“So… how are you and Danary?”
“…”
“I heard she met your parents already.”
“…”
“Are you actually… lovey-dovey with her?”
“…”
“It seems like something she would like, but I could never imagine you acting like that.”
“…”
“Come on, just a few words. That’s all I need.”
I gave a highly irritated sigh and came to an abrupt stop mid-walk. For some reason, Benedict came to my apartment this morning right as I was leaving and insisted on accompanying me to work.
Benedict held up his hands in mock surrender when I spun around with a harsh glare. “Look, I was just curious. It’s been over two weeks since I found out, and I haven’t bothered you once since then. The least you could do is satisfy my curiosity a bit.”
“…”
“Just a little.”
“We’re… good…”
He was staring at me with such big, round, questioning eyes that I was only able to bite out two words. I immediately spun around on my heel and started to make my way toward my office building again, unable to handle his intense stare any longer.
Why was it so hard for me to talk about my relationship with Danary? I had originally thought that it was simply because I was a private person, but now it was almost as if I wanted to selfishly keep all the adorable sides of Danary a secret to myself. I didn’t want to share her at all, not even in the slightest.
Benedict chased me all the way up to the top floor of my building, huffing and puffing when he finally reached the entrance of my office. “C-come on, don’t be like that. I’m genuinely curious.”
I ignored him as I rounded my desk. I slipped off my coat and carefully plucked off my gloves one finger at a time, tossing all my clothes to the side.
Benedict trudged into my office and flopped down onto the seat across from my desk.
“Don’t you have your own company to run?”
He shrugged and thumbed through the stack of files on my desk. “Not particularly… Besides, my secretary is very…”
His voice trailed off before he finished his sentence. I looked up from the file in my hand in question.
His jaw went completely slack as he stared straight at me with a flabbergasted expression. Then, his head suddenly started whipping back and forth between my hand and my face, pointing at me incredulously without any words coming out of his mouth.
I rolled my eyes at his melodramatic behavior and spat out, “What is it?”
He made a loud wheezing noise before finally shouting, “I thought I was supposed to be your best man. How could you get married without me?!?”
My eye twitched as his nonsensical blabbering. “Benedict… You’re walking on fucking wafer-thing ice… You better start making some sense before I throw you out.”
“What do you mean I’m not making sense?!? You’re the one wearing a ring.”
A ring? I shifted the folder between my hands to search for what he was talking about.
Why would I have a ring if I’m not-
Surely enough, there was a heavy silver band resting on the ring finger of my left hand. My eyes widened as I took in the detailed engraving all around the band. Wasn’t this the ring that never left Danary’s…
Oh god…
All of a sudden, a rush of memories from my dazed-out state at the peak of my fever came back to me.
“That was my older brother… He died a couple of years back and gave me the ring. It’s the only thing I have left of my family…”
“I want you to keep it. It’s an heirloom that has been passed down from the men in our family for generations.”
“You’d stay with me forever, right?”
“I’ll be waiting for a grand proposal.”
I clutched my forehead as it all came back to me. How could I forget such a thing? Did Danary notice that I didn’t remember? She hasn’t been acting like anything out of the normal, but was that because she thought it would be better just to pretend nothing happened?
“Rafael, you good there?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and painfully confessed, “No… I’m engaged… or half-engaged at least… and I forgot about it… and my fiancee… or sort of fiancee… fuck…”
Benedict echoed my words in questions as he stared at me with as much confusion as there was rumbling inside of me.
I sighed heavily as I plopped down into my seat, holding my head that was painfully overwhelmed with guilt. Danary didn’t deserve to be treated like that. How could I haphazardly declare a proposal like that?
“Rafael… You are engaged with Danary, right? And not some random chick, right?”
I groaned tiredly. “Yes… But I practically demanded for her hand in the haze of my fever…”
“…”
“Say something, Benedict… You have never been one to be quiet…”
“Um… I just can’t quite see what the problem is… I mean… you want to marry her, right?”
“Yeah…”
“And she gave you a ring, right? So she must not hate the idea of being married to you…”
“I suppose…”
“Then, what’s the problem? She wants to marry you, and you want to marry her… I mean it might be a bit fast for a normal relationship, but neither you nor Danary are all that normal…”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek as I contemplated his words. He wasn’t wrong, but it still felt like I had done from wrong, something bad enough for a dense cloud of guilt to hang heavy on my head.
“Look, if marriage is still too early, but you don’t want to break off the engagement, why don’t you just stay engaged? It’s not all that weird for couples to be engaged for many years before marriage.”
I sighed heavily. “That’s not the problem… I’d be willing to marry her right now if she allowed me, but I promised to take things slow for her at the start of our relationship and… and… and I basically forced her to give me her ring during the haze of my fever. I didn’t even get on one knee or give her any ring back. She deserves more than that.”
Benedict fell silent for a moment with a serious thinking face. Several minutes passed before he spoke up again, “Then why don’t you just get her a ring and give her the proposal she deserves then? You want to be with her, and I doubt she’ll reject you, considering the fact that she has given you a ring already.”
Would she actually like that? I knew that she said that she would wait for me to give her the “grandest proposal” in return, but did she not just say that in the heat of the moment to quell my delirious self?
“That ring on your finger has some significance to it, right?”
I looked up at him in confusion and slowly nodded my head. “It’s a family heirloom of hers, the only thing she has left of her family after she was orphaned.”
He whistled lowly. “Shiiit, I didn’t know it was that heavy… But that’s more than enough to say that she’s serious about you. No one would ever give up such a thing if they didn’t want to spend the rest of their lives with that person.”
I nodded understandingly. Oddly enough, for someone who was such a man whore, he was actually being quite helpful.
Glancing at my calendar that was open on my laptop, I mindlessly tapped my finger on my desk, lost in thought. With my mother’s self-proclamation of having Danary accompany me as my date to the opening ceremony of my building, I had just under a week before she would be publicly introduced as my partner.
“How long do you think it would take to get a custom ring made?”
“Huh?” Benedict looked up at me in surprise. “Probably more than a few weeks for a notorious jeweler, but if it’s you who’s ordering it, I’m pretty sure they could get it finished within a day with the right incentive.”
I nodded silently and started collecting my items again, picking up my coat from the chair and searching for my wallet.
“Wait just a moment, where are you going? I thought we were still trying to figure out what you were going to do with this whole issue.”
Pulling my arms through my coat, I replied bluntly, “We already figured it out. I’m going to get a ring made and propose to her before the gala on Saturday.”
“Wait, wait, wait! Rafael, are you sure you thought this through? I know I said all of that, but are you sure this isn’t too fast? I was thinking that you were going to ask to marry her like a month from now. Not this week!”
Straightening back out, I replied firmly, “I’m sure about Danary. It may have taken me 29 years, but I finally found the one for me, and I’m not letting her go.”
Benedict floundered, “Um… Uh… But we’re no longer going to be single bros anymore! Who’s going to be my wingman anymore?!”
I scrunched up in distaste at his words and muttered lowly, “All the more incentives to get married…”
“But, but, but, you can just leave like this. You’re supposed to be working!”
I eyed him in disbelief that the man who wasn’t even at his own company’s building on a Monday morning had the audacity to reprimand me about leaving my company unattended.
He held up a frantically waved a bunch of folders in front of me. “Look! So much work to do and so little time to do it. Maybe it’ll be better to push proposing off to some other time.”
“Benedict! Weren’t you the one encouraging me to reciprocate her proposal?” I snatched my folders out of his hands with a scowl, not wanting any more of my papers to fall onto the ground.
He pursued his lips as his expression fell. He released a soft sigh and confessed, “I just thought I had a bit more time before I lost you… Look, I’m happy for you and Danary. I really am. But… It just feels like I’ll lose you after you two get engaged and married… Even now, you two are only in courtship, and I feel like I barely know you anymore. You’re showing all these sides that I have never seen before, and it’s both an amazing thing and something I’m a bit afraid of..”
“But I’m still me?”
“Yeah, I know… It’s just that everything is changing too fast. I used to be able to barge into your office or home and have no problem dragging you out to dumb things, but now I don’t even know where you are most of the time…”
He had always been the one seeking the other’s presence, but I supposed I knew what he meant to some degree and, at the same time, still didn’t understand it at all.
I never really had anyone I would consider a friend before Benedict. He stood up against others who tried to bribe him into selling out my secret when we were in college. Even now, he has always been looking out for me, even if some of his antics cause more trouble than good. He was the only one who befriended me without wanting anything in return or trying to backstab me in an attempt to bring me down.
I sighed and dropped the files onto my desk as I turned back to face him. “Then come with me to pick out the ring… You’re going to be my best man when I do get married anyway…”
He immediately lit up at my words, “Really? Can I really come along?”
I nodded warily. “Yes… but just promise you won’t make any weird comments.”
He happily jumped out of his seat and bolted out of the room with my car keys.
I chuckled at his dramatic antics as I slowly made my way out behind him.
I used to think I was all alone by myself when I was younger. All I knew how to do was study hard to take over the family business. The other children hated me, so I never had any friends. And even though my family had always been there for me, it had always felt like they were always more than an arm’s length away.
But I had people around me now. A family who didn’t tiptoe around me anymore, and friends who stuck up for me, and a partner who loved me despite my flaws.
Sometimes it l almost all felt like a lie to me, but then I would take one look at Danary, even just a single thought of her or the mere passing of her name, and I would know that it was all real.
She brought warmth to my life.
Something that I never knew I yearned for.