2019-10-13 - The Perfect One

Cracking open his eyes, Greg stretches, yawning gustily. The sunlight filtering through the blankets nailed over the windows of his bedroom makes him squint, and he reaches for the phone on his nightstand clumsily, snatching it up to read the time on the screen. "Ugh," he groans, tossing the phone away; it clatters quietly to the floor amid a scattered pile of hastily-shed clothing.

He turns his head away from the nightstand, and there Frankie is, laying just to his right. Just to see her there, existing, brings a sleepy smile to his face, and he watches her sleep for a time like a total creeper. Lulled by the quiet, rhythmic sound of her breath, he begins to sort through the enormous, chaotic storm of emotions he feels about her.

Love. Real love, not infatuation or obsession, however this began. The sort of love that would drive him to any length, bring him to sacrifice anything and everything for her. Something he fails completely to really understand, lacking the framework for it, and it gives him a helpless and terrified, fluttery feeling in the pit of his stomach. The way he feels about her bubbles up out of him, seethes like an uncontrollable force of nature, and nearly drives him mad with the desperate need to be close to her, always closer and closer. To protect and shelter her from all the evil in the world -- and in some ways, he still wrestles with the distant understanding that he should rightly be included in the list of things to protect her from. Yet never once has she looked at him the way other people do, the hooded looks of suspicion and no small fear. In her eyes he sees a different version of himself, and incredibly, he finds that he looks up to her vision of him, aspires to become worthy of the way she looks at him.

Today? Today is a day for being that guy.

So Greg leans carefully over, softly smooching her on the top of her head before stealthily extricating himself from the covers. A quick shower, some light layers against the chilly Fall air, and a short while later Greg is rolling down the streets of Gray Harbor on his skateboard with one thing in mind.

You can't have a fiancee without an engagement ring. I mean sure, you can, and she even said she'd be happy with a rubber band. Greg was pretty sure she might think that's cute today, but her feelings might change when she looks back after a decade, or two, or three. When you want to build a life with someone, he thinks, it's better to show them how important they are to you. To give them a memory that will last through the decades and the trials. To do that? It had to be just right. Perfect. No room for failure here, lest the looming animal sacrifice pit claim him in the end.

Greg's fairly confident you're supposed to already have the ring when you propose, so he's already starting from behind the line on this race. A broad grin spreads across his face at the memory of the night he proposed to her. From the outside, their relationship looks insane; Greg is keenly aware of this even without the surprised looks and comments from his friends. They just didn't get it, though. With him and Frankie, their deranged game of chicken -- neither willing to let the other see them swerve -- was how they let each other in. It was what two broken people needed at the start, to let down their walls. They were running out of places to crash headlong into together now. Greg worries about that, in a small corner of his newly-discovered heart; what if she got bored of him when all the excitement ran out of it? He pushes that doubt deep down, burying it under the context of their recent conversations across the pillows, shoves himself away from it with the push of his foot propelling him along the sidewalk. It would last because they would make it last, together.

The perfect ring. There is one good, reliable way Greg knows of finding exactly the thing he needs. A little knack, you might call it. So as he rolls along, he turns his concentration inward, homing in on the bright and shining something within himself. He summons that power forward, places it around himself like a mantle, and focuses on what he needs: Frankie's perfect ring. He forms the question in his mind, releases it towards that inner shine, and...

Nothing. Nothing at all. He frowns in consternation. His power hasn't failed him one time since his fate activated and brought him here. Well, except for that terrible fucking flu, and he better not be coming down with that shit again. No, it must be something else. Sure, the world seemed a little... smaller, somehow, today. But that wasn't really right, though. The world didn't change, just his sense of it, contracting to an area a fraction of the size of what he could 'feel' just yesterday. He didn't think that was the problem right now, though. Or at least not the whole problem. It feels... wrong. He thinks back to his adventure in the Veil. He hadn't been able to find the cylinder in the velvet bag that Quix wanted until he knew enough about the item to really picture it in his mind. He's pretty sure the vaguely ring-shaped generic construct happening just above the level of his subconscious isn't going to cut it. So sure, he needs to be closer, but he also needs to craft a better idea of just what he's looking for.

Coming into the busier part of town now, past his store and onward towards the strip mall, his eyes start to rove the shopfronts. He needs a real jewelry store. Something new for Frankie, no second-hand pawn shop garbage with bad juju all over it. Not for her. He reaches down to pat his pocket, reassuring himself of the dense bulge there. Ten thousand bucks in cold hard cash, the lion's share of his take from the Elma job. All nicely washed under the hood of his mostly legitimate business and ready to be spent safely. He's not sure how much rings really cost, and he doesn't want to ruin the vibe of his moment by having to go back for more cash like a tool. No amount was too much to spend, for her, but he frowns on the tail of that thought. He's pretty sure she wouldn't agree with that, not at all. She would want him to save his money against a greater need; hence the rubber-bang ring request. He thinks once again of their pillow talk, the tentative and hopeful plans for the future, and he realizes he should really be putting some money away if they have any thoughts about starting a family.

Alright, so it's not a ten thousand dollar ring, he decides. Maybe... five? Is that a good amount? He decides that five seems like a good number, and the concept of the ring in his head grows just a little tighter. She wouldn't want a huge, ostentatious rock either, he thinks. The picture in his head moves away from the classical imagery of one huge, bristling diamond, and his mental construct shines instead with many tiny diamonds in row. He thinks about Frankie, her fiery spirit, her beautiful red hair. Their kids will be gingers someday too. The vague circle in his mind becomes a band of rose gold, and as he ollies his skateboard over a median to land in the parking lot of the strip mall, it happens. That shining light within himself seems to fire off one thin beam, a thing not seen but felt, guiding him forward into the jewelry store. He leaves his skateboard at the curb, steps up, and walks through the door.

Inside, he ignores the sales manager who asks if he's looking for anything in particular. For her part, she sniffs, giving him a doubtful look before moving on to assist more likely customers. Greg doesn't need her help anyway; he looks across the store, and his eyes fall directly onto it. Sitting in the middle of a display under the glass counter top, a beautiful rose-gold engagement ring. A stripe of brilliant diamonds runs across its surface, clear and flawless. He walks up to the counter, pulls the wad of money out of his pocket, and slaps it down with an audible flap. "That one," he tells the sales clerk, pointing. He looks at the money, looks at Greg with his homeless-adjacent style of dress, and settles for cool detachment as he cashes out the ring and puts it into a bag with its authenticity paperwork, giving Greg his change.

Greg hurries out of the store, sitting down on the curb to snatch his prize from the bag. He hangs onto the paperwork, stuffing it into the pocket of his hoodie, but lets the bag fly away in the brisk Autumn wind as he clutches the little white box with Frankie's ring inside. He cracks the box open, holding it up to look at its contents with an elated smile. He spies the little price tag sticker that would have blown up his spot, since it quotes a price closer to six thousand than five, and plucks it off to let it too float away in the breeze. He snaps the box closed as he bounds to his feet, steps up onto his board, and starts to hurry towards home. In his eager haste, he barely gives a quick look around to see if anyone's watching him before he kicks his board up into an ollie that doesn't end, and the skateboard bears him up into the sky, accelerating towards Huckleberry and his trailer.

It's time to make good on a promise.