This is kind of an answer to Rltsweetie22591 Proposal challenge in the Gio/Betty community forum. So I am dedicating this one to her.
THE RING
Some people ask me why I always carry that ridiculous plastic ring hanging from the cord of my portable computer wherever I go. When I reply to them that is the very reason of my own existence they don't really believe me. But it's the witness of a little story, one my favorites: the tale of a normal girl and a normal guy in a normal day like any other of their little lives.
—0—
The little transparent plastic ball rolled making a peculiar noise until it stopped right at the feet of Christina McKinney, the Meade Publications employee in charge of the clothing and accessory department. She bent down and picked the little ball and took it between her nice and slender fingers. She didn't like wearing ostentatious jewelry and nothing covered her fingers but one simple golden ring in her left hand. The ball seemed to carry some tiny items in its interior that were the cause of the strange noise it produced as Christina returned it to its owner: the woman who was sitting in the desk right in front of where she was standing. The lady had her hand under her chin, her eyes stared into the empty space. She was oblivious of what happened around her as her lips whistled some sad Tony Braxton melody. Christina took a deep sigh for it was very unusual of her friend to be sulking at her workspace. So she shook the little ball to advice her presence and said in her heavy scottish accent:
"Betty, this is yours, right?"
"Oh! Christina!" she said awakening with a start, "Thank you".
Betty Suarez, the assistant to Editor-in-Chief of prominent magazine Mode, Wilhelmina Slater, picked what the blond woman was returning to her and entertained her fingers with it as she noticed the papers Christina was carrying with her: "What's that?"
"Our wages, mail, the usual…" She dropped a few envelops in her desk but kept one particular postcard between her fingers staring at it intensively. Betty quickly opened her mail with a smile framing her metallic covered teeth and got distracted by her payment cheque. Even though any normal person couldn't tell behind her mismatched clothing style and her bushy messy long hair that she was very well positioned executive of one of biggest fashion magazines at Meade Publications, a prominent assistant to one of the most recognized representatives in the New York fashion industry and, occasionally, a correspondent writer to several of the Meade magazines. She noticed the figures printed in the paper, she had a very decent salary especially after Marc St. James, the former assistant to Mrs. Slater, quit his job a few months ago and pursued another job in another prominent fashion magazine. Christina hid the postcard in the papers she kept on her other hand. "Oh, probably you wouldn't like to see this one".
"Is that for me?" Betty asked raising her unkempt dark eyebrows above the rim of her glitzy red eyeglasses. She tried to pick her postcard from Christina's hands.
"Oh! no, no, no…" Christina kept the documents out of her reach. "I've seen you sad these few days and I don't think you are prepared to see this one".
"Come on, let me see it!"
With a deep sigh, Christina returned the postcard to her friend. Betty flipped it over a few times reading the word "Argentina" over the beautiful picture of a Tango dancing couple and a couple of sentences written on the back. "You mean this? Oh! I am through with him".
"Really? I thought you were all 'princess and fairytales' with the guy".
"The Guy…" Betty instinctively smiled at her choice of words. Placed the postcard on a drawer of her desk with the rest of her mail and kept playing with the ball, "The Guy…"
Christina got a bit annoyed at her spacing out again. "Yes the guy… the guy… you know, 'The Jesse guy', the old flat neighbor, the one with the singing voice".
"I know, I know. He is traveling the world on a tour right now. We're still pen pals".
She wasn't going to admit to anyone that after all that big crush she had about him for about a couple of years ago and all her talks about him she had her spell broken the very second his lips touched hers. Jesse, her former musician neighbor and one of her biggest romantic illusions since high school, was wonderful in her dreams and her fantasies but her heart didn't want to live reality with him and became pure stone the moment she tried to transform her dreams into something real.
"Then why are you behaving so oddly?" she placed both her hands on a corner of the desk. "Don't tell me it's about Daniel marrying that French woman and adopting that little French nephew of his".
"… and end up working for Wilhelmina Slater? Oh not at all. It was hard at first but I am getting used to it".
"It's being a year since then, I reckon. I always wondered why Daniel Meade never asked you to continue assisting him on the new Meade offices in Europe. Just imagine… Betty in Paris!". She made a gesture with her hands.
"Well, to be honest, he did ask. I refused", Betty rose from her seat and turned around her desk picking one family picture and showing it to Christina. "There's me and my life here and my family. Hilda got married and well… I moved back home. And there are my friends, you, your new husband…".
"Aww" Christina said looking at Betty's sister's wedding picture. "Everyone seems to be getting married these days. Even those I never thought would have it in them, like Marc and his boyfriend Cliff…"
"Yes, right after that new law was approved".
"… and Amanda with that millionaire. That was a surprise. Well, she did manage to get pregnant first".
"That still counts".
"What about you? Any plans on the matter?" She considered the question for a moment and hoped she didn't offend her little friend. "Well, we 'career girls' find it hard to find the time to place the search for the right guy anywhere near our professional lives, don't we?" She moved to the chair that Betty left abandoned and tried to sit in it. She jumped as she felt an object under her. She reached for it and noticed it was the same little transparent ball she had just picked from the floor. "What in heaven's name is this bloody thing?"
"Oh, that!" Betty took it from her hands and shook it like a little Mexican maraca. Though it wasn't exactly a musical instrument but one of those balls with little prizes that one can easily find inside any typical arcade machine. "This is a gift from someone at Coney Island Park back on the days when it was still opened".
"Oh well" She said uninterested picking up the little pile of unsorted mail that she still had to look through. "I better get going. See you later then".
As she saw Christina leave her desk she played with the little ball once again as her mind returned to her wandering thoughts even more as the word 'marriage' popped in her head. She knew she was barely twenty-seven years old but she wanted to get married like any girl. People just assumed she didn't. "Well people always keep assuming things about me, anyways", she thought as she squeezed the ball in her hand. Not many people really knew her and she was aware of it. Of course, her personality didn't help either. She was too shy and too beaten to let herself open to just anyone. Only one person cracked her protective shell and really managed to understand her, the very person she couldn't talk about that very subject.
'The Right Guy', she was surprised that Christina nailed it without even knowing it. That was the reason she had been sulking all the past few months. There were the occasional glances and the laughs and sometimes they managed to hang out. But there was also the lack of courage to ask for a second chance. And though most of the times she noticed a glimpse of hope, many times she feared neither of them had the strength to propose to start over again.
She took a deep breath. All that was left was to keep her mind busy with her fantasies walking around in circles inside an endless ring of regrets and nostalgia that did nothing but consume her and distract her from her daily activities.
"How stupid can a smart woman be?" she told herself. To have actually found him and so briefly and stupidly dismiss him from her life in such lamentable manner. Her own situation was her own foolish choice and that was the tragedy about the whole thing. To see him everyday and share the days and realize a little bit too late, that she had been the silliest girl in the planet for allowing him to be forbidden to her forever.
The little ball slithered from her fingers once again and fell breaking open in two halves spreading its content all over the floor. Betty collected the pieces and examined the little plastic circle that she had in the palm of her hands.
"Maybe it wasn't so late after all".
—0—
Betty's skirt fluttered gracefully as her body moved on the streets of New York. Her shiny yellow heels made loud continuous noises as she walked quickly and heavily on the pavement. The sun was intense above in the sky and she felt the blood boiling inside her slightly over-weighted body but the heat of the hottest day of that fall didn't change her resolution even though little drops of sweat were messing the bushy bangs that almost covered her eyes. She wasn't aware of the people around her as she walked in the streets. Her eyes located her destination among the many little businesses that were in that block. That one she knew she could recognize even blindfolded for she had been there many days of her life. She didn't stop for even a second as she quickly opened the door and transported herself with three huge strides to the other side of the counter. She grabbed him by his left arm and made him turn and face her.
"Gio, we must talk".
The man behind the counter wasn't any older than twenty-eight years. His dark silky hair parted on the side cascaded all over his beautiful head, the strands of hair loosely hugging the base of his neck and his forehead like little gentle fingers that silently caressed his brown toned skin. A few wrinkles appeared in that ample forehead of his, inherited from the long Italian lineage of the Rossi family along with their wits and hot temper as well as their noble heart.
"Hey, I'm in the middle of something here".
Betty looked down to his hands that were holding a couple of dollars. She quickly grabbed the bills and threw them inside the register.
"What are you doing?" he said as she took hold of his struggling hands and fought with him for a moment. He managed to set himself free and his eyes focused in that strange object shining on his left hand.
"Marry me".
His dark crystalline eyes shot open by the surprise. "What?!"
"You heard me", she said looking intently to his eyes.
"Betty, are you high on perfume again?!" He avoided her stare and tried to pull the plastic colorful toy ring from his fingers. "Darn it! It's too tight!"
"Marry me. You and I are meant for each other".
"You are out of your mind and I'm not marrying you. God! I can never get rid of you…"
She placed her hands around his biceps and raised herself on her tiptoes until she was on his same eyelevel of him "I don't buy your claims of getting over me. You haven't. I know the way you still look at me. You love me".
"I don't. Get over yourself" he held her stare defiantly but she didn't budge.
"You love me and I love you. And I know you know it".
"You are crazy" it was his turn to avoid her stare again but it was hard to focus somewhere else but her rosy lips that smiled in such determinant manner hypnotizing him, seducing him, inviting him to kiss her as he had desired every single day since the first time he had the fortune to meet her. "Everything about you is so sudden and so unpredictable".
"Just like you when you told me you wanted to be my guy, when you wanted to be The Guy".
"That was then" he frowned his eyebrows. "way before you sent me packing all the way to Rome with my tail between my legs".
"Yes, yes" she said dismissively, "minor details. Past is past and you forgave me long ago. But this is us now and it took me a lot of time but I know there is this 'wonderful thing' going on around us when we are together. We are back where we started. You and I right now. I just… didn't got the courage to take the first step. But I am not waiting anymore. So here I am. And I choose to be and to live with you".
"Betty, there's just…" he let out with the last of his strength to fight.
She interrupted him showing her teeth and her bracers and a glittering smile on her lips: "Did I mention that I love you?"
He couldn't help but laugh at her.
"You are not very eloquent for being a writer".
"But I can be very convincing though, eh?" she kept smiling happy to break through him.
"Ha!" he mocked as he stared at her in silence. He found his own reflection in those questioning eyes in front of him. He saw the future he always wanted and he saw the determination he loved in her, the determination he many times encouraged and fed.
"So?" she asked.
"So what?"
"Is that a yes?"
"Do you think I can just… just forget everything, put an end to my plans…"
"I 'woof' at your plans. Forget your plan! I was in them before and I am sure you want me to be in this plan and the next and the next after that."
He was getting a bit upset at not being able to be mad at her.
"This is madness" was all he could say.
"Isn't it?" she laughed and grabbed both the sides of the neck of his polo shirt and, pulling him down to her, she kissed him hard on the lips. She pulled out with a groan as she felt his vengeful bite. "What was that for?"
"That was for breaking my heart".He pulled her closer in an embrace, squeezed her bottom and spanked her with his right hand without taking his eyes off her. "That was for still living in 'Betty Suarez Land'".
"Ouch!" she complained.
"And this is for always finding a way to drag me into your world". He kissed her deeply holding her steady in his ever strong and protective arms.
"Ahem!"
They both opened their eyes and looked on the direction where the voice came from. An old woman was standing right in front of them across the cashier register. Gio arched his back and dared to make his eyes travel further, finally realizing the amount of people that had always been inside the deli and had been staring at their little scene. He noticed they were oddly smiling at them and totally amused. He let a whistle escape his lips.
"Could I get my change, please?"
Betty and Gio let go of their embrace. And Gio hurried to return the old lady her money.
"The whole show is courtesy of the house, Mrs Fields. Here, take a free cookie. Please return back".
She winked at him and gave Betty a smile.
"Oh, I definitely will, young lad".
The woman closed the door and the rest of the clients returned to their own little worlds. Gio turned back to Betty.
"And you, Suarez, you and I must talk".
She jumped clapping her hands.
"Okay, it's a date, then: your apartment at eight".
"What?!" he screamed in frustration. That girl was driving him mad.
"Don't think you'll get out easy on this one. I am determined to be your woman and I have finally learned to be as stubborn as you".
"Betty!"
She walked to the door and turned before leaving "See you tonight, Gio Rossi… de Suarez".
"Betty!!"
She closed the door behind her and disappeared. He looked at the door and then at the people in his deli. He dropped his shoulders and let go the air inside his lungs with a deep sigh finally staring at his left hand.
"And how on Earth do I take this damn thing off!"
—0—
That must have been his weird way of saying 'yes', for they never tell me what happened that night after eight at his place. They just smile at each other and tell me that all I have to know is that two years later I was born and I was their precious gift from life. And I can't stop asking them to retell the same tales over and over again even though I've heard them for more than twelve years: of how my mother proposed to my father and how they traveled the world… especially how they met each other. Yes, that's my favorite part. But that one, that's another story…