Chapter 18
Two nights after Matt went home, I went back to my place. I had my first night without him in over a month, and I hated it.
My arms felt empty without him in them. My bed felt cold without his heat warming the other side of it.
Every room felt too quiet without his music or the sound of his keyboard or his terrible jokes.
Every surface looked too neat without one of his rogue rubber ducks sitting on it.
My documentaries were suddenly boring without his color commentary and terrible impressions of the narrators.
My life was just less without his presence.
The idea of doing this for a few more months before we even opened the conversation about living together seemed like too much.
That was too long to wait to start planning the future I wanted with him.
Now that I knew that I was in love with him, I didn’t want to wait.
I didn’t want to risk losing him, risk losing this happiness and this feeling.
I’d caught lightning in a bottle, and there was no way I was letting it go.
An idea formed in the middle of the night.
A stupid, ridiculous idea.
I thought it’d be gone when I woke up, but it wasn’t.
A week later, the idea was still there. It grew every time I looked at a place in my apartment where Matt should be and saw it empty.
Every time we kissed goodbye at the end of the night, it grew.
On the nights when we slept over at either of our places, it doubled or tripled in size.
It was a stupid, ridiculous idea, but it had taken root in my head, and it consumed every waking thought.
It wasn’t going anywhere on its own.
That night, I called my parents. I knew that they didn’t ever do anything on Sunday evenings, and I knew that they’d never say no to a call from me.
I also knew that, if this was a bad idea, they’d pull me gently back down to earth.
And if it wasn’t a terrible idea, they’d tell me that, too.
After all, they had seen me and Matt together in high school.
They’d seen the love and the heartbreak, the ups and the downs, and everything in between.
They knew the plans we’d once made, and they knew how it broke me when those plans didn’t come to fruition.
“Mamma, Babbo!” I greeted them when they answered the call, their faces appearing smushed together on my screen.
“Noah, what a lovely surprise,” my mother cooed into the phone. “You look so good! So happy!”
“I am, Mamma,” I told her. “So very happy.” I watched my smile falter in the small image of myself in the corner. “Lonely though, now that Matt’s gone back to his apartment.”
“He lives how far from you?” My father’s voice was ever reasonable.
I liked to think I inherited his reasonable head, but recent ideas had me questioning this.
“Less than ten minutes if there’s no traffic.
” I felt ridiculous but wasn’t this whole phone call about the ridiculous.
“But it’s not about the miles between us.
It’s the nights. It’s the fact that he’s not here right now, and I know he won’t be here tonight. ”
“You love him.” My mother wasn’t asking a question. She was stating a fact, a fact I already knew and accepted and embraced.
I loved Matthew Bennett. He was the only man on this earth that I’d ever loved, and I thought he might be the only person I was ever even capable of loving.
Even when I didn’t know if I could feel that for him, if I could ever feel that again for anyone, he’d been committed to me.
He’d tried anyway, and he never made me feel less than for it.
My only other serious boyfriend hadn’t been able to handle it.
He’d belittled me. He made me feel broken, and it broke me down. Chipped away at me, little by little.
Matt had built me up.
That stupid, ridiculous idea suddenly felt a little less stupid and ridiculous.
“I do,” I told her with a smile. “I think I want to spend the rest of my life with him.”
“You think?” Babbo questioned. “Why is it only think?”
It wasn’t think. The moment my father questioned it, I knew that.
I knew it as well as I knew my own name.
I knew it as intrinsically as I knew my skincare routine.
Loving him was muscle memory, as automatic as breathing.
“I don’t think,” I corrected. “I know I want to spend the rest of my life with him. Is that—Is it too soon to know that?”
“You knew it when you were in high school,” Mamma reminded me. “You had an entire plan built up to make it work. Even when it didn’t, you still talked to him. The two of you have been linked since you were sixteen. It has been almost ten years. How is that too soon?”
“We’ve only been dating a few months.”
“But you have known each other for so long. You have never been able to cut the bonds between you.”
“And even if you hadn’t talked while you were separated, it is never too soon to know,” Babbo added.
“I met your mother and within a conversation, I knew that she was the woman I was going to marry. I courted her, and I had a ring on her finger within six months. We were married before our first anniversary, and I have never once doubted that. When you know, you know.”
It was a story I’d heard before. Many times before. I didn’t think I appreciated it enough until now.
“And you knew, too?” I asked my mother.
“No.” I watched as Mamma looked over at Babbo.
I could see the affection on her face, the adoration.
“It took me a few months before I knew, but by the time he was on one knee, I knew that he made me happier than anyone ever could. I knew that I wanted to build a life with him, to grow a family, to have a beautiful child and a beautiful home. I knew that no one would ever love me as well and as fully as he does, and I knew that I would never feel the love I felt for him for anyone else. Time did not matter. Time does not matter, not if the person is right.” My mother turned her piercing green eyes, mirror images of my own, at me through the screen. “Matthew is the right person for you.”
Again, it wasn’t a question. It was an accepted truth. It was a truth I knew and my mother knew and my father knew. I just hoped Matt knew it, too.
That stupid, ridiculous idea no longer felt stupid or ridiculous. I took a deep breath. “Do you still have Nonno’s ring?”
“I’m sorry, you’re thinking of doing what?!” Moira’s voice pierced my eardrum, and I had to pull the phone away from my ear.
“You heard me. I’m going to ask him to marry me.” I’d already told her this once, but clearly, she didn’t understand the words. “I just picked up Nonno’s ring from my parents. Nonna gave it to them for me after he passed.”
“Has it even been three months?”
There was a reason I hadn’t told Moira until I’d made up my mind.
I didn’t realize it until just this minute, but I hadn’t wanted to be talked out of it.
If I had, I would have called her instead of my parents.
I hadn’t. I hadn’t because, deep down, I’d known the idea wasn’t stupid or ridiculous.
Once I made up my mind, I knew that it was the right choice.
I wanted to build a life and a home with him.
I knew that no one would ever love me the way he did, and I knew even more that I would never love anyone the way I loved him.
He was the only person for me.
“Time doesn’t matter. Not if the person is right,” I told her, echoing my mother’s words. “He’s the love of my life, Moira.”
Moira let out a heavy sigh. I could read every emotion in that breath of air: frustration, confusion, and acceptance. “Okay, how are you doing it?”
I grinned. “I have no idea. Maybe make dinner and—”
“No!” Moira shouted. I pulled the phone away from my ear again, grimacing. “Absolutely not, Noah! You are not just making dinner and asking him to marry you. This is a once in a lifetime thing for you.”
Well, at least she had faith that I’d only ever ask one person to marry me.
Probably because she knew me. If, for some reason, this relationship with Matt didn’t work out, then I’d be an old bachelor.
I’d probably adopt fifty cats or something, an idea that disgusted me because while I loved cats, I could not imagine changing that many litter boxes.
“So, it needs to be bigger?”
“Yes! It needs to be something that you two can tell your grandchildren about!”
“Oh god, Moira, are you some kind of closet hopeless romantic?” And if she was, how was I only now just finding out about this?
I’d known her since college, and I’d seen her in relationships.
She’d always kept a cool head about them, even when she was deep in the smitten phase.
I’d never heard her like this. “Do you have a list of dream proposals?”
“No,” she scoffed. “I have a list of non-negotiable proposal options, and if and when I meet the person I want to marry, I will give them the list, and they can choose from it. But what isn’t on it is a quiet meal at home and being asked to spend the rest of my life with someone.
And honestly, if I’m dating someone and we’re at the point of getting married, they should know that without a list.”
“I don’t think Matt would mind,” I told her as I leaned backward on my couch. He liked to go out with his friends, sure, but he also loved a quiet night in. I didn’t think he’d mind a private moment. “I don’t think he’d like some grand public gesture.”
“Then don’t make it public,” Moira said simply. “It doesn’t have to be public, but it should be special. A night at home isn’t special. It’s a Thursday.”
“Actually, it’s not a Thursday. He goes out on Thursdays.”
“You know what I mean, Noah!” I could actually hear her patience running thin. “You need to do something memorable. What’s special to the two of you?”