49. Roll for Commitment
Chapter forty-nine
Roll for Commitment
Micah
There is a stuffed bear wearing a red shirt sitting on the kitchen counter, and I have been staring at it for approximately three minutes.
The bear itself isn't particularly interesting.
What makes it useful is that Dex is upstairs attempting to turn himself into Tigger, Cami has somehow convinced Griffin that Christopher Robin is a legitimate adult Halloween costume, Ronan is wearing a brown sweater vest and has already been informed by four separate people that being assigned Owl was less a costume choice than an acknowledgment of fact, and… there is a ring in my pocket.
The bear is considerably easier to think about than any of those things.
“You're going to wear a hole through the floor.”
I glance toward Ronan. He's standing near the sink with a mug of tea, already wearing the glasses Cami bought specifically because she says they're more “aggressively Owl” than his normal pair.
“I'm standing still.”
“You've shifted your weight fourteen times.”
“Did you count?”
“No.”
I stare at him.
His mouth moves slightly. “Not intentionally.”
“That's worse.”
He takes another drink of tea while I look back at the bear.
Two months ago, Griffin and Cami celebrated their first anniversary.
The day Griffin married her because insurance in this country is an elaborate extortion scheme and Cami needed better access to healthcare.
She spent most of the morning calling it their benefits package anniversary until Griffin finally picked her up, threw her over his shoulder, and carried her upstairs while she laughed loudly enough for the rest of us to hear through two closed doors.
Later, we all went out to dinner. There was cake.
Dex made a toast that began with to fraudulent romance until Griffin informed him there was nothing fraudulent about a legally binding marriage license.
Cami corrected him that the romance part had initially been questionable, and Griffin kissed her in front of all of us until she stopped talking.
It had been funny.
It had also stayed with me.
Not because I wanted what Griffin and Cami had. Their marriage belongs to them, including the weird way it started and everything it became afterward.
What stayed with me was the distinction they kept making without really trying.
The paperwork had happened first. The choosing came later, over and over again.
For a few weeks afterward, I caught myself thinking about Dex whenever marriage came up. Not wedding venues or tax filing or whose insurance was better. Just him.
Eventually I realized the thought wasn't going away.
I wanted the choice first.
No emergency. No practical problem to solve. No reason at all beyond the fact that when I picture my future, Dex is already standing somewhere inside it, usually talking too loudly and wearing shoes he abandoned in the middle of a walkway.
That's more or less what I told him when we finally put the word primary on whatever we'd already become. Giving it a name hadn't created anything between us.
Apparently I want another name anyway.
Fiancé.
Husband.
Even thinking the second one still changes something low in my chest.
My fingers slide into my pocket and brush the edge of the ring box.
Ronan notices. “You have checked that six times.”
“Five.”
“Seven.”
I glare at him.
“I'm trying to help.”
“No, you're not.”
He considers that and shrugs.
Ronan is the only person I told.
There were several reasons for that.
He doesn't accidentally reveal secrets because he's excited. He doesn't make other people's events about his own feelings. More importantly, when I told him, he didn't immediately ask whether I'd thought it through like I was about to make an impulsive decision.
Instead, he asked whether I specifically wanted a legal marriage. He asked whether Dex had ever indicated marriage was something he wanted. Then he asked how I thought another marriage might affect the family structure we'd already spent the last year building.
Useful questions.
After that, he asked whether I needed help.
I told him I needed twenty minutes alone with Dex before everyone left tonight.
Ronan said he'd handle it.
No interrogation. No unsolicited advice. He didn't even ask to see the ring until three days later.
Cami's voice carries down the stairs. “Dex, if you get orange body paint on that wall, Griffin is going to murder you.”
“He's a paramedic. He can revive me.”
“I cannot,” Griffin calls back.
“Not with that attitude.”
Ronan glances at me. “I will give you as much time as I can, but you may not have more than three minutes.”
My stomach tightens. “That specific?”
“Once Cami comes downstairs, containment becomes unlikely.”
Fair.
She is helping Dex with his orange makeup.
Part of me suddenly regrets deciding to do this tonight… in costume. But I’m not stopping now.
Dex laughs at something upstairs, and the sound catches me in the chest in the same place it always does.
He's been in my life long enough that I don't remember not knowing his laugh.
That's the strange part.
I remember meeting him. I remember thinking he was loud. I remember him moving into the house and filling spaces I hadn't realized were quiet.
What I don't remember is when I started listening for him.
By the time I noticed, it had already happened.
There are drawings of him in sketchbooks from before I knew I wanted him. His hands around a beer bottle. His profile while he watched television. The angle of his shoulders when he played guitar.
There's one page where I drew only his mouth because he'd been talking too much, and apparently some part of my brain thought the solution was to study it.
I found that one again while putting everything together for tonight.
At first it made me laugh.
Then I sat on the floor of my room for ten minutes because I realized I had been falling in love with him long before I knew what to call it.
The kitchen doorway fills with orange.
Dex has managed the pants, tail, fitted orange shirt with black stripes, and black eyeliner. His hair—newly dyed with orange tips—is still damp, pushed back from his forehead.
He looks at Ronan.
Then at me.
Then at the stuffed bear.
“Okay, why does this feel like an intervention?”
“Because your baseline behavior makes interventions statistically likely,” Ronan says.
Dex points at him. “That is not very Hundred Acre Wood of you.”
Ronan sets his mug down. “I’m going to go help Griffin with Cami.”
Dex's eyebrows rise. “Costume or emotionally?”
“Yes.”
“Fair.”
Ronan leaves.
Dex watches him disappear, then turns back toward me. “Why are you not dressed?”
“I am dressed.”
His eyes travel over my black jeans and gray shirt. “That's not Eeyore.”
“The ears are over there.”
“You need the tail.”
“I can think of no sentence less dignified than that one.”
“You're dating me. Your dignity died months ago.”
He crosses the kitchen and reaches for Ronan's abandoned tea.
I take it out of his hand before he can drink. “That's not yours.”
“Sharing is caring.”
“He will know.”
“He knows everything. It's exhausting.”
I put the mug back exactly where Ronan left it.
When I turn around, Dex is watching me instead of the tea.
His expression changes slightly.
He knows me too well. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Micah.”
I wipe my palms down my jeans.
Fuck.
I had a plan for this.
I've had a plan for weeks.
None of it accounted for the reality of Dex standing in our kitchen dressed like Tigger with eyeliner and orange facepaint.
I should have accounted for that.
“Sit down.”
His eyebrows climb. “Oh?”
“Not like that.”
“Do I know what you're about to do?”
“No.”
“Should I?”
“No.”
“Are you going to tie me up before the Halloween party?”
“No.”
He gives me an exaggerated pout. “Worst proposal ever.”
My body locks before I can stop it.
Dex pauses.
We stare at each other.
Then he laughs. “Jesus, your face.”
My lungs have temporarily stopped cooperating.
“Sorry. Sorry.” He drops onto one of the stools at the island. “You said sit down in your boss voice. My brain went places.”
I keep looking at him.
His laugh fades. “What?”
Instead of answering, I reach behind the cereal boxes on top of the refrigerator and pull down the portfolio.
It's black leather, roughly the size of a hardcover book, tied closed with a thin cord.
Dex stares at it. “What's that?”
“Open it.”
He takes it carefully.
The first drawing is old.
Years old.
Dex asleep on the couch, one arm hanging over the edge, his hair longer than it is now. I drew only his upper body and the mess of pillows behind him.
His thumb stills against the page. “Did you draw this?”
“Apparently.”
“What do you mean, apparently?”
“I found it in an old sketchbook.”
He looks up at me. “Before us?”
“Yes.”
Something in his face changes.
I lean against the counter because standing without support suddenly seems less appealing than it did a minute ago.
Dex turns the page.
His hands around guitar strings.
Another page.
His boots beside the front door, one knocked sideways because he has never once put them away correctly.
Another.
Dex laughing with his head tipped back at the D&D table.
Then one I made after we started sleeping together, his face half buried in my pillow, eyeliner still smudged beneath one eye.
“Holy… Micah.” His voice has gone quieter.
I let him keep going.
Dex with Cami asleep against his shoulder.
Dex under stage lights.
His hand resting on my thigh.
His mouth against Ronan's.
The back of his neck in the kitchen while he tried to cook something I should have stopped him from attempting.
That one makes him laugh. “What the fuck is this?”
“The quesadilla incident.”
“The quesadilla was fine.”
“It was burned.”
“It was crispy.”
“It adhered to the pan.”
“Semantics.”
He keeps turning pages.
There are twenty drawings.
I considered fifty.
Ronan told me twenty was already enough to make the point.
I did not tell him he was right.
The final page isn't old. It's the only drawing I made specifically for tonight.
Dex's left hand rests loosely against mine, and around his ring finger is a black band.
Not a generic ring.
The ring.