Chapter Twenty-Five A Different Kind of Yes
“Good,” he said, simply, and kissed her forehead. “That was, in fact, the entire plan.”
She borrowed his bathroom and discovered, in short order, that Dr. Lin Xing’s apartment was not merely tidy but organized on principles she could not begin to decode — towels folded to identical widths, three kinds of soap arranged in what she could only assume was order of clinical efficacy, and a drawer that contained, as far as she could tell, nothing but perfectly coiled charging cables sorted by length.
“Lin,” she called through the door, “where do you keep the toothpaste?” “Second drawer. Left side. Behind the backup toothpaste.” “Why is there BACKUP toothpaste?” “Why would there not be backup toothpaste?” She emerged to find a mug of coffee waiting for her on the counter, made — she realized after the first startled sip — exactly the way she liked it, right down to the precise, slightly indefensible amount of sugar.
“How do you know my coffee order?” “You’ve ordered coffee in front of me approximately three hundred times over nine months.
” He didn’t look up from the eggs. “I kept records.” “You kept RECORDS.” “Mental ones. Initially by accident.” A pause, and then, quieter, with the smallest possible smile: “Later on purpose.”
They made breakfast together in his kitchen — her giving orders, him following them with the same meticulous focus he brought to a difficult diagnosis, both of them laughing more than the actual cooking warranted — and it was somewhere between the eggs and the coffee that Jennie went quiet, watching him at the stove, and made a decision.
“I need to get something from my apartment,” she said.
“Two minutes. Don’t let the eggs burn.” “I would never let anything burn. That’s an insult to my technique.
” “Your technique is four months old and largely inherited from me.” “I’ve made it my own.
” She was laughing as she slipped out the door, and back within the two minutes she’d promised, a small navy velvet box held carefully in one hand.
She found him plating the eggs — genuinely not bad, she noted, a little proud — and set the box on the counter between them without a word. He looked at it. Then at her. Something in his face shifted, recognition arriving slowly.
“Jennie—” “I know it’s not a proposal,” she said quickly, before he could say anything else. “I’m not asking you to marry me over scrambled eggs on a Sunday morning, I have more romantic instincts than that, mostly. I just—” She took a breath, steadying herself. “I bought this in Kochi.
Months ago. Before either of us had said anything real out loud.
I saw it and thought of you, and I didn’t understand yet what that meant, and then I carried it around in my bag like some kind of secret for weeks, and it was in my handbag the night of the school bus emergency, and I think, somewhere in all of that, it stopped being a whim and started being a promise I hadn’t said out loud yet. ” She opened the box.
The platinum ring sat there, simple and steady, exactly as it had been the day she’d bought it.
“I don’t need you to wear it,” she said softly.
“I just wanted you to know it exists. That I’ve been carrying a promise around for months, waiting for the day it would mean what I actually wanted it to mean. ”
Lin Xing was quiet for a while, looking at the ring, and when he finally spoke his voice had gone rougher than usual. “May I?” She nodded, throat too tight to answer properly.
He took the ring from the box, turned it over once in his fingers, studying it with the same careful attention he gave everything that mattered to him — and then, instead of putting it on himself, he reached for her left hand.
“Jennie.” “Yes?” “This isn’t a proposal either,” he said, echoing her own words back with the faintest, warm trace of humor.
“I intend to do that properly, eventually, with considerably more preparation than either of us has had this morning. But I don’t want this to sit in a drawer as a symbol of something we’re too careful to name.
” He slid it gently onto her finger. “Consider this a promise,” he said, “that the proposal is coming. That I’m not waiting out of doubt anymore. Only preparation.”
Jennie stared down at her hand, the ring catching the morning light, and felt tears finally spill over — happy ones, unguarded, nothing held back.
“You’re supposed to wear it,’ she managed.
“That was the whole point. I bought it for you.” “I know.” He lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles, just above the ring.
“But I’d rather it live on the hand of the person who had the courage to carry a promise around in her handbag for months, waiting for the right moment to give it away.
That’s not a small thing, Jennie. I don’t want to diminish it by wearing it myself and calling the gesture finished.
” She laughed, wet and disbelieving, and threw her arms around his neck.
“I love you,” she said again, because she’d only just gotten to start saying it and found she couldn’t stop.
“I love you too.” He held her close, steady as always, the eggs going cold and forgotten on the counter behind them.
“Now eat your breakfast. I worked very hard on it.” “Your technique is inherited.” “My technique,” he said solemnly, “is inherited and improved. There’s a difference. ”
Later that morning, walking to church together — hand in hand, no longer a small, deliberate gesture but simply how they walked now — Jennie caught him glancing at the ring on her finger more than once, something quietly, thoroughly pleased in his expression each time.
“You keep looking at it,” she said. “I keep confirming it’s real. ”
“It’s real.” “Good,” he said, lacing his fingers more firmly through hers. “I intend to spend a great deal of time getting used to that.” The congregation waiting inside was about to become the very first place their secret quietly, joyfully stopped being a secret at all.