Chapter 64 – Promise

Sasha’s POV


My anniversary is less than three weeks away and I HAVE NO FRIGGIN IDEA WHAT TO GET MY GIRLFRIEND!!!! Nef told me that she had gotten my gift quite some time ago. Her gifts to me were always so thoughtful and heartfelt. I love her and I want to get her a meaningful gift but she is one of the hardest people in the world to shop for.

“You don’t have to get me anything,” she said. “Having you is present enough.”

Ugh! Why can’t she just say I want this or I want that? But I guess if she was just after shiny presents or pretty things then I probably wouldn’t love her so much. I knew that she would be happy with whatever I decided to get her but I want it to be special. It is after all our first anniversary. Anyway drastic times call for drastic measures. I called her twin.

“Imhotep,” I said. “I need your help.”

“What’s up?”

“Anniversary with Nef is soon.”

“Yeah.”

“I not know what to get her. She is hard person to shop for.”

I explained to him the situation and he agreed to meet me at a sushi bar near Tyson’s Corner, Virginia.

“Help!” I said as soon as I saw him. “Do you know what she got me?”

“Yeah, I was with her when she had it m…I can’t say that part,” he started then stopped.

“Can’t say what? When she did what?”

He made a zipper motion over his lips and shook his head no. Nef had told him not to say anything to me. Bah!

“A hint? A clue? Something? Anything?”

“No.”

I tried to get him to tell me but he wouldn’t. Damn twins. They were almost impossible to separate.

“What would she like? She tell me she not need anything.”

“She doesn’t.”

I put my hands to my face in exasperation. He wasn’t being very helpful. I’d forgotten how much like Nef Imhotep is. I told him that he needed to work with me and not against me. We weren’t leaving this restaurant until I had at least an idea of a gift for Nef.

“She likes meaningful gifts. You could write her a poem or sing a song?”

I just looked at him. I’m a hockey player not a poet. I can’t sing to save my life. I’m absolutely tone deaf.

“Okay. Okay, that was a bad suggestion.”

I was strumming my fingers on the table when Im noticed my ring.

“Where did you get that?”

“Nef give to me over the summer.” I guess I hadn’t been wearing it when I went to their house for dinner when I got back from Russia.

“Do you know what that is? What it means?”

I shook my head no. Nef had told me it was a ring that had been passed down to her from her family. She loved me and wanted me to wear it.

“She say she give it to me because she loves me. She say she get from her family.”

“It’s called an eternity band. When you hold your hands together in a certain way you can see the hieroglyph for ‘shen.’” She is the word for eternity…forever. They’ve been in our family for a very long time. I have a set as well – the twin thing again.”

“From your grandparents a long time?”

“Longer than that, a lot longer than that. These rings should probably be in a museum rather than with us.”

I knew that the rings were old. I could tell that by looking at them but I had no idea that they meant so much. I had always wondered about Nef’s family. They had a naming tradition that dated back thousands of years on her mother’s side of the family. When I went to Egypt with her I learned that they had a lot of ancient traditions and customs that they kept. She could trace her family history back for many many generations. The tattoo on her back had been done traditionally by her grandmother when she was 16. Her mother had one and her grandmother had one.
I looked down at the ring. In one single act Nef had expressed how much she loved and cared for me without even telling me. I fiddled with it.

“Don’t ever lose that,” he said. “She really loves you.”

The last part wasn’t directed at me. It seemed like he was talking to himself

“I want to show her that I love her too. She mean the world to me now. When we had fight it wasn’t pleasant. It was…miserable. She makes me happy and I want to make her happy too.”

“Did you tell her that?”

“I tell her I love her every day. I try be perfect for her; I try let her know she important to me and that she matters.”

When we left the Sushi Bar we went to the mall to walk around a bit.

“How about a shopping trip?” I asked. Since I wasn’t sure what to get for her maybe

I could get her a fun weekend shopping trip to New York.

“She doesn’t need more clothes or shoes…and that’s not meaningful. How about you give her a promise?”

“A promise. How I give a promise?”

“You know, write down all the ways you love her, all the reasons why, and then say I promise to love you, be with you, etc? Then you can give her a token of that promise…like the handwritten letter in a frame or something.”

That’s really sappy but at the same time it makes sense. We went to a frame store – they actually have stores that are for nothing but framing? – and picked out a silver frame that when then took to be engraved. Im wrote out the hieroglyphs for Nef’s name and I wrote out the Cyrillic for my name. That was followed but the date of our anniversary. After that we went to a stationary store to pick up what Im called nice paper for me to actually write the letter on.

We were about to leave when we walked by Tiffany’s and I saw it. It was perfect for her. In the display case there was a ring. It was two hearts linked together with a trail of diamonds going across the band. It was beautiful and I could imagine that ring on Nef’s finger. I pulled Im into the store and asked the sales clerk if I could look at the band.

“Do you know what size she wears?” the woman asked.

“A size 6,” Im told her.

“You think she will like it?”

“Alex, she’ll like anything you get her. Will she wear it? Definitely; it’s very beautiful.”

And with that we left the mall. I told Im not to say anything to his sister. I didn’t want the surprise to be ruined. I was proud at what we’d accomplished.


AN:

The promise ring:

http://www.tiffany.com/Shopping/Item.aspx?fromGrid=1&sku=GRP00032&mcat=148204&cid=287466&search_params=s+5-p+11-c+287466-r+101323351-x+-n+6-ri+-ni+0-t+