31. Valentina
— ? —
Valentina
Sunday at Nora’s is different now.
The house still smells like lavender and something baking. The blue plates are still on the table. But there’s something in the air, a kind of anticipation, that makes me nervous.
Nora looks good. Better than she has in months. The chemotherapy is working, the doctors say, buying her more time than anyone expected. She’s gained weight. Her eyes are brighter. When she hugs me at the door, she holds on longer than usual.
“You look happy,” she says.
“I am happy.”
“Good.” She pulls back. Studies my face. “He makes you happy?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s all I need to know.”
We spend the afternoon in her kitchen, cooking together while Eric does something in the garden. Nora teaches me her secret pasta sauce recipe (“Tell no one, not even him”) and I tell her about my new job, my new life, all the ways everything has changed.
“You’re thriving,” she says, stirring the sauce. “I can see it. You’re not surviving anymore. You’re living.”
The words hit something deep in my chest.
“I didn’t think I’d ever feel like this again,” I admit. “After Sebastian. After everything. I thought that part of me was broken forever.”
“Nothing is broken forever.” She sets down the spoon. Takes my hand. “You just needed time. And the right person to remind you who you were.”
I don’t trust my voice. So I just squeeze her hand and try not to cry.
After dinner, Eric takes me for a drive.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
The car winds through familiar streets. Past the restaurant where I used to work. Past the motel where I used to live. Past all the places that used to represent my lowest moments.
We pull into a parking lot.
I recognize it immediately.
The restaurant, the one I was serving not so long ago. Where I bumped into him that first night. Where he bandaged my finger and changed my life without either of us knowing it.
“What are we doing here?”
“Come inside.”
The restaurant is closed. Dark. But when Eric unlocks the door, I see it.
Candles. Dozens of them. Lining the path to a table in the back corner. The same table where he sat the night we met.
“Eric…”
“Wait.” He takes my hand. Leads me inside. “Let me say something first.”
We stop at the table. The candlelight flickers across his face, and I can see now what I couldn’t see before. The nervousness. The uncertainty. The vulnerability he usually keeps hidden behind confidence and control.
“The night I met you,” he says, “you were crying in my restaurant. Bleeding on my floor. Running from something that had just destroyed your life. And I looked at you and I felt something I’d never felt before.”
“Eric…”
“Let me finish.” He takes a breath. “I told myself it was curiosity. Fascination with a beautiful stranger. Then I told myself it was attraction. Then I told myself it was the arrangement, the deal, the mutual benefit.”
He reaches into his pocket.
“But it was never any of those things. It was this.”
He pulls out a ring.
A beautiful band with two stones, intertwined.
“Your birthstone,” he says. “And mine. Because whatever we’ve built, we built it together. The band was my mother’s. The ring she’s been saving for thirty years. She told me it needed new stones, a new story. So I gave it ours.”
I can’t breathe. Can’t speak. Can’t do anything except stand there with tears streaming down my face.
He drops to one knee.
“Valentina, I don’t want a contract. I don’t want practice. I want every messy morning, every fight, every time you tell me no and every time you let me in.” His voice breaks. “Marry me. Not because my mother wants it. Not because it’s good PR. Because I’m so in love with you I can’t see straight.”
I laugh through my tears. Grab his face. Kiss him hard.
“Yes,” I say against his mouth. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”
He slides the ring onto my finger. Pulls me into his arms. Holds me like he’s never going to let go.
“You said yes,” he whispers.
“Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“I hoped. I wasn’t sure.”
“I’ve been sure for a while now.” I pull back enough to look at him. “I love you, Eric. I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to say that again. But I love you.”
His eyes are wet. I’ve never seen him cry before. Not really. But he’s crying now.
“I love you too,” he says. “God, I love you so much.”
We stay there for a long time. Kissing. Laughing. Crying. The candles burn down around us and we don’t notice.
Eventually, we end up on the table.
His hands are everywhere. My dress is pushed up to my waist. His pants are undone. And when he slides inside me, surrounded by the place where our story began, it feels like coming home.
After, we lie tangled together on the tablecloth, staring at the ceiling.
“We should probably get up,” I say.
“Probably.”
Neither of us moves.
“Your mother is going to be insufferable about this.”
“Absolutely.”
“She’s going to want a big wedding.”
“She’s going to want grandchildren.”
I laugh. “One thing at a time.”
He kisses my forehead. “One thing at a time.”