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The first time Teresa gets proposed to, it’s with a toy ring from a cereal box.
Her and Greg both giggle at the timing and absurdity of it, because he’d been waxing poetic about spending the rest of their lives together just last night. He gets a serious look in his eyes as she snorts after mockingly slipping it on, though, and makes a clumsy, pretty speech about loving her and not being able to live without her. Promises dutifully to replace the plastic with a real diamond one day, even if this one is basically kismet. And Teresa’s sense is a bit fogged by the lingering haze of sleep and infatuation she hasn’t been able to shake off for months, so she agrees too easily. Ignores the twinge in the back of her head that makes anxiety coil tight and insistent in her stomach, because why do reality and pragmatism have to come into it now, when there’s a boy she might be in love with telling her he wants forever with her?
But days and weeks pass, and the dread starts spreading to her limbs and chest until it finally reaches the logical part of her brain. Maybe like a malignant tumor, or maybe like the engulfing responsibility she’s been overly familiar with since she was twelve.
Greg has two sober parents and an older brother. He has dreams and aspirations of going on adventures and learning to sail boats. Chasing horizons that are always another open ocean away. He wants a pretty type of freedom: one where he can whoop into the rushing wind and savour the sunlight on his skin and laugh with a family whose biggest concern is how to not drive each other crazy in the mornings. He’s good with her brothers, but she doesn’t really think he understands that she’s more like a parent to them. If Greg’s idea of freedom is the wind that fills a boat’s sails, Teresa’s is the anchor keeping the boat still.
It’s a nice dream, though, she thinks wistfully, looking at the way the plastic wraps around her finger. To have someone she can share the burden of everything with; someone to help bear the weight of it. To have someone who adores her, promises her future jewels with love in his eyes. Who wants to build a good life and share a happy future with her. The want of it aches so badly she’s breathless for a moment.
She gives the toy back. The reality is that neither of them have the means to get a real ring, even a cheap one. They’re definitely not ready for something as serious as marriage.
-
The second time Teresa gets proposed to, it’s without any ring at all.
She’s still reeling from a scheme and a lie that’s put a bad taste in her mouth, ready to make a decision on D.C. that she’s been putting off making for reasons everyone must know but don’t want to name. A decision she makes a little under pressure because she has been taking too long, and because, well, she doesn’t know if lying to her boss is the type of agent she wants to be.
When Marcus actually asks, there’s a part of her that feels like maybe she’s missed a step or a whole staircase during the progress of their relationship. A large part of her that feels unprepared for the fact that he’s even thinking of marriage, let alone actually asking her. And it’s a spontaneous, not very romantic thing at all, really: not with the timing or the location or even his speech, which isn’t really a speech at all anyway. It’s direct and sort of bold, but she relaxes a lot when he just wryly grins at her needing more time. Is even a little charmed by his fond reassurances, despite the weight that starts settling, large and heavy, on her chest. She wonders how long he thinks they’ve been ready for marriage, thinks of how he’d said, Wow, I wish we were somewhere more… romantic, and then wonders if he’d just been waiting for her to affirm D.C. so that he could do this next.
Something about the thought makes her apprehensive. Is this what life with Marcus will always be like? Constantly feeling like she needs to skip chapters and change books in order to catch up to the page he’s on? Will they always be sacrificing thoughtfulness for the sake of momentum? His proposal is impulsive and hasty, and maybe that’s what makes it genuine, but she thinks that there must be other ways to be honest. Ways that don’t make her feel like entire neural networks in her brain have snapped and left nothing behind but hollow voids. Ways that don’t make it seem like this is just a symptom of his fundamental need to tick off the next thing on his picket-fence-life checklist.
It would be a nice dream, though, she thinks mournfully, thumbing her bare ring finger. If she could only just love him. Be so impatient to have the things he offers her that nothing else is able to penetrate her certainty. If he could only just sweep her off to D.C. and make her forget everything that’s tying her to Austin. But her wanting to want the things he does isn’t a sustainable lifeline for a relationship, and her wanting to let go isn’t enough to make happen the clean break that this requires, and her not being wanted back isn’t enough to bleed her dry of her feelings.
She retracts both decisions, in the end. She had made them for all the wrong reasons, anyway, while waiting for that one thing to try and stop her. And he did try, and the way her heart soars, finally settles, for another man - well. That’s no foundation to have for something as sacred as a marriage.
-
The third time Teresa gets proposed to, it’s with another woman’s ring.
Insects hum around them between the swishing leaves from the wind, and she’s suddenly privy to a rare sight: Jane’s nervous. When he opens his mouth, his words are halting with emotion and slow with deliberation. Sincere with every ounce of intention he pours into them. They’re only just recovering from his kidnapping, and before that they’d been only just recovering from his disappearing act, and this is the first, most stable moment of peace they’ve been able to really have for weeks.
Tremors pass through his arms as he holds the ring up between them, and this is such an important, long-overdue conversation that she almost doesn’t realize where he’s even going with it (or maybe that’s just her brain refusing to get its hopes up by prematurely thinking a spade-like shape is a spade). He takes several fortifying breaths and says, it also represents meeting you. Says, I want to share it with you. Says, I want it to represent our future, together. And despite every misgiving thought she’s recently had about his commitment to her and the prognosis of their relationship, Teresa finds that she feels really good about his speech. Honored and respected and considered and loved.
It’s a big thing, that he wants to share his ring with her. Specifically because of its significance to his closely guarded past. Oh, Teresa’s sure he’s probably shared more of it with her than anyone else, but not nearly enough to trick her into thinking it’s a burden he’d wanted her to help shoulder. For all the things she knows, there are three gaps in between each: she doesn’t know where he goes when his eyes glaze over, or whether he still talks to his wife the way he used to. What he even says if he does. Sometimes he alludes to that point in time, but more often it’s to explain his feelings in the present rather than to share that part of himself with her. But she thinks the ring he holds to her now is a surrender of that. Can feel it in her bones.
It’s not a dream, she knows, sliding the ring’s unfamiliar weight onto her necklace’s chain, letting it rest next to her mom’s cross. Even her dreams used to laugh at her over the mere idea of this: that Patrick Jane would ever let her in on his life this intimately. Make her a part of his life so intrinsically: somehow integrating her into his past, present, and future. It’s more like a prayer answered; a long-standing wish granted. Everything she’s never let herself hope for too much; everything she never thought she’d ever have.
She accepts immediately, easily, because of course she does. It’s her, and it’s Jane, and it’s marriage.
+
The diamond he passes her glitters under the light. It’s huge, and lovely, and hers, and real.
Of course it’s real, he says softly, looking at her with surprise. Of course, to him, she supposes that it would be obvious that it’s real. But no one has gotten Teresa a diamond ring before; somewhere between joking with Greg and staring uncomprehendingly at Marcus, she’d stopped really thinking that anyone ever would. Even from Jane, she’d been expecting the usual simple band.
I can’t accept it, she tells him, because, really, she can’t. She doesn’t own any jewelry half as valuable as this ring and it feels wrong, too indulgent and self important, to think she can accept something like it from someone. From anyone, even him.
Jane disregards her protests completely. Says, You can accept it and you will, it’s yours, and watches with gentle, happy eyes as she lets herself get fully transfixed by it. And Teresa knows there’s no material way to measure being genuinely loved - knows it’s not about that at all. She knows it’s silly to get choked up over getting her own real ring. And one so beautiful, too.
Still, though. As they leave the county clerk’s office, she tugs on his wrist to make him stop walking for a second. Leans close and pushes herself up on her tip toes in order to press a soft, lingering kiss to his cheek.
“Thank you, Patrick,” she murmurs.
Jane closes his eyes at the contact, a sighing exhale making his shoulders droop at her voice. It’s more than relief, she thinks with wonder, more than contentment. Looks a little bit like bliss.
“I love you, Teresa,” he whispers, turning his head until their gazes lock and their noses nudge together. His breath fans over her face, making her shiver, and his voice is distinct over the background traffic. “There’s no ring or vow in the world that will ever represent the depth and magnitude of it with any justice.”
She slots their lips together and fights a fresh set of tears, flushing with pleasure. “I love you, too.”
He grins at her, boyish and burden-free, and taps his thumb lovingly on her chin. “Pretty lucky that we’re getting married then, huh?”