51. Keeley
KEELEY
I listen breathlessly as he describes the night we wound up in Vegas. He’s told me bits of this, of course, but never in such detail. I feel like I can almost remember it now too. And then he stops.
“Come on,” he says, climbing out of the car.
“You can’t just end it there!” I protest.
In my head, he’s still inside the building a year ago, and I’ve gone outside with Drew. Even though I know things worked out okay, I want to scream at story-Graham and say, “go outside and get her, idiot, before Drew convinces her not to marry you!”
“We’re getting to the rest,” he says, reaching into the trunk and hoisting my bag over his shoulder before he grabs his own. It’s only now I realize he never put the surfboards on the roof, or packed our wetsuits. I’m shockingly unobservant at times.
He slams the trunk shut and comes over to where I stand, twining his fingers with mine as he leads me to the building’s entrance.
“What happened next is that Six stormed outside and grabbed you,” Graham says. “So I clocked him, which I’d been dying to do all day.”
I put a palm over my face. “Oh my God,” I groan. “You punched Six ? Look, I know he’s kind of a douche, but he isn’t a bad person—”
Graham’s nostrils flare. “If you remembered the way he grabbed you, you might feel otherwise.”
I hide a smile. He’s still irritated over the attention I paid to another man a year ago. Then again, Anna Fucking Tattelbaum will never be my favorite person either. “Please continue.”
“And then I brought you over here,” he says, pulling me around the corner, to an empty patio on the building’s west side. In the distance, the sun is already beginning its descent in a glorious haze of pink and salmon.
He drops to one knee, and I don’t entirely understand why until he fishes a small blue box out of his bag. “I asked you to marry me again, and you said yes. But I figured it was time I did it the right way.”
I blink back tears. Yes, there was a part of me that always wished I’d gotten a big romantic proposal, or had at least been asked when he was thinking clearly. I told myself it didn’t matter as long as I wound up happy, and…I did. But I love that he’s asking now anyway.
He climbs to his feet. “Aren’t you going to open it?”
I pluck the box from his hand. “I’m just worried it’s, like, a tiny stock portfolio instead of a ring.”
His eyes crinkle at the corners. “Even I’m not that bad.”
He’s nearly that bad—I mean, we still don’t have a Silver Cross stroller. I fully expect a diamond chip so small I need a magnifying glass to see it, but it doesn’t matter what the ring is like. I love him and I love that he’s done this.
I open the box and my jaw drops. Not out of horror.
It’s a massive rose-cut diamond, just like the one Lily Collins has. “Oh my God,” I whisper. “How did you know this is what I wanted?”
He laughs as he slides it on my finger. “You’ve shown me that ring every day since you got out of the hospital, Keeley. You made a TikTok about your love for that ring.”
Okay, yes, I did do those things. I laugh but it comes out a little like a sob.
He frowns. “Is it okay?”
I swallow hard and press my face to his chest. “It’s better than okay. J Lo only wishes Ben Affleck loved her this much.”
He holds me tight. “So that’s a yes?”
I nod quickly. “Yes.” I wipe my eyes and pull back to smile at him.
His gaze holds mine for a long moment. He already knew how I felt about him, and I knew how he felt about me. It’s still nice to stand here and live in it all for a second. We’re so lucky it worked out the way it did.
“So are you going to tell me the rest of the story?”
He pushes my hair out of my face. “After the limo ride to the airport, it’s mostly a blur for me too.
” He nods toward the street, where a limo I hadn’t even noticed awaits.
“I know it’s not a parade through Santorini, but I thought maybe we could redo the rest of it together.
It’s the most important decision I ever made.
And the best one. I’d like to remember it. ”
I’m blinking back tears again. It was by far the best decision I ever made too. I’d be inclined to wonder if Drunk Keeley was some kind of all-knowing genius, except Drunk Keeley also once thought it would be “funny” to try to sneak over the border into Canada. So probably not.
I slide my hand into his. “We probably need a classy, elegant story to tell Daisy one day.”
He grins. “So this is going to be classy and elegant? That’s disappointing.”
“We’re 100 percent still having sex in that limo.”
He laughs and pulls me against him again. “We’re only ten minutes from the airport,” he whispers. “It’ll have to be fast.”
I pull his mouth to mine. “That’s okay.”
I’m no longer certain the O’Keefe curse is going to get me, but the one thing I’m sure of is that it’s not about how long things last.
It’s about making sure you love the time you have, and the people you spend it with.
And I do. I really, really do.
THE END