You'll Float, Too

Story Sent in by Patsy:

I had already gone out with Tommy once, on a brief coffee meet-and-greet kind of thing. He seemed nice but easily distracted. Almost as if he would've rather been someplace else. So I was surprised to hear from him a second time. He asked me out to dinner at a fancy Japanese place.

After we sat down to dinner, he handed me a little wrapped box. I opened it and found a pretty rhinestone bracelet inside. I thanked him and even put it on.

"Those are real diamonds," he said.

I said, "Um... I'm pretty sure this isn't a real diamond bracelet."

"It is! Give it to me."

I handed it to him and he dropped it in his water glass. It sank. He said, "Real diamonds sink. Fake ones float." He reached into his water and handed it back to me. "It's real."

He must have read the doubt in my face as I looked over the wet bracelet. With a louder voice he said, "Bring it to any jeweler. Go on. Do it. You'll see."

I said, "Okay. I believe you," just in the hopes of diffusing the situation. For the rest of dinner he flirted as if he really expected me to jump into bed with him for giving me a fake diamond bracelet. When it became clear to him that he wasn't getting any, he became distracted and grumpy again.

The next week, I stopped by a jeweler's on my way to work. I was just curious as to what the stones in the bracelet actually were. The jeweler confirmed that it was just rhinestones. I wasn't planning to contact Tommy again but he wrote to me to ask me out a third time and if I was enjoying the "real diamond" bracelet.

I wrote back to let him know that I'd pass on a third date, that I had taken his advice and brought the bracelet to a jeweler, and that I knew for certain that the bracelet was just rhinestones. Tommy wrote back that he knew it was fake but just hoped that I'd be "smart" enough to "get into bed" with him. He called me stupid and wished me a nice life. A nice life was practically guaranteed now that he was no longer in it.