This Memory Brought to You by the Letters: WTF

"Hey, it's me." he said when I picked up the phone.

"What's up?" I replied, with no small amount of trepidation. It was, after all, only a month after I had broken up with him over the phone.

"Can you get away for lunch today? I haven't seen you and want to catch up."

"Um, okay I guess. Where were you thinking? I don't have a whole lot of time." I was already worried about where this was going to go.

"I'll pick you up."

It was a Friday afternoon in October 2005. He arrived in a car I'd never seen before. I hopped in and we sped off to: Mimi's Cafe. Take note, this location is important.

Once there, the servers seated us in a remote corner in the back. We ordered some lemonade and asked for a few minutes to order. Then he placed a dark blue jewelry box on the table and told me to open it.

"What's this?" I asked him laughing, thinking this was a joke. We had broken up. You don't give exes jewelry.

"Open it." he replied. I opened the box to find a piece of duct tape where one might expect to find a tennis bracelet. As I looked up at him, I remembered something he used to say, an analogy of love, and I felt the color leave my face as the bile worked it's way up.

"I need to give you this duct tape. It represents me. I have given this duct tape to only one person before, and it stayed for awhile until she gave it back to me. It still has a lot of stick. I still have a lot of stick."

I had no reply to that. What does one even say? Then he handed me a smaller box. "Open it." he said, waiting.

"This had better have a pair of earrings in it, or I'm going to be pissed," I told him, hoping to god it wasn't what I thought it was. I was horribly wrong. Nestled in that blue box was a princess cut diamond solitaire. The urge to throw up was equally strong as the urge to run. I remember thinking that this was not the reaction a girl was supposed to have at her first proposal. At the same time, everything else was wrong: Mimi's Cafe on a Friday afternoon with my ex.

I didn't know what to say to him. I tried to be gentle. "I can't accept this," I said, closing the box and handing it back. "I don't know what to say. We're not together. There are reasons for this. I hope you can return it." Okay, so maybe I wasn't that gentle.

"I had them inscribe our initials next to the EGL number."

"Why are you telling me this? Why would you do that? Shouldn't you have waited? Did you actually think I would say 'yes' after everything? You lied to me, you let your daughter move to Sweden without a second thought, you told me YOU were moving. No. This is not happening, I don't think you actually thought this through," I railed at him.

We got up quickly, never having touched our drinks, never having ordered our food. We paid the $4 plus tip and walked out. On the way back to my office he asked me not to tell anyone. I made no promises. I had just said no to unhappily ever after, and I have to say, it felt good.