So Friday night, the boyfriend and I went shopping for rings. We’ve been doing this for about a week now. Yes, we are that serious.

He went to meet the parents a couple of weeks ago (an event which was pulled off with much mutual admiration among the parties, thank you very much), and since then we’ve been talking about the Four C’s of diamond shopping and the difference between platinum and white gold.

Believe it or not, this is not freaking me out. And that’s how you know it’s love, peeps.

So we’re at the mall going through the jewelry stores so that he can get an idea what I like. We’re walking toward Barnies to get a cup of coffee when we run into Neal and his wife.

For those of you who have not been with this blog since the beginning, first of all, shame on you and secondly, Neal is an old flame. We went through a time in college when the Ross & Rachel similarities were staggering, and played the "will they/won’t they" game for a good two years or so.

Anyway, this was the first time I had seen him since he got married, and the first time he had seen Damian. We did the round of awkward introductions (made less awkward by the fact that Damian has no idea who Neal was).

So I start catching up with Neal and he’s telling me that he’s a math teacher now. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being a math teacher (although for a large part of my high school career my arch nemesis was a Trig teacher), but Neal is not supposed to be one. He’s a writer. He’s supposed to be teaching language arts and revealing to grammar school kids the great wonder that is Roald Dahl, while writing the great American novel at night. The fact that he’s teaching math stabbed an icicle into my heart.

But it’s not my problem. It’s Jana’s. The wife kept breaking in like a buzzing fly to add comments to what he was saying. But to us, for that moment, she was a non-entity. She didn’t matter because we were finishing up something in which she was never involved.

I was letting him know that I’m fine. More than fine. And he was letting me know that he’s happy being something he’s not supposed to be. And I was noticing that he’s shorter than I remembered, and that he’s not quite as cute, and that I never would have been happy with him. He was probably thinking very similar thoughts about me. And we were people who used to make each other’s pulse quicken, standing there in a mall food court with surprisingly calm hearts.

I was looking at him through the contact lens of a new committed relationship, and it made me see his faults and foibles as clearly as I once saw only his gifts.

I hugged him again and walked away with Damian. I looked up at him and suddenly realized that I haven’t realized how tall Damian is. And how handsome, and funny and smart. And how lucky I am to have him. I didn’t tell him that Neal and I had "a thing," or that there was a time when I rearranged my schedule to be with him or planned my whole college world around Neal, or thought that my heart beat sounded like his name. I just, to steal a phrase from the Bible, "pondered these things in my heart," and reached for Damian’s hand.