22. Nick
— ? —
Nick
The jeweler sets the third tray on the velvet, and I still have no idea what I’m doing.
“Something classic,” I tell her, because it’s the only word that surfaces. “She doesn’t like fuss.”
It’s a lie. Jo would wear something enormous and ridiculous if I gave it to her and never once admit she loved it.
But I want her to notice the ring, not the price of it, because she has spent her whole life being shown the price of everything.
I pick one up. Set it down. Pick up another.
My hands aren’t quite steady, which is absurd.
I stood in front of my father and didn’t flinch.
I knelt over my own brother bleeding on my living room floor and my hands didn’t shake.
And here I am, undone by a woman in an apron asking for my fiancée’s ring size, which I don’t know, which I have to text Grace for, hunched over my phone under the counter so the jeweler won’t see.
She sends back a number and seven exclamation points.
Three weeks. That’s how long it has been since the night my brother broke into my home, and I’m standing in a jewelry store with my pulse in my throat, about to do the most certain thing I have ever done.
The weeks in between were their own kind of war, just a quieter one, fought with paperwork and phone calls instead of broken glass.
Matthias didn’t fight it. There was nothing left to fight with.
He had broken into my home in the dead of night.
He had put me in the hospital with a piece of his own brother’s coffee table.
The fake papers he used to try to walk Rory out of his school turned up the moment anyone bothered to look, and every one of them pointed back at him.
And then there was the money, all of it he had quietly stolen over the years.
My parents wanted that buried most of all.
I handed the proof over anyway, the day I decided I was finished protecting any of them.
His expensive lawyer haggled over the only thing left to haggle over, how long he would be gone.
He took the deal. He will be gone a long time.
The fight over Rory ended the second the handcuffs closed, and the order that came with it keeps Matthias away from my son until Rory is old enough to decide for himself.
Jo found out, eventually, that it was Brittany who took the photos to the press. Brittany called to tell her so herself, which was its own small miracle. I divorced him the day your message came through, she said. And then I made sure the entire world knew exactly what he is. Consider us even.
Even was generous. Brittany didn’t walk away clean, and Jo made sure of it.
The woman the police arrested at the school had a great deal to say once the charges stacked up, and a good portion of it was about who had pointed Matthias’s people at the school Rory attended, and who had been slipping notes under a single mother’s door since her first weeks at the firm.
Brittany had known about all of it. Her cooperation against Matthias kept her out of a cell.
It didn’t keep her out of a courtroom. She pleaded to harassment and to her part in the conspiracy, took the probation and the permanent record and the restraining order that keeps her away from Jo and Rory for good, and watched the society pages she had clawed her way into spit her back out.
The Anderson name didn’t save her either.
They will never be friends. But they understand each other now, two women who learned the same lesson from the same man, and there’s a strange quiet peace in that.
My parents I handled myself.
I drove out to the estate one last time and I didn’t sit down and I didn’t drink the tea.
I told them what I had done to Matthias, every charge, every door I had personally closed in his face.
And then I told them that if they ever came near Jo or Rory again, by lawyer or by checkbook or by midnight visit, I would do the exact same thing to them, and I would enjoy it more.
My mother opened her mouth. My father put a hand on her arm.
They understood. Some languages you only have to speak once.
They aren’t in my life now. I find that I don’t miss them. I traded a cold house and two people who never once saw me for a woman who laughs in her kitchen and a kid who calls my office to ask whether a T-rex had a belly button.
It wasn’t a hard trade.
So. The ring.
It’s probably too soon. We’ve only been together for a few months, intense months, battlefield months, but months nonetheless. The rational part of my brain insists that waiting makes sense, that rushing into marriage after everything we’ve been through is asking for trouble.
It gets firmly overruled.
Jo is my future. Rory is my family. The certainty of it sits in my chest like bedrock, immovable and absolute. Waiting feels like wasting time, and after a lifetime of waiting for my life to start, enough is enough.
The plan comes together quickly. Rory is in on it, the kid can barely contain his excitement, vibrating with the secret every time Jo enters the room, his poker face absolutely nonexistent.
Grace is on standby to collect him for an overnight once the question is asked and answered.
A restaurant is booked, the nice one downtown, with the view of the city and the wine list that requires a second mortgage.
The ring burns a hole in my pocket for three days straight.
And then Jo cancels.
“Something came up at work,” she says over the phone, her voice apologetic. “A client emergency. I’m so sorry. Tomorrow?”
Disappointment tastes bitter, but hiding it seems important. “Tomorrow works.”
Tomorrow arrives. Jo cancels again. Something with Rory this time, nothing serious, just a school situation that needs handling, a meeting with a teacher that can’t be rescheduled.
The universe, it seems, is sending a message.
Day three, the elaborate plan gets abandoned. Grand gestures are overrated anyway. What matters isn’t the restaurant or the champagne or the speech that’s been practiced until every word is perfect. What matters is her. What matters is us.
The decision to just ask her, simply, quietly, at home where we’re comfortable, settles into place like the right answer to a question that’s been asked wrong.
Her apartment door opens to reveal Rory, gap-toothed and grinning.
“She’s not here,” he announces. “She went to get milk. But she’ll be back soon. Wanna wait?”
I wait on the couch, the ring box a lead weight in my jacket pocket. Rory launches into a complicated story about dinosaurs and time travel that requires significant audience participation, complete with sound effects and dramatic reenactments.
The door opens mid-pterodactyl screech.
Jo walks in carrying a grocery bag, wearing sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt, her hair scraped back in a messy bun. She looks exhausted. She looks perfect. She looks like everything I’ve ever wanted and didn’t know I was missing.
“Nick?” Confusion crosses her face. “What are you doing here? I thought we were meeting tomorrow...”
“I need to ask you something.”
“Right now? I just. I need to put the milk away, it’s going to spoil if...”
“It can’t wait.”
She stops. Really looks at me. Whatever she sees in my face makes her go completely still, the grocery bag frozen in her hands.
“Rory,” I say, “can you go to your room for a minute?”
“Is this the thing?” His whole face goes bright, every light at once. “Mom, it’s the thing!”
“What thing? Rory, what are you talking about...”
One knee hits the floor.
Jo’s hand flies to her mouth.
“I had this whole plan,” I tell her, and the words that have been rehearsed for days fall away, replaced by something simpler and truer. “A fancy restaurant. Champagne. A speech I practiced until I could say it in my sleep. But none of that matters. What matters is this.”
The ring box comes out. Opens. The diamond catches the lamplight, simple, elegant, exactly what she would choose for herself if she ever allowed herself to choose something just for wanting it.
“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. You and Rory. You gave me a family I didn’t know I was missing, a home I didn’t know I was looking for. And I don’t want to spend another day without knowing you’ll be mine forever.”
“Nick...”
“Joanna Holland, will you marry me?”
Rory is bouncing up and down beside us, completely unable to contain himself. “Say yes, Mom! Say yes say yes say yes!”
Jo is crying. Of course she’s crying, she’s always crying these days, but they’re happy tears now, the only kind I ever want to see on her face again.
“Yes.” The word comes out watery, broken, perfect. “Yes, of course, yes.”
The ring slides onto her finger, made to be there. Standing up, pulling her into my arms, kissing her while Rory makes elaborate gagging noises in the background, this is what happiness feels like. This is what home means.
“I love you,” I tell her.
“I love you too.”
“Can I call Grace now?” Rory demands, tugging at Jo’s sleeve. “She said she’d take me for pizza if you said yes! With extra cheese! And maybe ice cream!”
Laughter breaks through the tears. Jo calls Grace. Rory is collected within the hour, bouncing out the door with promises to be good that no one actually believes.
And then we’re alone.
The door locks. Jo turns.
“Hello, fiancée.”
“Hello yourself.” Her smile is radiant, tear-streaked, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. “I can’t believe you. Rory knew? This whole time?”
“He was an excellent secret-keeper. Mostly.”
“He’s been acting weird for days. I thought he was coming down with something.”
“Nope. Just vibrating with the knowledge that his mom was about to get engaged.”
She laughs, crosses the room, wraps her arms around my neck. The ring glints on her finger, catching light.
Making it to the bedroom seems unnecessary. The couch is closer, and the urgency that’s been building since she walked through the door, since before that, since the moment the ring was purchased, since the day we met, demands immediate attention.
I strip her out of the sweatpants and the oversized shirt and everything underneath until she’s bare beneath me, the diamond catching lamplight on her hand, the most perfect thing I have ever seen. Mine now. The thought lands low and possessive and I let it stay.
“Say it again,” I tell her, dragging my mouth down her body, over the stretch marks I have kissed a hundred times by now, lower. “Tell me you’re mine.”
“I’m yours.” Her fingers fist in my hair. “God, Nick, I’m yours, just...”
I don’t let her finish. I take my time with my mouth first, until her thighs are shaking on either side of my head and she’s hauling me up by the hair, cursing, done with patience.
Months in and I haven’t gotten used to her like this.
Greedy. Demanding. Nothing left of the careful woman who used to flinch at every kindness.
I push into her slow and watch her take all of me, her mouth falling open, the ring glinting where her hand grips my forearm. For a second I hold there, buried deep, both of us breathing hard.
Then she rolls her hips, and whatever patience I had left burns off.
I take her hard. One of her legs hooks over my shoulder and the new angle drags a sound out of her that I’ll be hearing in my sleep for a long time to come.
The couch creaks under us. Her nails rake down my back.
I work a hand between us, thumb circling her tight and steady while I drive into her, and she comes around me fast and loud, clamping down so hard it nearly takes me with her.
She doesn’t let me stop. She flips us before I can manage it, plants her hands on my chest with the ring cool against my skin, and rides me with her head tipped back and her hair falling everywhere, setting her own pace, taking exactly what she wants. I grip her hips and let her.
“Look at me,” she says, throwing my own words back at me from the shower.
I do. I watch my fiancée come apart on top of me, her whole body pulling tight, my name breaking open in her mouth, and I follow her over with my hands holding her hips hard enough to leave marks she’ll find tomorrow and smile at.
After, tangled together on the couch that’s seen far too much of our relationship, she examines the ring. Turns her hand this way and that, watching the diamond catch light.
“How long have you been planning this?”
“Since the hospital. When Rory asked if I was going to be his dad.”
“That was weeks ago.”
“I wanted to be sure.”
She looks at me, searching. “And are you? Sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
The kiss that follows is soft. Full of promise. Full of future.
“Good,” she says against my mouth. “Because you’re stuck with us now.”
“That,” I tell her, pulling her closer, “is exactly where I want to be.”
The ring catches the light as her fingers run through my hair, and for the first time in thirty-three years of existing without really living, everything feels exactly right.