When the park was quiet again, they faced each other.
"What's gotten to you?" he asked, pushing some hair off her cheek and brushing the lace of her mask at the same time. Sometimes he hated that thing, hated the way the lace tickled him when they kissed, hated how it kept her from him. "You're usually not this absent-minded."
She gave him a look he couldn't decipher and said, "It's real."
He looked confused until she held up her wrist, the pearls gleaming in the dappled shadows of the park's tree-lined pathway. "The bracelet? Of course it's real." He was confused. What kind of guy gave a girl fake jewelry if he could easily afford the real thing?
"'Of course'?!" She sounded slightly hysterical. "I thought it was costume jewelry! Pretty and sentimental, but worthless. You can't get me REAL pearls!"
He looked at her oddly. "Why can't I?"
"You're just eighteen! You're still in school; you don't have a job! What?" She paused.
"Seventeen," he corrected. "My school was ahead of yours so I got bumped up a grade.
"Oh." She looked like this new information had superceded her interest in ranting at him, for which he was grateful.
"Look," he said, "if you're worried about money, my family can afford it. In fact, my mother tells me I need to spend a lot more if I'm going to keep up with my sisters. If you're worried about something else, don't be. I love you, and I want you to have it. If you just don't like it, I can get you something else."
She was looking up at him with a startled expression. "That's the first time you've said you loved me."
"Is it?" He looked uncomfortable, shifting his eyes away. "I've thought it before."
"How can you know if you love me already?"
He shrugged. "I just do." They stood in silence. "How can I prove it?" He wanted her to believe him.
"Find me," she said, and then disappeared into the dark.