Emma
"He used to practice his gold medal speech in the bathroom mirror. Covered in foam and all."
I nearly inhaled my morning coffee.
Athena was perched across from me at Ralph's sleek marble kitchen island, her legs folded underneath her like a tiny, chaotic Buddha on the leather barstool.
She was wrapping both hands around her giant mug, wearing an expression of such pure sisterly glee that it was clear she had been waiting a literal lifetime for an audience worthy of her blackmail archive.
"He was nineteen," she continued, ignoring the muffled, wheezing choking sounds I was making into my sleeve.
"I used to sit out in the hallway with my back against the linen closet and just drink it in.
He'd do the whole bit, Emma. The humble, breathless wave to the imaginary cameras.
The choked-up thank-you-to-my-sacrificing-family.
He even had a dedicated three-minute section about his coach that he rehearsed with aggressive hand gestures. "
"Hand gestures," I wheezed, my chest heaving.
"Full, dramatic choreography. Like a highly emotional TED Talk in speedos."
I was crying. Actual, hot tears were streaming down my face, my ribs aching from the kind of deep, violent laughter I hadn't produced in three years. "Athena, stop. I'm begging you, my lungs are collapsing."
The heavy click of the door echoed down the hall, and Ralph walked into the kitchen.
His damp, golden-blonde hair was pushed back from his forehead, and he was wearing a clean black T-shirt that stretched violently across his chest, paired with gray sweatpants.
But it was his face that caught me off guard.
Framed by a pair of matte-black, square-rimmed reading glasses I'd seen him wear once before, he looked so utterly, devastatingly hot it made my throat instantly dry.
The second his eyes landed on our conspiratorial huddle, the stoicism on his face cracked straight down the middle. He ripped the glasses off, his ears turning a magnificent shade of crimson.
"Whatever she's telling you," he said, pointing a long, warning finger at his sister, "is actionable defamation of my character."
"Every single syllable is gospel truth," Athena countered smoothly, taking a slow, elegant sip of her coffee.
"I've never felt more profoundly educated in my life," I added, wiping a tear from my cheek. I looked back up at him, my gaze trailing over the broad line of his shoulders, then back to the glasses clutched in his hand. "Why do you wear those glasses so early in the morning?"
Ralph stiffened, shoving the spectacles into his pocket with a defensive, grunted mutter that sounded like an angry bear. "They're for eye strain. The computer screens at the foundation are bright."
"Ralph—"
"Athena, I believe she was talking to me." Athena shot me a look, then held Ralph's gaze for a second. Was I imagining the sudden tension in the air?
"They make you look like a very brilliant, very dangerous literature professor who is about to give me a failing grade," I teased, trying to shatter the stillness.
He grabbed a water bottle and slammed the refrigerator door.
Athena ended up staying for two hours. She filled the house with vibrant, chaotic noise and a familial warmth these walls had been starving for.
"People treat me like a door to him," she murmured, her blue eyes—so strikingly identical to her brother's—softening as she looked into her empty mug.
"At dinner parties, they don't ask about my life or my degree.
It's always 'How is Ralph's shoulder?' or 'Is Ralph single?
' I'm a human search engine with a family connection. "
"I understand that exact brand of isolation," I said softly. Athena looked up, her eyes going still on mine, like she was weighing whether I really meant it. "Yeah," she said, a small, genuine smile breaking through her defenses. "I think you really do."
After she finally left, promising to return with a PowerPoint presentation of Ralph's most humiliating teenage swim meets, the kitchen plunged into a heavy, resonant quiet. I sat on the barstool, my fingers trembling slightly as I pulled up my phone.
One new notification. The name on the screen made my lungs seize.
Theo.
I forced myself to breathe, unlocking the screen.
Theo
Em. I'm so sorry. For every single thing I shouted at the pool deck. For the way I handled it. If you're ready to talk... I'm here. Whenever that is. No pressure. I won't fail you again, Emma. I promise.
I read the words until they blurred into a watery, illegible smear. I pressed the glass screen hard against my chest, swallowing down the thick lump in my throat.
I typed back with a shaking thumb:
Emma
I'm ready.
His reply flashed back within a second:
Theo
Saturday. Dad's birthday. Please come home.
I stared at the blue bubble for a long time. Then I typed:
Emma
I'll be there.
Ralph found me twenty minutes later, still frozen in the exact same spot, staring blankly at the kitchen tile. He'd put the black glasses back on, standing in the archway with his arms crossed over his chest, looking so ruggedly handsome it felt like a physical offense.
"What's going on in that beautiful head of yours?" he asked, his voice low.
"My dad's birthday is Saturday. Theo wants me there." I lifted my eyes to his. "Will you come with me, Ralph? Please?"
He walked over, his massive frame eclipsing the kitchen light, and leaned down until his face was inches from mine. "Try and stop me, Emma. I'm your shadow."
"I need to buy him a gift," I said, panic rising in my chest, my words rushing out in a breathless flurry of anxiety.
"I need to find something absolutely perfect because I haven't been to his birthday in three years, Ralph.
I can't just walk into that house after all my silence and not bring something that says 'I'm so sorry, and I love you, and I know I don't deserve this space but please let me stay. '"
"Emma." He reached out, his long, warm fingers gently cupping my jaw, his thumb smoothing over my skin with a tenderness that made my eyes sting.
"Your father would be ecstatic if you showed up carrying a melted gas station candy bar.
The gift is you breathing the same air as him.
The gift is you walking through the door. "
"I'm still buying him the entire world," I whispered stubbornly, leaning into his palm.
We went to the high-end department store downtown that afternoon.
To avoid the local sports press, Ralph wore a black baseball cap pulled low over his eyes and a sleek black medical mask.
Instead of making him look incognito, the combination made him look like an incredibly tall, lethally attractive criminal attempting a very high-fashion heist.
He'd kept his reading glasses on to check the labels, and the sight of those dark frames tucked beneath the brim of his cap, paired with the broad sweep of his shoulders, had two women in the cologne aisle doing double-takes that suggested they were rethinking their afternoon itineraries.
I was an absolute psychological disaster. I picked up a cashmere scarf, tensed, put it down, circled a leather watch case four times, and spent fifteen minutes agonizing over whether my father would prefer a personalized fountain pen or a leather-bound journal.
Ralph trailed me through the aisles with his arms full of my rejects, offering zero unsolicited commentary unless I specifically begged for it.
I could see what it cost him. His jaw kept working, and twice he opened his mouth, thought better of it, and shut it again, physically swallowing the opinion a man used to being obeyed so badly wanted to hand me.
"The journal," I muttered, pulling at my hair. "No, the pen. No, both. I'll get both. And the scarf. And that vintage book on fly-fishing because he mentioned wanting to try it back in 2022."
"Emma, sweetheart, you're currently purchasing the entire inventory of the Pacific Northwest." He chuckled behind the mask, his eyes crinkling at the corners behind his glasses.
"He deserves the inventory, Ralph."
"He deserves his daughter. The rest of this is just expensive kindling."
I ignored him, adding a rare bottle of small-batch bourbon to the mounting pile. By the time we reached the pristine glass cash wrap, I was a ball of exposed nerves.
I reached frantically into my purse for my wallet, but Ralph's movement was a lightning-fast blur. His black titanium card was out and tapped against the electronic reader before my fingers could even find my zipper.
"Ralph, no!" I lunged for the machine, my hand brushing his solid forearm. "Stop it!"
"Too late," the sales clerk said with a dreamlike sigh, the receipt already printing.
Ralph pocketed his card with an unbothered, masterful calm that made me want to jump him and strangle him simultaneously.
"I was explicitly going to pay for that," I snapped, my face flushing hot. "That was my penance."
"I'm fully aware." He leaned down, his chest pressing lightly against my shoulder as he whispered directly into my ear, his breath scorching my skin. "But I happen to thoroughly enjoy spoiling my girlfriend. So deal with it."
The word detonated in the center of my chest like a synchronized firework show.
Girlfriend.
"Girlfriend?" I repeated, my voice a tiny, breathless squeak.
"If you'll have me," he said. "I wanted to do this with an actual script, Emma. Somewhere grander than a fluorescent checkout line next to the designer socks. But you keep making me lose my mind with impatience."
Behind the register, the middle-aged sales clerk suddenly pressed both of her hands over her mouth, her eyes instantly welling with heavy tears.
She looked like a woman who had been selling luxury goods for twenty years and had never once witnessed a real-time romantic surrender between the gift-wrap and the cologne section.
"Oh my god," she whispered, aggressively fanning her face with a promotional flyer. "Do not keep that man waiting. Say yes right now, honey, or I'm going to faint."