Read Online Die for You by Lisa Unger - Free Book Online

because of its silver mines, now just a side trip tourists make while visiting Prague.
    He spoke with the locals in Czech, explained to me how things had been during the communist era. How there were lines around this block for oranges that had come from Cuba, how this thriving store once was just a hollow space with empty shelves, how the communist propaganda had been taught in that tiny school.
    On the way back to the city we stopped at a small Bohemian restaurant which, with its heavy oak tables, wood paneling, and thick ceiling beams, could have been plucked from the Middle Ages, if it weren’t for the jukebox and the young thugs smoking cigarettes and drinking enormous glasses of beer at the bar. The waiter brought a giant cast-iron platter of meat and potatoes. We ate until we were stuffed.
    He’d been quiet all day. Not sullen or morose; just contemplative, maybe a bit sad. I just assumed that it was hard for him to be back in the place where he grew up, where so much had been lost—his parents, his aunt. I didn’t press him to talk.
    “Isabel,” he said when we were done with our meal and waiting for our dessert. His accent was heavier than I’d ever heard it, had been since we’d arrived in the Czech Republic, as if being home, speaking his native language, reconnected him to a part of himself he’d neglected, even tried to quash. “I never thought I’d bring anyone here. Never thought I’d want to.”
    “I’m glad you shared this with me,” I said. “I feel so much closer to you.” He was looking at me attentively; I felt heat rise to my cheeks. He wasn’t handsome, not beautiful in the classic sense. But his intensity, the hard features of his face, had a kind of magnetic power that lit me up inside. He dropped his eyes to the table.
    “I want to share everything with you,” he said softly. He reached into his pocket and slid a blue velvet box across the table toward me. “Isabel. Maybe it’s too fast. I don’t care. I could have done this the night I met you.”
    I opened the box to see a gleaming, cushion-cut ruby in a platinum setting. It was breathtaking.
    “Isabel,” he whispered, grabbing both my hands. “This is my heart. I’m giving it to you. I’d die for you. Marry me.”
    I remember being stunned but nodding vigorously, tearing as he put the ring on my finger and came to kneel beside me and take me into his arms. People around us looked on; one woman, another American—I could tell by her Tommy Hilfiger sweater and khaki pants, but mainly by her sneakers—clapped her hands and released a happy little cry.
    What had I expected to feel in that moment? I didn’t know. You see it from the outside, stylized and engineered to sell in films and commercials. You hear the stories your sisters and girlfriends tell. But you only know how it’s meant to feel. It’s one of those moments in your life, in your relationship—the markers, the milestones, the important snapshots. But I could only experience the moment as I experience everything, observing, narrating. How Marcus was as close to emotional as I’d ever seen him. How the men at the bar turned to look at us, one of them sneering. How the lights were too dim for me to really see the ring. How a truck passed by and caused the bottles on the shelves behind the bar to rattle slightly. And I observed myself: happy, surprised, and, dare I admit it, a little relieved that my life wouldn’t pass without this moment. From the outside, I supposed it looked very romantic. But that’s where romance dwells, isn’t it, in the observation? Inner life is far too complicated; one doesn’t feel romance. You feel love , and even that isn’t one note resounding above all others; it’s one element in the symphony of your emotions.
    “I DON’T UNDERSTAND,” my sister said. “You barely know him.”
    Marcus and I had announced our engagement over dinner at my sister’s, and Linda and Erik had made all the appropriate noises; embraces were