it. Forever. It’s right in front of me. He’s right in front of me.
“JADE CHILDS!!!” My dad’s shout echoes up and down Madison Boulevard.
A few more dogs are yapping in yards and front windows now.