Neither of us spoke for a while.
Then I started laughing through my tears.
Robert stared at me.
“What?”
I wiped my eyes.
“You idiot.”
A small smile appeared on his face.
“I know.”
“Thirty-one years, and you still think you have to hide things like this from me?”
“I was ashamed.”
“Well, I spent two years blaming my thighs, my wrinkles, my stomach and gravity.”
That actually made him laugh.
And strangely, hearing him laugh made me laugh harder.
Saturday evening, we still went to the hotel.
The surprise was already ruined, but I pretended not to know half of what he had planned.
Our children were there.
Old friends were there.
The same song we had danced to at our wedding began playing.
And inside that little black box was not some secret gift for another woman.
It was a new wedding ring for me.
Inside it, Robert had engraved three words:
