The Ring

Warning: Mild violence, swearing, and heartbreak ;)

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As they say, love is a double edged sword. It can be the most beautiful thing in the world, making you feel like the most loved and special person in the whole universe, but at the same time, it can be used to cause one of the greatest pains a human can ever experience in their life. Whenever someone asks me what I think about it, instead of telling them a simple answer, I tell them this story of mine:

I wake up to the warmth of the sun on my back. I stretch my hand to reach for Jake’s soft face, but I’m greeted instead with the sharp pain of a thorn piercing my hand. I wince and open my eyes to see what I just hurt myself with. My hand is bleeding, so I rush to the bathroom to clean and bandage the wound. After that, I clean my face, brush my teeth, and walk down to the first floor to search for Jake.

“Jake,” I call out, my voice still groggy.

I hear a loud thud coming from the kitchen as I go down the stairs. I sprint out as I yell Jake’s name to see if he got hurt. I get to the kitchen, but there’s no one there, just the soup pot sitting in the middle of the floor.

“How did you get here?” I murmur to myself as I put the pot back in place.

I’m hungry, so I open the fridge, but instead of finding the food like I had arranged it, I find every single item wrapped in aluminum foil. Besides that, I find a pink sticky note on the inside of the door saying, “Happy April Fools’ Day!!! P.S. Turn the note around.” I obey as I roll my eyes and keep reading. “I have a surprise for you. Just follow the clues. -Jake.”

I close my eyes and breathe deeply. I'm specifically mad at him because he knows very well how much I hate surprises and pranks. “Very funny of you, Jake… but you’ll have to wait until I’m done with the mess you made.”

After spending a long hour unwrapping and placing everything where it is supposed to be, I decide to eat some cereal and watch some tv. I had completely forgotten about Jake’s note until I saw another pink sticky note stuck to the controller. There’s an arrow pointing up drawn on it and a message saying, “Go upstairs to your closet.”

I sigh in frustration and go upstairs out of curiosity. I search in my closet for anything unusual and there I find it.

“Another sticky note?” I yell in frustration. I take another deep breath and start reading, “‘Great! You found the note. Now, I need you to get into some nice clothes --Not too fancy, but not too casual-- and head to this address: 145 Main Street. See ya there at 4. Jake.’”

I look up the address on my phone and see it’s a beach-front restaurant. To be exact, it is the restaurant in which Jake and I met over a year ago. Ever since then, we’ve been a happy, loving couple, and lately we’ve been planning on marrying sometime soon.

I gasp as this final thought comes to my mind. “Could it be?” I wonder to myself.

I rush myself to get showered and dressed and apply some make-up on. Not too fancy, but not too casual, like Jake said. I put on the red high-heels Jake gave me for my birthday a few months ago, take my purse, and head down to the car. The restaurant is over an hour away from home, but that doesn’t bother me. I have been waiting for this moment way too long, and I’ll go as far as I have to go to make it happen.

I pull up into the restaurant’s parking lot after a long drive and receive a message from Jake.

“Meet me inside <3,” it reads.

I check my make-up on my car’s mirror and head inside the restaurant. I find Jake seated at a fancy table for two, him wearing a nice shirt, a tie, and a pair of new khakis. He greets me kindly with a kiss and helps me sit down. He then opens a champagne bottle and serves two glasses for us two.

“Well, how’s your day been?” I ask shyly.

“Actually,” he says as he sips on the champagne. “It’s been pretty good today, you know? Woke up very early today to wrap every single item in the fridge in aluminum foil.” He chuckled. “What about you, Tesoro?”

I blush and feel my hands are sweating excessively. That is my special nickname. He used it the first time he asked me to be his girlfriend and only used that nickname again when it was for something intimate or extremely important.

Could it really be?

I let out an awkward giggle subconsciously and cover my mouth immediately after I noticed it. I clear my throat. “I-It’s been great,” I answer nervously. I smile.

The waiter comes and asks us what we want to eat. I order a salmon and Jake orders a ribeye steak. We both chat for a long while until our food comes to the table. We eat, keep chatting, and order some dessert and coffee.

“An espresso for me and a mocha for her, please” Jake tells the waiter. The waiter then takes away our menus and leaves.

“So, where are we going after this?” I ask Jake.

He opens up his wallet and hands me another pink sticky note.

“It’s a surprise,” I read.

“Yep. Just follow me,” he instructs me.

The dessert arrives shortly after and so we eat it as we chat some more. After we’re done, Jake takes my hand and guides me to the beach.

“Take off your shoes,” he tells me.

I do and he guides me along the shore, my hand wrapped in his. We walk along the beach. I take a deep breath as I take in the beautiful view. We finally get to wherever Jake was planning to get me. It is a small wooden pier.

“Come with me,” he says.

I follow him, but get distracted by the beautiful sunset and the faint pink and purple sky. The seagulls flying in the distance and squawking make the moment even more majestic and precious. I put out a wide smile and turn to see Jake. I let out a gasp as I see him.

Right at the end of the pier is him smiling and kneeling in one knee, holding a velvet little box. Words cannot express my excitement at the moment. Tears flow uncontrollably out of my eyes as I walk towards him.

“Ava,” Jake says in a deep, romantic voice. “Would you like to make me the happiest man in the world?”

“Yes,” I answer confidently and excitedly. “Yes, I do!”

He gets the box closer to me and opens it. What I see next breaks my heart into smithereens. I try to hold them back, but the sadness and anger are stronger than me. I break down on the floor, bawling my heart out as Jake tries to stop laughing at me and my stupidity.

Why was I so devastated? Well, once he opened up the ring box, instead of it being a ring inside (it didn’t really matter if it was plastic or gold, all that mattered was his intention), all I found was another pink sticky note saying, “Mega April Fools’ Prank!!! Did you really think this was real?”

“Did you see your face?” Jake asks as he half talks and half laughs. He points towards a hidden camera man who must have taken a video of everything. “You walked the prank! And the best part is that it’s all in video.” He got closer to me. “Why are you crying, Tesoro?”

I get up in a split second and punch him right in the face hard enough to make him fall without hesitation. Anger is boiling inside of me, but I manage to control it enough so that I don’t beat him up on the spot. Instead, I spit in his face and yell, “Don’t you ever call me that again, you fucking jerk!” I slap him on the face, this time not as hard. “And don’t you ever speak, call, or text me, you hear me?”

I feel the tears coming back, so I turn around and run to where I left my shoes as I cry hysterically. Jake is crying out to me. It was just a prank, he cries, I didn’t mean to harm you. Can we start over again?

I finally get to my car and lock myself in it as I let the tears roll out of my eyes. I don’t try to contain them. After five minutes, I turn on the car and drive the long ride home. I don’t put on the radio or anything. My head is already loud enough to be able to bear more noise. Jake calls me several times, texts me, but I don’t answer. Once I pull up to my driveway, I take my time to go through the voicemails of him and his texts.

“You had your chance,” I say as I read and hear his messages. “But you wasted it badly.” I leave a quick message to him saying that if he wants his things back, he can come get them from my driveway tomorrow morning, and then I click on the block-and-delete-contact button and the frenzy of notifications ends.

I turn off the car and go into my closet. I find an old bag and stuff it with his stuff. There is extra space in the bag even after filling it with all of his things, so I decide to stuff all the aluminum foil I’d taken over an hour to remove from the food into the bag. I then go outside and leave the bag right where I told him it would be. I go back inside to the kitchen and take out a gallon chocolate ice cream bucket out of the fridge, turn on the tv, and sit on the couch to eat and watch tv.

“Never will I ever commit this mistake again,” I bow to myself as I shove a big scoop of ice cream into my mouth. “Never again!”