And as he kissed her, he took a small box out of his pocket, held her close to him, opened it with one hand, and slipped a ring on her finger. She didn't know what he was doing at first, and then she realized and looked down to see it. It was an absolutely beautiful engagement ring he had picked out on his own, and slipped out of a Tiffany box. He had been planning this for months.
“Oh my God, Chris, what are you doing?” She looked stunned.
He got down on one knee before he answered, and gazed at her solemnly from the floor. “I'm asking you to marry me, Sabrina. I love you more than anything in life. Will you marry me?” As he asked her, her eyes filled with tears. This was not what she had in mind. It was just one more shock. And she had had far too many in far too short a time. From their mother's death to Annie's blindness, the assault on Candy, and now her father marrying a girl half his age whom they had always thought of as a slut-it was just too much. She wasn't prepared to marry him. She wasn't ready. She just wanted to get through this year of taking care of Annie and living with her sisters. And maybe after that she and Chris could go back to their old life, but not get married. She didn't feel ready for that yet, and maybe never would. She loved him but felt no need to marry him. What they had now was enough for her.
She took off the ring and handed it to him with tears running down her cheeks and sorrow in her heart. “Chris, I can't. I can't even think straight right now. So much has happened in the last year. Why do we have to get married?”
“Because I'm thirty-seven, you're thirty-five, I want to have babies with you, we've been together for almost four years, and we can't wait for the rest of our lives to grow up.”
“Maybe I can,” she said sadly. “I love you, but I don't know what I want. I loved what we had before, each of us living in our own space, being together whenever we wanted. I know it's been a little crazy living with my sisters, and I love you. But I just don't feel ready to make that kind of commitment for the rest of my life. What if we screw it up? I see people in my office every day, just like us, who thought they were doing the right thing, got married, had kids, and then everything went wrong.”
“That's the kind of chance we all take,” he said, looking anguished. “There are never any guarantees in life. You know that. You just have to take a deep breath, jump into the pool, and do your best.”
“What if we drown?” she said miserably.
“What if we don't? But one thing I do know. I don't want to go on like this. Life is starting to pass us by. If we wait long enough, we'll be too old to have kids, or you will. And we'll never have a real life. I want that with you now.” His eyes were pleading with her, and his heart sank as she shook her head.
“I don't. I can't.” She looked panicked. “I won't. I'd be lying to you if I said I was sure.”
“You don't have to be sure,” he tried to reason with her. “We just have to love each other, Sabrina. That's enough.”
“Not for me.”
“What the hell do you want?” he said, starting to get angry.
“I want a guarantee that it's right.”
“There are none.”
“That's my point. I'm too scared to take the chance.” He was still holding the ring, and then he slipped it back into the box and snapped it shut again.
“I love you. But I'm not sure I'm ever going to want to get married,” Sabrina admitted to him. She couldn't lie to him. She just didn't know, and she didn't feel ready to be engaged, no matter how much she loved him.
“I guess that's my answer,” he said, but he wasn't sorry that he'd asked her. Sooner or later he had to know. He turned as he stood in the doorway. “You know, I think your father is a fool to do what he's doing, especially so soon after your mother died, and with a woman younger than you. But however stupid it may seem to us, at least you've got to respect the guy for having the balls to take a chance.”
Sabrina nodded. She hadn't thought of it that way, and she was furious at him. But Chris had a point. Her father still had enough life in him to take a chance. “I guess the bottom line is, I don't have the balls.”
“No, you don't,” he said, then walked out of her bedroom, closed the door, walked down the stairs, and out the front door. Instead of getting engaged, as he had hoped they would, they had broken up. It was not the New Year's Eve he had wanted or planned. He had dreamed of this moment for so long, and her reaction to it had pushed him right over the edge. And in her room, Sabrina sat on her bed and sobbed.
The others didn't hear about it until the next morning, and when Sabrina told them, they were shocked.
“I thought you two were upstairs all night, like lovebirds,” Tammy said with a look of amazement.
“No, he was gone before one o'clock. I gave him the ring back and he left.” She looked heartbroken as she sat at the kitchen table with her sisters, but she knew she had done the right thing. She didn't want to get married, even to Chris. For her, what they had now was enough. More would be too much.
They were all depressed about it when they heard what had happened, but no one as much as Sabrina. She really did love him, but she just didn't want to get married, and those things couldn't be forced, even with a lovely ring, and a great guy.
Between her breaking up with Chris, and their fury over their father getting married, January was a gloomy month on East Eighty-fourth Street. Chris never called her again, and Sabrina didn't call him. There was no point. She had nothing new to say. And he was still too upset to call her. He was devastated by her refusing his proposal. And he didn't want to resume the same relationship they'd had for years. He wanted more. She didn't. And suddenly there was nothing left to say, nowhere to go, but gone.
All of them were in the doldrums for the first few weeks of January, and then slowly things began to pick up. Annie had dinner with Brad several times. They always had a nice time. He had talked her into taking the sculpture class, and she was actually enjoying it. And even without being able to see what she was doing, her work was surprisingly good. He told her about a lecture series he was trying to organize, centered on cultural things, theater, music, and art. He asked her if she'd consider giving a lecture on the Uffizi, and she was excited about it. She typed the entire lecture out in braille. She gave her first talk at the end of January, and it was a big success.
Candy left for Paris in the third week of January, to do the couture shows. She was going to be Karl Lagerfeld's bride for Chanel. They paid her an enormous fee to be exclusive only to them, and she had a ball staying at the Ritz. And on the plane coming back from Paris, she met a man. He was working as a photographer's assistant, as part of a graduate program he was in at Brown. He was twenty-four years old, and they laughed all the way from Paris to New York. His name was Paul Smith. He was getting his master's in photography in June. He was planning to open his own photography studio after that. He said he had worked on a shoot with her in Rome two years before, but he had been a lowly intern then, and they had never met.
She told him about Annie, and losing her mother in July, and then she told him that her father was getting married in two weeks, to a girl who was thirty-three years old.
“Wow, that's heavy,” he said, looking sympathetic. His parents had gotten divorced when he was ten, and both of them were remarried. But he said his stepparents were cool. “How do you feel about that?” he asked about her father's remarriage.
“Actually, like shit,” she said honestly.
“Have you met her?” he asked with interest.
“Not really, not since I was a kid. My sisters always called her ‘the slut.’ She tried to steal my sister's boyfriend when she was fifteen.”
“Maybe you should give her a chance,” he said cautiously.