29. Brooklyn
“ I thought life couldn’t get more tiring than being on my feet all day, chasing eight-year-olds around, but I was wrong.” I wiped the sweat off my brow with the back of my hand as I set the moving box down on the floor of our new kitchen. “Thank God that’s the last of them.”
“No more boxes?” Gabe’s eyes went wide. “Aw. That’s sad.”
“Sad? We don’t have room for any more. I thought you’d be overjoyed.”
He laughed. “What can I say? I like watching you sweat.”
To his credit, Gabe had helped move a lot of boxes up from the van to the apartment too. But our new place on Summersea was so small that there was hardly room for us and the boxes inside it at the same time. So he’d started unpacking them as I’d finished bringing the last ones up.
“Well, if that’s all you’re looking for,” I said, threading my way through precarious stalagmites of cardboard so I could push him up against the refrigerator, “then I can think of way more fun activities than hauling all of our physical belongings up two flights of stairs on an unseasonably warm February morning.”
“Gardening?” Gabe smirked at me.
“Nope.”
“Tango dancing.”
“Guess again.”
“Ooh, ooh, I’ve got it. Construction work. You know, bricklaying. Pipe-fitting. Hanging drywall?”
“Bingo.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. In fact, I’ve been waiting all day to spackle you.”
“Well, you’re going to have to wait another few minutes,” Gabe said, slipping out of my grasp, “because we have something important to do first.”
“And what’s that?”
“Celebrate.” He pulled the fridge open and brought out a bottle of champagne I hadn’t seen him sneak in. “We’ll have to drink it out of coffee mugs because those are the only things I’ve unpacked so far, but it’s the thought—well, and the champagne—that counts.”
I laughed and opened the cabinet above the sink, pulling down a ‘ World’s Best Teacher ’ mug that Julian had gotten me when I’d agreed to take the job at Adair Elementary and a mug with Human Nature’s new logo for Gabe. He’d only been a full-time manager there for a couple of months, but he’d already overhauled the entire look and feel of the organization.
“I know I’ve said it a million times before, but you did a great job with all this branding.” I grinned at him as he filled the two mugs with champagne. “Program manager par excellence . Is there anything you’re not good at?”
“If there is, I’m not telling you for another, um,” he glanced at his watch, “two minutes and seventeen seconds.”
“But two minutes and eighteen seconds is okay? Why? What happens then?”
“Because after two minutes and seventeen seconds—well, two minutes and six seconds, now—we will have completed our first five months of marriage. And I’m not giving you any ammunition to divorce me between now and then.”
“Hard as this might be to believe, I wasn’t planning on divorcing you anyway.”
“Even now that Tanner pulled out of the bet?” Gabe raised an eyebrow.
“Especially now that Tanner pulled out of the bet.”
I hadn’t really been surprised when Tanner had called it off, saying that everything had changed once our marriage had gotten us temporarily famous. I was glad Gabe had insisted on getting that first chunk of money up front, but I was equally glad not to have the remaining fifty thousand hanging over our heads.
“I want you to know that I’m married to you for you ,” I told Gabe. “Not some absurd sum of money. But did I miss a memo or something? What’s special about five months?”
“Nothing, really.” He grinned. “It’s just, you know, most couples celebrate one-month anniversaries and all sorts of little milestones in their first year. We missed all of that, jumping straight into marriage. But I don’t want to wait a full twelve months to celebrate, and when I realized a couple of days ago that our moving day would coincide with our five-month anniversary—well, it just seemed like a sign from the universe.”
“To sweatily drink champagne out of ceramic mugs?”
“Exactly.”
He beamed at me, and I shook my head, laughing.
“What?” he asked. “Too cheesy?”
“It had better not be too cheesy,” I said, still laughing, “because if it is, then I’m going to feel pretty ridiculous doing this.”
“Doing wha—” Gabe broke off and stared at me, open-mouthed, as I got down on one knee.
My heart started to pound, and I had to clear my throat a couple of times before I trusted myself to speak.
“Gabriel Evelyn Hastings, I love you so much. I can’t ask you to be my husband, because you already are. I can’t buy us nicer rings, because you, in your eminent foresight, insisted we get nice ones to start with. And I can’t even claim to have remembered it was our five-month anniversary today, since, well, I clearly forgot. But what I can do is tell you that I am so, so grateful for you.
Gabe clapped at hand to his mouth, and I swallowed before continuing.
“I know you never intended to settle down, never wanted to get trapped. I know you probably never dreamed of ending up on some tiny island like Summersea with a guy like me. But for me, every day with you is an adventure. Every morning I wake up next to you is the start of something extraordinary. I’m so lucky you decided to take a chance on me. So rather than propose that we get married, I’m proposing that we stay married. And since I couldn’t get you a ring, I got you these.”
I pulled a folder out of the box I’d just set down and handed it to Gabe. His eyes lit up as he took in its contents.
“Tickets to Paris?”
“For spring break. I know you always wanted to go. I hope you won’t mind going with me.”
“Mind? I fucking insist. Now get up so I can kiss you.”
He tossed the tickets onto the minuscule kitchen island and launched himself at me as I stood. I stumbled back a couple of steps, narrowly missing another stack of boxes, and wrapped my arms around him.
We had each other.
We held each other.
That was all we needed.
Thanks for reading!