“Sorry, I love you to much to let you stop me!” Jenny said and bit her lip immediately when she saw the hurt look on my face when she said ‘love’. I got mad again but didn’t say anything. Simply smiled and knew I had to do this for my friends.

“Present time!” Came Jenny’s sing song voice from behind me as she pushed me into a chair around the table. It was all my close friends, Bette, T, Al, Dane, Drew, Jenny, Kit, Angelica, Moira and a few tag alonger’s who just wanted to watch I guess. The rest of the crowd was mingling and I was thankful for that. I buried my head in my hands as Jenny thrust the first one at me. I sighed.

It was a new set of hair cutting tools that I was sure were really expensive, from Bette and Tina and Angelica. I couldn’t have been more grateful. The next was a CD from Drew, it was My Chemical Romance, we both laughed and I was surprised that I wasn’t hurt by remembering what had happened after are sing along. We had really had fun despite everything. The next was an inappropriate ***** toy from Alice and Dana. Dana, had insisted that she tried to fight Alice on it but she was too set on getting it. I blushed and thanked them. Alice laughed and snorted the entire time at her corny joke and I couldn’t help but feel happy for a second. Kit had gotten me a mug that said ‘The Planet’ and a gift certificate for 20 bucks worth in free coffee and anything else I wanted. I smiled gratefully, they all knew me to well.

“Okay, I don’t know who this one’s from,” Jenny frowned, she was sitting on the arm of my chair, helping me with the unwrapping when I heard a small voice that made me shiver.

“M-Me,” came a choked reply. I closed my eyes, I didn’t want to look up at the face I knew was there but I knew it would be rude not to. I placed an extremely plastic smile on my face and shot it at Carmen. I didn’t notice the bag in her hand when she walked in I guess, or how long she had been standing there. It made me feel uneasy as I lifted the lid to the small box. I stopped moving when I saw a twinkle of gold light. I bit back a lump in my throat and told myself it couldn’t be. I pulled it back farther and blinked, everything had gone pretty quiet around the table. It was a ring the ring, the one I had fallen in love with while shopping with- with Carmen. It was pretty chunky a gold band with a thin silver one snaking around it, each end of the silvery band were delicately carved snake heads. In the middle of all that perfection sat a large black stone with flecks of grey swimming in it here and there. I gulp noticeably. When had tears started forming in my eyes? I looked up at Carmen who was looking at me in a very unsure way. Everyone else looked mildly uncomfortable and I immediately felt bad for putting them in the middle.