To Remember

The Prompt: “Pawn it.”

Her words assaulted my ears. She’d always been blunt, but this was too much. I held the ring in my hand, carefully, as though the slightest movement would break it. I knew diamonds didn’t break like that, but sometimes it doesn’t matter so much what you know as it does what you feel. “Jessie, pawn it.”

“I can’t.” My voice was small, hardly managing to bubble out of my throat. For a moment I thought it hadn’t, but Autumn grabbed it from my hand. “Hey, don’t!” I protested, but it was weak at best.

“If you can pawn it then the bastard did something right. Unless he gave you a fake ring. What do they call it, fool’s gold? The diamond version.” Autumn held the ring up to the light, as though she could tell the difference just by looking.

"Cubic zirconia," I told her.

“Whatever. I’m sure you could get something for it.”

“I don’t want to pawn it,” I said. I took the ring back from her rough hands and closed my fist tight around it. I needed to protect it. It was a diamond and like all diamonds, it was flawless. Just like our love was supposed to be, but wasn’t. If the ring realized that, would it crack? Shatter into a thousand imperfect pieces? It would have been poetic, but life so rarely is. “It’s mine.”

“It’s from him.” She reached for the ring again, but this time I blocked her. It was mine. “Look, you’ve got to move on. Selling the thing isn’t just for the money. It’s symbolic. Throwing your final token of his love away. Good riddance to him. It’s- what’s that word? The Buddhist thing. Cathartic.”

“It’s not Buddhist,” I told her, but she never listened.

“Whatever. Like it matters.”

Everything matters. Maybe not monumentally, maybe it won’t change your life, but everything matters. “I’m keeping it.”

“To do what? You can’t wear it. The bastard cheated and left. You can’t wear his ring.” Autumn scowled at me, her dark eyes severe and judging. No, that she was right about. I couldn’t keep wearing the ring. I didn’t want to. But I needed to keep it, perhaps locked away in some jewelry box. But I needed to know it was still here. A reminder. That’s all it was, a reminder. A reminder that at one point he had loved me. Our love had been pure, just like the diamond. Flawless. Nothing flawless ever lasts. Nothing flawless except a diamond, that is.

“Just to have,” I said. I opened my fist to see the light glinting off the tiny stone. “To remember. It wasn’t all bad.”