Direct question

Sitting at lunch this week with an old friend that I hadn’t seen in a long time, I finally got a word in edgewise while she caught me up on all she’s been up to. She’d been rattling on about how much she remembered about me (more than I remembered about her, I’m afraid), paused to take a breath…

…and I leaned over and tapped the large gold band encrusted with diamonds on her left hand ring finger. “Is this for real,” I asked with a smirk, “or is it just to scare guys off?”

She looked down at it, laughed, embarrassed, started turning it around on her finger. “Yeah, it’s just to scare guys off” she admitted. “Well, plus, I’ve been filing. I normally wear it on this hand,” and she pulled it off, transferred it over to the ring finger on her other hand, “but it gets in the way.”

I leaned back and smiled knowingly. “Some guys” I sighed and shook my head in disbelief. “From what I remembered of you, you didn’t seem like the marrying kind.”

Score one for a direct question. I do learn, eventually.