Chapter 27 #2
I was aware of everything at once—the pale gold light through the curtain, the sound of his breathing, the smell of his skin like coffee and something mineral and like home.
The particular Minnesota smell of cold air coming through the window.
The warmth of the bed around us. The weight of him above me.
The feeling of his hands being careful, being gentle, being exactly what I needed.
The morning light made his skin look warm, made everything look like a painting, made the moment feel like it was happening outside of time.
He entered me slowly. So carefully. Like he was asking a question with his body and waiting for my answer.
There was no rush. There was no urgency.
There was just the two of us in the pale gold light, learning how to fit together in this new way, in this way that meant forever.
He moved slowly inside me, and I could feel every moment of it.
Every. Single. Moment. I could feel him holding back, choosing gentleness, choosing tenderness, choosing to show me what love could be when it was not born from desperation but from choice. When it was born from commitment.
We had made love three times before this—the storm, the only-one-bed night, the makeup in the hotel.
But this felt like the first time. This felt like the beginning of something.
This felt like a promise. This felt like him saying with his body what he could not always say with his words: I choose you. Every day. Every morning. Forever.
He said, “You’re beautiful.”
I said, “You don’t have to say that.”
He said, “I’m not saying it because I think you need to hear it. I’m saying it because it’s true. You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Even like this. Especially like this. When you’re soft and open and giving me everything.”
I started to cry again, but he kissed the tears away and he did not stop moving inside me, and it was not sad anymore.
It was just—much. Too much and not enough and exactly everything I had ever wanted.
The tears kept coming and he kept kissing them away and holding me and moving slow and steady like he had all the time in the world to love me.
He said, “Sunshine.”
That word. He only called me that when he was completely serious. When he was completely his. When he was not hiding any of the walls he kept so carefully built. When he was showing me all the soft parts of himself.
He said, “I am going to spend the rest of my life doing this. Waking up next to you. Bringing you coffee. Loving you like this. Are you sure you want that?”
I said, “Yes. I am so sure. I am the most sure I have ever been about anything.”
He said, “Then marry me properly. Let me have the string lights. Let me have the porch. Let me have the whole town.”
I said, “Yes. Yes to all of it.”
He came then—careful and quiet, his face against my neck, his arms around me like he was trying to hold me so close that we became the same person.
I held him while he shook. I held him while he stayed inside me and breathed against my skin.
I held him and I understood that this was the moment that changed everything.
This was the moment that proved love was not something you felt, it was something you did, something you showed up for, something you built every single morning.
After, we lay there without moving.
His hand was on my lower belly—protective, possessive, like he was already guarding something that was not yet there but that we both knew would be. A baby named Caleb. A continuation of his brother. A continuation of us.
I said, “I have to open the diner at 10 a.m.”
He said, “I know.”
I said, “We should get up.”
He said, “Not yet.”
I said, “Knox, you’re not going to let me sleep in ever again, are you?”
He said, “I am going to bring you coffee in bed every morning for the rest of your life.”
I said, “That’s a lot of coffee.”
He said, “Yes.”
I said, “I’m going to get very fat.”
He said, “Okay.”
I said, “You’re not going to try to talk me out of it.”
He said, “No. I will watch you get fat and I will love you more every day of it. I will love the body that carries my children. I will love the woman who gets up at three a.m. to make pie. I will love all of it.”
I started to cry again, but this time he was laughing—that quiet thing he did that was barely a laugh at all, just a shake against my back and the warmth of him holding me close, the warmth of being loved by someone who understood.
I said, “I’m going to marry you.”
He said, “I know.”
We stayed in bed until 8:15 a.m. Then we stayed for another thirty minutes because he did not want to let me go and I did not want to be let go.
We were in a state of constant touching, constantly reconnecting, constantly remembering what the other person felt like.
When we finally got up, it was 8:47 a.m. and we were running late but neither of us cared because being late was worth it.
I showered while he made breakfast—toast and scrambled eggs and bacon from his tiny refrigerator.
The bacon popped and sizzled in the pan and I could hear him from the shower, the sound of him cooking for me making my chest tight.
We ate standing at his kitchen counter with coffee and the morning light making everything golden.
The kitchen was small and warm and full of the smell of butter and coffee and bacon grease.
The windows were steamed from the shower and the cooking.
It felt like the beginning of our life. It felt like the beginning of everything.
He said, “Ready?”
I said, “For what?”
He said, “To walk down Birch Street. With me. Where everyone can see us.”
I said, “Are you nervous?”
He said, “No. Are you?”
I said, “No.”
I was lying. I was terrified. I was about to walk down the main street of Frostbite Falls with the man I loved, wearing his ring, and every single person in this town was going to stop and stare and whisper and celebrate and judge and love us and we were going to have to let them do all of it.
We walked out of his apartment and down the outside staircase together. The morning air was cold and clean. The snow had mostly melted but the grass was still frozen, still white with frost at the edges.
He took my hand.
His hand was warm and his grip was confident.
I could feel his heartbeat through our joined hands—steady, certain, not afraid.
He did not flinch when we turned the corner onto Birch Street and the first person looked up from their car and gasped—actually gasped, like it was a physical reaction to seeing what he was claiming—when they saw the ring.
We walked.
We did not stop for anyone. We did not explain anything. We just walked down Birch Street holding hands like it was the easiest thing in the world. Like we had been doing this for years instead of for just this morning.
By the time we got to the diner, three people had already texted Mira with the news, and Mira was standing behind the counter with her hands on her hips like she was about to commit a murder, and she said, “You are lucky I love you both or I would kill you. But I don’t, so instead I’m going to make the most beautiful wedding this town has ever seen and you’re going to let me. ”
I said, “Okay.”
Knox said, “Thank you.”
I sat down at my counter and started my day—pulling espresso shots, calling out orders, taking care of the people who came in with coffee and pie and all their stories.
And Knox sat in the booth nearest the door, drinking his black coffee, eating his pie, and every person who came in saw him watching me like I was the only important thing that had ever happened to him.
Like I was the reason he had stayed in this town.
The whole town was watching. The whole town was celebrating. The whole town was bearing witness to the fact that I had been chosen by a man who could have chosen anyone.
I did not care.
FIVE DAYS LATER
The thing I noticed first was that the coffee was wrong.
It had been wrong for two mornings now. I would pull the shot the way I always pulled it, watch the crema bloom the way it always bloomed, hand the cup to Knox the way I always handed it to Knox, and then I would lift the cup to my own mouth and the smell would arrive in my brain like a slap.
Burnt. Sour. Like the espresso machine had been making coffee out of metal instead of beans.
I had cleaned the machine twice. I had run vinegar through the lines on Tuesday. I had recalibrated the grinder Wednesday. The coffee did not get better.
Knox said his coffee tasted exactly the same.
That was when I started counting.
Mira was on a hike with her sister and her phone was off, which was the only thing that kept me from telling her at 6:14 a.m. on a Friday morning when I sat on the back step of the diner with a cup of espresso in my hand and the cold March wind on my face and I counted the days the way Knox would have counted the days—precise, in order, with the math working backward from the present moment to the last time I had bled.
Forty-six days.
Forty-six days since the storm. Forty-six days since the apartment. Forty-six days since the very first time, in the very first bedroom, in a body that had been just mine.
I sat on the back step and I held my cup and I let the math sit there in the air between me and the cold morning, and I understood.
I understood the way the body tells you things sometimes before the brain is ready.
I understood the way the coffee had been wrong for two days, and the way I had cried at a commercial about dogs Wednesday night, and the way my breasts had been sore since the late-January storm that had closed the diner for three days.
I understood the way I had eaten an entire jar of pickles on Sunday because I had wanted them so much that wanting them was the only thing in my brain.
I had not had a period since before Knox.
That was the math.