Epilogue
Chapter forty-three
One Year Later
Foundation Fitness smelled like rubber, sweat, and the particular hope that came from people trying to be better versions of themselves. Ellis was on the bench press, form still slightly off despite a year of my unsolicited commentary.
“Your elbows are doing that thing,” I said, sitting on the adjacent bench with my water bottle. “That aggressive thing. You’re bench pressing like you’re trying to prove something.”
He racked the weights. “I’m just trying to press, Jett.”
“Sure, but you’re doing it like the weights personally insulted your family.”
He laughed. It came easy now. Everything came easy, or at least easier. The year sat differently when someone carried it with you.
After the gym, we walked through Clinton Hill. The neighborhood pushed into spring. The bare trees were starting to think about leaves. The brownstones came alive again with people on stoops and windows open. A day for believing in possibilities.
My phone buzzed. My mom: Sunday dinner. Three heart emojis. A performance of affection, but affection anyway. She had been doing this more since the apartment, finding ways to stay connected that weren’t just food or silence. She was learning the language of moving forward.
Ellis’ phone buzzed, too. Venue photos from Megan. She was marrying a woman named Patricia in the spring. Ellis was invited, and Ellis was inviting me, and none of this would have been possible a few months ago.
“Your family’s getting big,” I said.
“Our family,” he corrected.
It still hit me when he said things like that.
The instant we got home, I could feel something was off. Ellis was fidgeting, checking his phone, his energy off, like he was waiting for something.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah.” He didn’t finish. Kissed my forehead instead. “Give me a second.”
He moved into the kitchen. Opened the drawer where we kept the junk, the phone chargers and takeout menus. Reached past the surface stuff and pulled something out from underneath. A small box. The size of his palm. Black, matte, the kind of thing you only buy for one reason.
He came back to me. Didn’t sit. Stood with it in his hand looking down at me with that careful Ellis face, the one that meant he was about to do something he’d practiced and couldn’t quite remember how to start.
“Ellis.”
“I bought it months ago. The week after Megan asked me how I knew.” His voice was steady, but only by effort.
“I knew the second I started looking. I’ve been waiting for the right place.
I kept thinking the right place would happen, and then we found this apartment, and I realized the right place was home. ”
He opened the box.
A matte gold band. Plain by choice, not by accident. Geometric in its restraint. So obviously chosen by him, I almost laughed.
He went to his knees on the floor in front of me. Not a performance. Just down, like his legs had decided for him.
“Marry me.”
Two words. Not a speech. Not the four pages I’d find out later he’d written and scrapped. Just the words, with his voice cracked open in them.
The word from earlier in the day landed back behind my ribs. Permanently. He’d been holding it.
I couldn’t speak. I held out my left hand. He slid the ring onto my finger, similar to placing a thing on an altar. It fit. Of course it did. Ellis had measured.
“Yes.” My voice came shredded. “Yes. Ellis. Yes.”
He pressed his forehead to mine. Both of us were crying again. Both of us laughing. The streetlight moved across the ceiling as another car passed.
“You were terrified.”
“I’ve been terrified for weeks.”
“Weeks?”
“Since I knew I was going to ask. I just didn’t know how to start.”
“You started fine.”
“I was going to start with a speech.”
“Was there a speech?”
“Four pages. I scrapped it.”
“Of course you did.”
“What came out was clumsy.”
“Clumsy is my favorite version of you.”
He laughed into my shoulder.
We danced after that. Not intentionally. The radio played something impossible not to move to; Ellis pulled me close, my hands gripped his shoulders, and we swayed in the kitchen like this was a prom and a wedding and a promise all at once.
In this kitchen, with his hands on my waist and my head on his shoulder and the knowledge that we chose this and were still choosing and would probably keep choosing, nothing else mattered.
He pulled back enough to look at me. His eyes were that complicated green-brown I’d never got tired of. The geometric tattoo on his arm caught the light. His face had the softness of someone who’d learned to put down the armor.
We stood in the kitchen, two people who’d survived their own worst fears. Forever was a fancy word for choosing to stay, every single day.
The Inner Circle arrived on a Saturday in May, which was when Brooklyn finally admitted spring existed.
Calliope came first because she was always first. She brought chaos and flowers, a bouquet that looked like it had survived a hurricane but worked, all clashing colors and stems at aggressive angles. She dumped them into my arms before I could properly greet her.
“These are for your apartm…”
She stopped.
The bouquet hit the floor between us.
She had my left hand by the wrist before the flowers finished landing, holding it up to the light.
“What. Is. THAT?!”
I’d been wearing it for sixteen hours, and I’d already imagined her face six different ways. None of them were as good as the real one.
“Last night.”
“LAST NIGHT?”
“Hardwood. Long story.”
“Hardwood?”
“Ellis got on one knee. In our kitchen with a four-page speech scrapped.”
She made a sound I’d never heard her make before. Halfway between a scream and a laugh, with a sob underneath. Didn’t let go of my wrist.
“SIERRA. RAVEN. GET. IN. HERE.”
Ellis came out of the kitchen, took one look at Calliope and my outstretched hand, and laughed the way he laughed when something he’d been waiting for had finally arrived.
Sierra rounded the corner with her camera already up. The shutter clicked twice before she’d taken three steps. Then she let the camera drop, crossed the room, and pulled me into a hug so tight my ribs ached.
“You said yes.” Into my shoulder.
“I said it three times.”
“Of course you did.”
Raven came last. Didn’t ask to see the ring.
She walked past us, dropped to her knees in the parallelogram of gold the afternoon sun cut across the rug, and pulled the Ten of Cups out of her deck without shuffling.
Set it face-up on the floor, like she’d been holding onto that card for three weeks waiting for this exact moment.
She finally looked up. Her face did the thing it almost never did. She smiled all the way.
“Told you.”
We fell into the apartment the way we’d always fallen into spaces. Sierra photographing the light from the window, Calliope reorganizing my record collection and complaining about my Carly Rae Jepsen-to-Beyoncé ratio in volumes I could hear from the kitchen.
“Jett. JETT. Where’s Robyn? Tell me you have Robyn.”
“Heartbreak corner on the bottom shelf. Next to Adele."
“This is a terrible filing system.”
“Works for me.”
“Then why am I LOOKING AT TWO COPIES OF DANGEROUSLY IN LOVE in the heartbreak corner?”
“Because some of us are loyal, and Beyoncé works in every section.”
Raven snorted from the floor. She had her cards spread by the window, laying a slow cross in the parallelogram of gold the afternoon sun cut across the rug. Checking the bones, she called it. A reading on the apartment itself.
Ellis carried the focaccia past her without disturbing the cards. He’d learned. Three months in, and he’d already absorbed the unspoken etiquette of The Coven. Calliope chose the music. Sierra chose the light. Raven chose what we weren’t saying.
I stood in the doorframe between the kitchen and the living room and let the apartment fill up around me.
This had not been mine a year ago. A year ago, I was in a one-bedroom in Bushwick with too many takeout cartons and an empty windowsill.
Now it was a two-bedroom in Clinton Hill.
A man across my chest at night. A jar of Mom’s cooking in the freezer she’d dropped off last Sunday without ceremony because Ellis was running low.
Jack Jr. on the windowsill, healthy in a way I hadn’t earned but Ellis trusted me with anyway.
All our friends moved through the rooms the way they always did. Calliope in motion. Sierra observing. Raven still as a stone in the current. Three women who’d met me at sixteen, when I didn’t yet know how to take up space.
It started with three girls who saw me when I was still learning how to be seen.
I’d said that, once. A long time ago, before any of this.
It had grown since then.
Ellis crossed the kitchen to me. Bumped his shoulder against mine. Stood with me and let the room happen around us.
“You good?”
“Yeah.”
He didn’t ask me to elaborate. He let me take the time.
“I used to count three seconds.” I said it quiet. Not for the room. “Three seconds, and then I’d redirect. Bail on anything good before it could leave me first.”
“And now?”
“Now I just stayed.”
He took my hand. Pressed it palm-flat against my ribs through the thin cotton of my shirt.
“I know.”
I leaned my forehead against his shoulder. Calliope was still arguing with my record collection. Raven shuffled the deck. Sierra had her phone up, capturing the way the late afternoon light fell across all of us at once.
I was still here.
Still learning what Libre meant.
Whole. Unafraid.
Choosing to stay.