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.He hands it to me and watches eagerly as I open it.There’s a necklace inside.I scoop it up to examine it.An extremely large oval purple stone dangles from a thick gold chain.“That’s so pretty,” I say.“Do you like it? My mom helped pick it out.”I’m not surprised.It looks like something his mom would pick out.She doesn’t have bad taste—she’s an attractive woman who dresses well—but she’s over fifty and likes the kinds of things you’d expect a woman her age to like.Which aren’t necessarily the kinds of things a twenty-five-year-old would like.“If you’re not crazy about it, we can exchange it for another color or something completely different,” Tom says.I once returned a gift he gave me.He had told me I could, but when he found out, he looked so hurt I resolved never to do it again.Not unless it was something so awful and so expensive it would be crazy not to.This necklace doesn’t qualify as either, so I say firmly, “It’s great.I love it.Tell your mom I say thanks.”His face lights up, and I’m glad I went with the pretend-you-like-it approach.It’s a perfectly nice necklace, and I’ll find times I can wear it—mostly to his parents’ house, I’m guessing.Anyway, the point is he took the time to go shopping with his mom to find me a gift.I’m lucky I have a boyfriend who cares enough to do that, who doesn’t just grab something at the drugstore or hand me a twenty and tell me I should go buy myself a nice present.He cares.I put it back in the box, then reach for my fork.“Hold on,” Tom says.“That was just your birthday present.I still have to give you your anniversary present.” He starts to slip his arms out of the jacket.“Um, Tom?” I say as the jacket comes off.“If this present involves your going full monty, maybe it should wait until we get back to the apartment.Not that I don’t love the idea—”“No, that’s your third present,” he says with a laugh.The jacket’s off, and he’s unbuttoning his left sleeve at the wrist and rolling it up.“Then why are you getting undressed?”“Hold on.You’ll see.” He keeps rolling up his shirtsleeve.“You got a flu shot? For me? Aw, honey!”He shakes his head, preoccupied: he’s rolled the fabric so tight it won’t budge, and he swears and struggles with it and has to pull the shirtsleeve down again.He’s more careful this time to keep the folds smooth, and he’s able to pull it up almost to his shoulder.He extends his arm out to me, twisting it a little from the shoulder so I can see the exposed area above his elbow.It’s a little pink and a little inflamed, but even so, I can clearly make out the letters of my name written in dark black ink.No, not written.Tattooed.Tom’s had my name tattooed on his arm.KeatsLike that.* * *And I had thought it was hard to pretend to be happy about the necklace.He’s waiting for my reaction, his excited eyes flickering up to mine and then back down to his arm like a little kid who’s painted a picture on a wall and isn’t sure whether his mom is going to praise him or punish him.“Wow!” I say after I’ve opened and closed my mouth a couple of times without saying anything.“This is.Incredible.I can’t.Believe it.” I sound like I’m talking in Morse code.I clear my throat and get out an entire “When did you do it?”“Yesterday.” He beams.“Remember how I said my arm hurt? This was the real reason I didn’t want you to touch it and why I came to bed after you and was wearing that long-sleeved shirt all night.I had the bandage on underneath.It really hurt.I had to take a painkiller to get to sleep.”I hadn’t even noticed.I think I was asleep by the time he came to bed.“I wasn’t really having dinner with my dad,” he adds.“That was all a setup so I could sneak out and do this.But Dad knew he was supposed to cover for me.”“Your parents knew you were getting a tattoo?” I’m surprised.The Wellses are fairly conservative people.Politically and every other way.It’s one of the reasons I’ve avoided getting them together with my parents, who are as liberal as they come.Another reason is that my parents aren’t at all interested in getting to know them.Tom smiles sheepishly.“Not exactly.I only told them I was getting you a surprise present and didn’t want you to know.”“So they don’t know you got a tattoo?”“Not yet.” He wiggles his arm a little.“But they won’t mind.Dad got one when he was in the army, so he can’t really have a problem with it.Anyway, forget about them—what do you think?”His face is so hopeful, so excited, so eager for assurance that he’s done something wonderful.I feel sick.I don’t want my name tattooed on Tom’s arm.He should have asked me first.It’s my name.If he had, I would have told him not to do it.But he went ahead and did it without asking, and now it can’t be undone.“It’s such a surprise,” I say.The waiter comes by to fill our water glasses, and I see him look at Tom’s arm and his eyebrows soar.He grins at me and briefly touches his hand to his heart as he moves away again.I guess he finds the gesture touching.Which probably means I should.I reach across the table and squeeze Tom’s extended hand.“I can’t believe you did that for me.”“Ten years, Keats,” he says and finally lets go of his sleeve.It shifts down so it covers the tattoo, although the fabric is still all bunched up around his elbow.“I wanted to do something really special.I mean, once you make it an entire decade, you know it’s forever.I had to do something to honor that.”Most of the girls I know have gotten tattoos.Izzy once told me she has one—“but it’s private, just for Lou,” she said coyly and never did say exactly where on her body it was or what it looked like.I’ve thought about getting one myself—maybe a little rose or snake on the back of my shoulder.But I’ve never thought for a second about getting Tom’s name tattooed on my body.Now, as he gazes at me hopefully, I realize that he wants me to do what he did [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]