Chapter 15
Dakota
M: I spent the afternoon with your mom and sister.
I'm at Levi's, and we're working on an addition he's making so that Magnolia Grace will have more than enough room to run her business, when I get the text.
D: You did what?
M: You read that right. Spent the afternoon with your mom and sister. There's no way we're keeping this a secret from them. They basically told me they know what we're doing. You may have thought you didn’t confirm anything for your mom, but your non-confirmation was the confirmation.
D: So I guess the question is, when do we want to make our grand debut?
M: LOL! You say that like we're a couple at a debutante ball.
D: You almost were, weren't you?
M: Yes, but thank God my mom decided against it. What are you doing?
D: Helping your brother with the room he's building for Magnolia.
"Do you think you can set the phone down and help me?" Levi grumbles as he struggles to hold up a sheet of dry wall.
"Sorry." I throw the phone down and rush over to where he's standing, grunting.
"What's so important that you forgot you were helping me?"
It'd probably be a good idea to just get it out in the open right now, but I can't. Not without Molly here.
I don't want her to have to face her brother on her own when he finds out what's going on between us.
"It's a secret." I give him a conspiratorial grin.
"You'll find out when I'm fucking ready to tell you. "
"Has to be about a damn woman, then."
Little does he know.
We get the sheet up and secured, and I hold it in place while Levi runs the screws in, and for a few minutes the only sound is the drill and the occasional creak of the house settling around us.
He's been working on this addition for a few weeks now, and I can see the shape of it coming together.
He told me that he sketched it out one night while he and Magnolia were watching TV, but he had to think on it before he pulled the trigger.
That's always been Levi. He thinks things through from every angle before he commits, and then once he commits, there's no half measures about it.
I step back and look at the wall, checking that it's sitting right, and then I look at the rest of the framing he's done and the materials stacked along the far side. "How much more do you have to do?"
"Three more walls and the ceiling, and then it's all finish work." He sets the drill down and pulls his water bottle off the windowsill. "Flooring, paint, getting her workspace set up the way she needs it. Maybe another month if I stay on it."
"It's going to be a good space." I say it, and mean it.
The room faces the backyard and gets good light from two directions, and it's large enough that Magnolia Grace will have room to spread out without feeling cramped.
He thought about what she actually needed, not just what seemed practical. "She's going to love it."
He nods, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and the look on his face when her name comes into the conversation is the same one it always is.
Peaceful and settled. Like everything in him that used to run a little restless finally found where it was supposed to be.
I know that look. I've been watching it on his face since the two of them got together.
"Things are going good?" I ask, even though I can see the answer plain as anything.
"Really good," he says, and he doesn’t elaborate, which tells me more than a long explanation would.
Levi doesn't constantly talk about his feelings or happiness. He just has it, and it shows up in the way he shows up for those he loves, it’s no different now that he and Magnolia Grace figured out what they are to each other.
I think about them and I think about what it cost both of them to get there, everything Magnolia survived before Levi was able to step in and be what she needed, and I have nothing but respect for both of them on the other side of it.
Some people earn their happy ending in a way that makes it look even better once they get there.
"Wait here a second," he says, and sets his water bottle down and heads toward the main part of the house.
I lean against the framing and look out through the open space where the window will eventually go.
The backyard is still carrying the last of winter, the grass pale and flat, but there are things coming up along the fence line that suggest spring has got ideas about showing up soon, even though it’s a little early.
I think about the last few years and what they've looked like compared to what I'd expected, and how different the two are.
Levi and I both thought we had a reasonable idea of what our lives were going to be, and then circumstances rearranged most of it without asking, and we ended up here instead, and I'm not going to say that was easy because parts of it absolutely were not, but I'm also not going to pretend it didn't lead somewhere good.
Because it did. It led him to Magnolia Grace, and it led me back to Molly in a different way than I'd ever had her before, and standing in this half-finished room in the house my best friend is building into a permanent life with the woman he loves, I feel the full weight of how much we've both grown up.
We're not the same kids we were in middle school, when Levi was the one person who stood between me and the version of my life that would have gone badly in all the ways it could have.
We're not even the same people we were three years ago.
We're men now, in the fullest sense of it, with real stakes and real things to lose and real things we're building toward, and I don't think either of us saw this particular version of our lives coming, but I'm glad we're in it.
His footsteps come back through the house and he reappears in the doorway, and he's got something in his hand that he holds out toward me without saying anything first.
It's a ring box, small and dark blue, and he opens it before he extends it the rest of the way so that I can see what's inside.
The ring is simple and super sparkly, a solitaire on a clean band, and it's exactly what I would have guessed if anyone had asked me what Levi would pick. It’s small, but effective and makes a lasting impression.
I look at it for a long moment, and then I look at him.
"You're going to propose?" I ask, eyebrows raised as I look at my best friend.
He takes the box back and closes it and tucks it into the front pocket of his jeans, and he's got that look on his face again, the peaceful one, except now there's something under it that's a little more exposed, a little more vulnerable, the way he used to look when he was a kid and something really mattered to him and he wasn't sure how to explain it for fear that others would make fun of him for it.
"Yeah," he says. "When this room is done, and we've settled in, I'm going to make it official with her. Just pray she accepts."
She will. I know she will, and I don't say that to make him feel better or because it's the thing you're supposed to say when your best friend shows you a ring.
I say it because I have watched Magnolia Grace look at him, and I know what that looks like from the outside, and there is not a single version of this where she says no.
The woman would walk through fire for him. She already has.
"She'll say yes," I tell him, and I hold his gaze when I say it so he understands I'm not just talking. "Without question."
He exhales slowly, and some of the tension he'd been carrying in his shoulders releases. "Good to hear."
I lean back against the framing again and take in this moment.
We’re quiet as we stand in the unfinished addition that is going to become the place where Magnolia Grace builds her business alongside this man who has been my closest friend for most of mine.
I feel a whole lot of emotions shift inside of me.
Not in a dramatic way, not in a way I can put into words.
It’s a feeling that I’ve run from most of my life, because I wasn’t sure what it would look like when I grew up.
So many parts of my childhood and teenage years were painful because I didn’t know how to navigate life with my learning disability.
“You know, it’s funny,” I tell him. “So many times in my life I’ve worried that I wouldn’t have what others have because of my disability.
I was always afraid I’d read the wrong thing at the wrong time, not understand something that someone was trying to say to me.
I lived my fucking life in fear of reading in front of others, or having to explain myself in front of an audience. ”
“C’mon Kota. None of that shit matters when you’re an adult,” Levi scoffs.
“You’re right. When you’re an adult and find your footing in the world, those kids who made your life a living hell are the same adults just looking to see if they can make sense of what’s happening.
I was always worried,” I start, but pause for a second to collect my thoughts.
“Always worried that I’d have to make my life smaller to fit in with everyone else, but now I realize it needed to be bigger.
Bigger so that I could find those people who weren’t closed-minded. ”
“Those people were fucking assholes, Kota. You’re a great guy, and anyone who ever thought you were less than that because of your dyslexia is a motherfucker.”
We laugh together, and I realize he’s right.
But back then I couldn’t see it. I wanted to be smaller, because bigger brought attention, and attention meant more eyes on me.
Which is why I was small about what was happening with Molly, but now?
Now I want the bigger. I want the out loud kind of attention that I’ve shied away from my entire life.
I have hope that when Levi finds out about the two of us, he'll get there.
He loves his sister, and he loves me, and those two things are going to have to coexist in a new way once we tell him, and I believe that they will because Levi is not a small person.
He's never been small about anything that really matters.
He might need a minute, and I'll give him that minute, but I'm not letting Molly go to make anyone more comfortable, including her brother.
I'm never letting her go. I decided that somewhere between the bowling alley and her front porch and that afternoon in my truck in her driveway, and there's nothing left to decide.
"Let's get back to work," I tell him, because if I stay in my own head much longer I'm going to end up saying things I'm not ready to say yet, and Levi deserves to hear it the right way, at the right time, with Molly standing next to me when I say it. "We're burning daylight."
He picks up the drill and hands me the next sheet of drywall, and we get back to it, and the afternoon stretches out around us easy and familiar, two men building something that's meant to last, each of us with our own reasons to make sure it holds.