omg FINALLY. I was about to call the cops.
You were not.
Megan
Truth. But I was worried. Are you okay?
I knew what she meant. Despite having egged me on, Megan was fully aware of the dangers of mixing too much alcohol with my condition. Her texts were full of humor, but legitimate worry underwrote all of them.
I’m fine. Hungover, but not dead. Won’t be drinking like that for a very, very long time.
Megan
Good. SO. HOW WAS HE?
I bit my lip. How was I even supposed to answer that?
Still trying to remember.
A few dots appeared while she wrote. Then:
Megan
Too bad. I hear congratulations are in order.
That was followed by a GIF of a bride and groom.
I stared again at my ring before typing back.
What do you know?
The dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again.
Megan
Girl, check your photos. Your stories were insane last night.
With a frown, I swiped to the app. How could I have had the wherewithal to post to social media about my escapades and not be able to remember a damn thing the next morning?
But there it was: the evidence that proved the ring on my finger wasn’t just a piece of new jewelry.
A selfie of me and the curly-haired stranger at Caesar’s Palace, laughing amidst the animatronics of the Fall of Atlantis show by the Forum Shops. Another of us somewhere on The Strip, his arm around my shoulder, nose in my hair. One more at a diner, where I had whipped cream on my nose and appeared to be laughing hysterically as he licked it off.
The man’s curls weren’t quite as dark as I remembered, more auburn under the bright lights of the diner. His eyes, too, weren’t black, but in fact a very dark brown, decorated with shadows and tiny lines at the corners that only tempered his joy with soulfulness. His chiseled, refined bone structure would have competed with any Greek statue had it not been tempered by a charmingly crooked nose and lips almost too full for his face.
He was full of nuance. He was alsogorgeous.
But it was really the change in my own face that made me stare. I was in the company of a beautiful man, yes, but it was more than that. The lines of worry that had decorated my face like icing for the last few years were gone. I looked like a normal girl of twenty-seven letting loose.
I looked happy.
Then I swiped to the last photo and, once again, found it difficult to breathe.
The stranger and I were outside a chapel, next to a man in a bad Elvis costume. My stranger—my Dionysus—had swept me off my feet princess-style, and my head was tipped back with a grin that threatened to split my cheeks while he stared down at me with an expression that looked like awe. Like I hung the moon and stars. Like he couldn’t believe I was his.
Both of us wore rings in the picture.
Rings like the one I was currently wearing right now.