I pick up a large coffee from the café next door and make it to Brooklyn Jewels by 8:30 a.m. I always like to get here early. Jess will be in by 9, and Sophie typically makes it in twenty minutes later. That’s half because she’s a slowpoke in the mornings and half because she’s coming from Park Slope, the neighborhood she and Liv moved to in anticipation of the babies that are taking longer to come than either of them expected. I don’t think it’s healthy for her to be in Brooklyn’s greatest per capita concentration of strollers after two rounds of IVF. I keep telling her to move to Williamsburg, or at least closer to the shop, but she claims that living within ten blocks of the bar Union Pool again would give her hives. As a person who’s had more than her fair share of hookups in the Union Pool bathroom, her point resonates on a cellular level.

Everything looks different in the daylight, and the shop is no exception. I flick on the lights, flip the white-lacquered sign in the window to OPEN, and unlock the safe so I can set out jewels in the window boxes and the glass display case. The routine calms me, and I take extra care with it today, adjusting the placement of each piece until it’s flawless.

I should set what is now, I guess, “my” ring into the case, too. We keep engagement rings and bridal jewelry on one side of the store and other fine jewelry pieces on the other. There’s a spot just waiting for it. But instead, I slide it onto my finger and flex my hand under its weight. Sunlight streams through the shop’s window and hits the bulky center stone at a fiery angle, radiating sharp bursts of light from my hand. The bauble is monstrous. I always pictured myself with a pair of our vintage-inspired ballerina bands stacked around a classic solitaire, or maybe a pear-shaped diamond for a more modern look. (It’s impossible to choose just one dream ring when you sell them for a living.)

I’m Windexing the glass counters when Sophie pushes through the door. It’s 8:58 a.m. She’s early and her eyes are wild. She wears a tomato red caftan that makes her copper red bun look even brighter, and her oldest clogs. Sophie always looks more polished than this; it’s like my news has sapped the energy she’d need to iron a silk Everlane button-down or to swipe on some mascara.

“I can’t believe you’re actually doing this,” she says in lieu of a greeting.

“You saw that ten-thousand-dollar sale,” I point out. “You can’t think that’s a coincidence.”