‘Am I a terrible fiancé for making you choose your own engagement ring?’ he asked.
She bumped his hip with hers. ‘As far as I’m concerned it makes you an excellent fiancé. Imagine having to wear something the rest of your life that you didn’t get to choose yourself.’
In the end she chose a vintage opal, milky white with flashes of colour, set in old yellow gold. It was warm and full of character.
‘Do you wa
nt to wear it now or do you want it in a box?’ the shop owner asked them, snipping the thread of the price tag as Jannes handed over his credit card. Lara looked up at Jannes, a question in her eyes.
‘Up to you,’ Jannes said.
‘Then I definitely want to wear it,’ she said, holding out her left hand. Jannes felt a surge of possessiveness that he absolutely was not entitled to as he slipped the ring onto her wedding finger.
‘It looks good on you,’ he said, and before he knew what he was doing his fingers were brushing the nape of her neck and he was touching a gentle kiss to her lips and then to her knuckles. It was just to make their story look real, he told himself as he was doing it. If anyone was to approach the owner of the store about them buying their engagement ring, he would have no reason to think that this was more an arrangement than a relationship.
The owner cleared his throat, and Jannes realised that they were still staring at each other, their lips just an inch apart. Lara caught her bottom lip between her teeth and then turned away from him and turned to the owner of the store with a beaming smile.
‘Thank you so much. I love it.’
‘Well, I do like to see people fall in love,’ the owner said, giving Lara a wink. ‘I actually follow you on Instagram,’ he continued. ‘I just adore your feed.’
Lara fixed him with a radiant smile that almost made Jannes feel jealous.
‘That’s so nice of you to say. I’m going to follow you right back.’ And she pulled her phone from the back pocket of her shorts as she was speaking. Three taps later and she turned the phone to him. ‘There. Done. I’m going to tag you as soon as we make an announcement on there. But we’re off the grid for the weekend...’
‘Of course you are,’ he said, smiling at them both. ‘Now go celebrate that ring. Champagne all round.’
‘Join us?’ Lara asked, and Jannes had to suppress a laugh at the irrepressible way that she made friends.
‘If I had someone to mind the shop I’d be there,’ he said. ‘But you’ll just have to have one for me.’
After Lara had hugged him and snapped pictures of some pieces she wanted to feature on her feed, and had negotiated hard on the price of a pair of vintage platform sandals, they finally made it out of the store.
‘Shopping with you is quite the experience,’ Jannes said as they walked back on the main street. ‘I never asked you how work is going.’
‘It’s going well,’ Lara said, seizing on the safe topic of conversation and running with it. ‘I’ve been doing some training so I can open my own social media consultancy. There’s only so many brands I can partner with, but if I can train others to do what I’ve done, I can help more people to grow their businesses.’
‘Sounds like an interesting pivot.’
She smiled. ‘Well, I’m not going to stop what I’m already doing. I love the community that I’ve made too much for that. Actually, we probably need to talk about that. It’s going to look weird if I don’t post anything about the engagement. Do you mind if I post a picture of the ring?’
‘You’re doing it to save my sponsorship,’ Jannes said. ‘Of course I don’t mind. I’m grateful.’
‘No time like the present then,’ Lara said, positioning them so that the sea was at their backs and pulling Jannes in for a kiss, her left hand up to his face so that it was facing the camera lens. He glanced at the screen when she was done, at the ring catching the light where her knuckles rested on Jannes’s cheekbone, sunlight flaring at the side of the frame. Something inside him ached with wanting it to be real. They looked so happy, so right together, that he had to remind himself that it was all for show. That he could never really have the fairy tale that they were presenting to the world.
‘You know,’ Jannes said as they got back to his house, ‘we never had a chance to talk about why you even agreed to go along with this engagement charade. I don’t want to make you change your mind but I feel like I should be asking why.’
‘Was I not supposed to?’ Lara asked, tossing her tote back to one side as they walked through the house, heading for the deck at the back. ‘I thought you wanted me to go along with it. It wasn’t like I had much choice under the circumstances. I couldn’t really argue with a notice in The Times in front of Spencer.’
‘I know that,’ Jannes said, pulling loungers into the sun and arranging them facing out over the water. ‘But now we bought a ring and you’re talking about it on your feed—’
Lara frowned, and he didn’t think he’d ever seen her do that as much as he had this trip. It didn’t take a genius to work out that he was already hurting her, despite every intention not to.
‘I can’t believe you’re having a go at me for going along with it,’ she said. ‘Did you want me to make things harder for you?’
‘Of course I don’t,’ Jannes said, returning from the fridge with a couple of cold cans of lemonade and sitting on the edge of one of the sun loungers. ‘I’m not saying I’m not pleased you’re doing it; I’m just saying that I would like to understand why. You’re my friend and I guess I’m just...concerned. I don’t know.’
Lara collapsed in the lounger next to him, all-out scowling now. ‘You’re concerned by the fact that I’m doing the thing that you want me to be doing?’