Chapter Thirty-Two Nine Thousand Miles of Yes #2
Will you marry me?” For a long moment, Jennie couldn’t speak at all — could only look at him, kneeling on their living room floor in the candlelight, her parents crying openly on a laptop screen nine thousand miles away, milk rising slowly to a perfect white crown on the stove behind him, exactly the way it had the very first morning any of this began.
“Yes,” she finally managed, laughing and crying at once.
“Yes — obviously yes, you enormous, careful, wonderful man, yes—” He slid the ring onto her finger, right beside the promise she’d already been wearing for months, and then he was standing, and she was in his arms, and neither of them noticed for several long seconds that her parents were shouting congratulations from the laptop, or that the milk had, in fact, finally boiled over, filling the apartment with the smell of a hundred good beginnings all at once.
“The milk,” Jennie gasped eventually, muffled against his shoulder, laughing. “Let it burn,” Lin Xing said, and kissed her instead.
It was her mother’s delighted shriek through the laptop speakers
— “Jennie! The milk! Some things are still sacred!” — that finally sent Jennie stumbling to the stove, laughing too hard to properly rescue anything, while Lin Xing stood watching her with an expression of such complete, undefended happiness that her father, still on the call, said something to her mother in Malayalam that made them both laugh and dab their eyes all over again.
The apartment door burst open four minutes later without a knock, which was how Jennie learned exactly where Sophia and Emma had been hiding all evening.
“WE HEARD SHOUTING,” Sophia announced, already holding a bottle of prosecco she had clearly been keeping cold in the hallway for exactly this purpose, Emma close behind her with an actual cake, “AND WE ASSUMED IT WAS GOOD SHOUTING, BUT I NEEDED CONFIRMATION—”’ “You’ve been in the hallway this whole time?
” Jennie stared at them, ring catching the candlelight.
“Since 5:45,” Emma admitted, setting the cake down with dignity.
“David’s downstairs with the car running in case it went badly and someone needed a dramatic emotional drive somewhere.
He’s very committed to contingency planning.” “It did not go badly,” Sophia said, already crying, already popping the prosecco with a technique clearly practiced for this exact scenario. “LOOK AT THE RING. Jennie.
LOOK AT IT. Show me the hand.” Jennie held it up, laughing, and the small apartment filled with noise — Sophia’s delighted shrieking, Emma’s warmer, quieter joy, her parents still audible through the laptop demanding to see the ring themselves, someone somewhere managing to spill prosecco on the crooked bookshelf, which Lin Xing eyed with visible, long-suffering resignation before deciding, apparently, that tonight was not the night to mention it.
Later, much later, after the cake had been eaten and Sophia and Emma had finally been ushered home still glowing with secondhand joy, and her parents had signed off with tearful instructions about calling Grandmother immediately, Jennie sat curled against Lin Xing on the sofa, the ring still strange and wonderful and heavy on her hand, watching him dial one more number.
“Who’s this?” “My father,” he said. “I promised I’d call, whatever happened tonight.
” He glanced at her, warmth and something more fragile underneath it.
“Would you mind if he heard it from both of us?” “I’d like that very much.
” The call connected, and a steady, quiet-voiced man appeared on the screen — older, silver at the temples, sitting in a house Jennie recognized from photographs, a framed picture of Mei visible on the wall behind him.
“Ba,” Lin Xing said. “It’s done. She said yes. ”
His father — Lin Wei, a name Jennie was hearing spoken aloud, properly, for the first time — went very still for a moment, the same particular stillness she recognized in his son.
“Your mother would have loved this part especially,” he said finally, voice rough.
“The asking. She always said you’d overthink it into next year if someone didn’t push you. ”
A small, wet laugh. “Congratulations, son. Truly.” His eyes moved to Jennie, warm despite the screen and the distance.
“And to you. Welcome to the family, properly, this time.” “Thank you,” Jennie said softly. “I’ve heard so much about her.
I hope I get to hear more.” “You will,” Lin Wei said. “He talks about her more now than he has in years. I think that’s your doing.”
After the call ended, the apartment finally went quiet — properly quiet, the kind of quiet that comes after a very full day, candles burned down to stubs, one plate of cake left uneaten on the counter, the framed photo of Varkala beach still sitting where they’d left it, watching over the whole evening like it had been waiting years for exactly this.
Jennie looked down at her hand — the promise ring and the new one sitting together now, small and certain and entirely hers.
“Two rings,” she said. “That feels excessive for one hand.”
“I considered that,” Lin Xing said. “I decided against removing either. One was a promise. This is the proof the promise held.”
He took her hand, turning it gently in the candlelight. “I find I like the story they tell together better than either one alone.” Jennie leaned into him, tired and full and entirely happy, and let the quiet of their apartment hold them both. “So,” she said eventually.
“Three countries are about to be extremely involved in one wedding.” “At minimum three,” Lin Xing agreed. “I’ve already begun mentally cataloguing the diplomatic complexity. I believe it may exceed several actual peace treaties.”
“Good thing you’re careful,” Jennie said, laughing against his shoulder. “Good thing,” he agreed, “I finally learned when not to be.”