When they first talked of marriage, Matt had envisioned searching for a ring with Vic by his side, the two of them finding the perfect ring together. Things didn’t quite work out that way. Matt should have known better, really—Vic hated shopping, all aspects of it. He never looked at a sales ad if he could help it, and refused to spend the evening cuddled together in bed, leafing through jewelry catalogs. His idea of going to the store was walking straight down the aisle to whatever it was he wanted to buy, no stopping to look at anything else. Once he held his intended purchase in hand, he made a bee-line for the register, then out the door. The few times Matt sent Vic to the grocery store on his own, he came home with only those items specifically spelled out on his list. If Matt wrote a
