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Shelly’s stopped wearing her wedding ring. But she keeps it in her pocket at all times, just in case someone from the insurance company does a surprise inspection or something. She tries to keep her mind off it, tries everything to distract herself.
She tries watching daytime soaps that she hasn’t seen since high school when she would cut school, and hang out on the torn couch in her best friend’s basement and smoke cheap pot. But when she’s idle, her mind doesn’t so much stray back to the ring as it does stay permanently fixed on it.
She tries baking. She’s never been a great cook. So it’s not a huge surprise when her first ever attempt at from-scratch cupcakes overflow their patty pans and the chocolate chips are hard as rocks and taste burnt while the cupcakes themselves still taste undercooked and doughy. She tosses them out with a heaving sigh, and reaches for the tube of cookie dough in the fridge.
She even tries to read a book – something she’s always hated to do – as she munches on cookies that never taste anywhere near as good as the ones they sell at the diner.
But nothing seems to be able to keep her thoughts away from the ring where it’s burning a hole in her pocket, and in the back of her mind.
So with a loud sigh, she gives up her feeble attempts at distracting herself, and resorts to the one thing she knows will keep her mind occupied.
She calls Norma with the intention of chatting for a few minutes, just long enough to hear the other woman’s voice, and give herself something else to think about; just enough to tide her over until she can see her after work the next day. But then Norma invites her over; insists really. And she’s already put Leo to bed for the evening. And she hasn’t yet learned how to say no to the older woman, especially when she puts on that husky quality in her voice that makes Shelly’s knees just a little bit weak.
So when Norma tells her that she’ll be there to pick her up in fifteen minutes, Shelly finds herself humming her agreement before she really has a chance to think about it.
Half an hour later, she’s curled up in a snug little ball on Norma’s couch, chewing on a chocolate chip cookie that is so much better than she could ever possibly make, with the other woman wrapped around her, running gentle fingers through her hair and over the skin of her neck.
The thought of her wedding ring doesn’t cross her mind for hours. Not until later that night, when she’s wrapped in messy sheets, with Norma’s naked skin pressed against her own, and the older woman’s fingers entwined with her own. She runs the pad of her thumb across Norma’s knuckles, and suddenly her mind flashes with visions of wedding rings; rings she’d be more than happy to have on her mind all day, every day. Her smile is ridiculously huge, and she turns her head slightly in an attempt to bury it in a pillow, to hide it from Norma.
Then her mind travels to that other ring. The one she left on the kitchen counter in her haste and excitement to meet Norma. But even the thought of Leo, at home in bed, drooling into his shirt, isn’t enough to dim her smile. Especially not after Norma presses her fingers into the ticklish flesh of her ribs, causing her to curl up into a ball in a fit of giggles, and says “Now what dirty thoughts could possibly have you smiling like that, I wonder,” the tip of her tongue brushing against Shelly’s neck.
It’s hours more before she thinks of the ring again. And when she does, she’s in her own kitchen, looking at the damned thing. But her mind doesn’t stay on it for long when Norma wraps her arms around her waist, pressing kisses along her neck instead of helping her make breakfast for Leo like she’s supposed to be doing.
Norma hasn’t worn her wedding ring since a month after Hank went to prison. Since then, she’s never given much thought to wedding rings, her own or anyone else’s. But since her ‘thing’ with Shelly turned into something more like a real, rather wonderful, relationship, she can’t really seem to help pausing in front of the window at the jewellery store.
Maybe one day, she’ll actually venture inside. But for now, it’s enough to imagine her future with the woman she loves, and to know that Shelly imagines it too.