CHAPTER THIRTY
THE SAFEST PLACES
AGE TWENTY-ONE
“Isn't it weird that we never really went on a first date?”
I turned to look at Meg, sitting in the passenger seat of my car.
It'd been a few months since that kiss in the parking lot of the police department, and immediately after, we'd settled easily into a relationship that felt old and comfortable.
Three months wasn't a long time by any stretch of the imagination, but at this point, I could barely remember my life before her.
Or maybe it was that I didn't want to when this was all I'd ever really wanted.
Sometimes, I could hardly believe she was mine.
“What do you mean?” I asked, pulling into the RCPD parking lot. “We've had a first date.”
“Dinner at your parents' house isn't a first date,” she countered, and I didn't need to look at her to know she was rolling her eyes.
“Yeah, okay, but then we went out to the diner the next day—”
“That was lunch! We've been doing that since you started working—”
After pulling into my usual spot, I turned and leaned across the car, stretching my arm across the back of her seat and bringing my nose within an inch of Meg's perfect nose.
“Then maybe we've been dating since I started working.”
She scoffed, shifting her gaze from mine. “No, we haven't.”
My eyes dropped to her lips as I nodded, uttering a low grumble. “No, you're right,” I replied. “I think we started dating before that. Maybe as far back as when I was locked in the holding tank and you spent the entire day with me.”
“Oh my God, you're ridiculous.”
She laughed, ready to open the car door and hurry inside, but I snatched her hand, interlacing our fingers, keeping her in place.
Her eyes danced within mine, skating across my face to settle wantonly on my mouth. I would bet she was thinking about what my lips and tongue had done to her in the shower before this car ride to work. I would place money on it, and I would win.
“You were a kid,” she whispered.
“No, I wasn't,” I said with a quirk of my lips. “Not then.”
“Well, we weren't together yet anyway. I was with … um …”
“Jack,” I said, refreshing her memory.
She exhaled. “Right. Jack. Yeah, we were together then. I was with him for a while—”
“But you wanted me,” I countered. “You thought about me. And that's why, when we were here, at work, you spent every single lunch break with me. Not with him. Me. You might’ve been dating him, but …” I shook my head, my gaze holding hers. “You were never his.”
Meg's lips fell open, but she said nothing.
“So, no, to go back to what you were saying …
I don't care about first dates or any other formalities,” I said, leaning in closer to trace her nose with mine.
“Not with you. Not when I've seen us as …
us for a long time. But if you want that, if you need a first date, I'll take you on the best first date of your life. Because I love you, and—”
“Wait, wait, wait.” She laid both hands against my chest, her gaze holding mine.
“Huh?” I bit back a grin, feigning cluelessness.
“You love me?”
“Wait, did I say that?”
Meg lifted her palms to hold my face. “Do you really love me? You're serious?”
“Babe, I thought I'd been making that pretty obvious for the past … how many years?”
“No, but you mean that,” she said, stroking her thumbs against my cheeks. “You really … God, you really love me.”
I swallowed, all ability to joke and tease flying out the window. “My heart doesn’t know peace without yours,” I uttered quietly, as if we were in a room full of people and I didn't want anyone but her to hear. “I wouldn't know who I was if I didn't have you to love.”
***
AGE TWENTY-TWO
“So, do you know how you're gonna propose?” Dad asked after I showed him and Mom the ring I'd bought for Meg—an emerald encircled by tiny diamonds on a gold band that I'd found at the local antique shop.
It wasn't the most expensive ring, nor was it the biggest or flashiest, but it was what I could afford. And more importantly, it was the first and only one I'd seen that reminded me of her. It was the one I could imagine her wearing.
“I don't know,” I muttered with a shrug as I tucked the velvet box back into my jacket pocket. “I've been trying to come up with a good plan, but …”
Across from me at the table, Mom offered a smile, her eyes twinkling with tears.
God, I hoped she wouldn't cry. I hated when Mom cried—from happiness or otherwise. It reminded me too much of times I preferred to forget.
“You know how Dad proposed to me?”
As unbelievable as it was, I didn't have any clue, so I shook my head. “No, I don't think I’ve heard that story.”
“What?” Dad exclaimed, disbelieving. “You weren't there?”
“He wasn't there,” Mom told him, before returning her attention to me. “Dad was so hopped up on painkillers at the time that he probably didn't even remember his own name.”
Ah, so it must've been while Dad was in the hospital, recovering from one of his several surgeries after being shot by my sperm donor.
“I wasn't that strung out,” Dad muttered in my direction.
“He was,” Mom assured me with a nod. “He had just woken up after being out for a while.
And he looked at me and said, 'You know what I should do when I get out of this mess?
' And I said, ‘What?’ And he said, 'I should make you my wife, and then I should adopt Noah.
' And I nodded and said, ‘That sounds like a good idea.’ So, that's exactly what we did. As soon as he got out and could walk on his own, we got married. There was no big proposal or big party or anything. We just … did what we were meant to do.”
Like me being with Meg, I thought. It was what I was meant to do.
My angel on the other line.
“So,” Dad said, laying a hand on my shoulder, “the point is, buddy, just do what feels right. It doesn't have to be this big, grand gesture or anything if you don't want it to be.”
I went home shortly after, my mind full of all the possible plans I could think of.
Vacations, beaches, cabins in the woods somewhere, a camping trip.
Every scenario seemed more elaborate than the last until they felt downright ridiculous.
And by the time I climbed the steps to the apartment we lived in, I was ready to book a trip to Ireland to propose to her in the town her family had hailed from.
Until I saw her.
She was standing in our little living room, her curls piled on top of her head in a chaotic tangle, the vacuum in her hand.
She was wearing one of my T-shirts, sweatpants both of us wore when there was nothing left to throw on, and slippers a year past their expiration date.
She kept saying she was going to buy a new pair, but never did because she liked how broken in these were.
She was listening to music, her earbuds in place, unaware that I was there for a moment before lifting her head. When she saw me, she gasped, then immediately laughed, clapping a hand over her chest as her cheeks pinked with an embarrassed flush.
I hoped I could always make her blush like that.
I couldn't wait to find out, and I realized … I didn’t want to wait.
And why should I? I didn’t need an elaborate, extravagant proposal.
I didn’t need to put myself into debt to take her on a trip around the world just to put a ring on her finger.
Not when she was already here, and so was I, and this velvet box was in my pocket when its rightful place was just right over there.
I’ll take her to Ireland another time, I thought.
She plucked her earbuds from her ears and asked, “Hey, where were you?”
I swallowed, the ring suddenly a ten-thousand-pound weight in my pocket. “I went to my parents' house to show them something,” I admitted, crossing the living room to press a kiss to her forehead.
She laid her hand against my chest, smiling into my eyes. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah, hold on.”
My palms were sweating as I made the final decision to throw all grand gestures aside and reached into my pocket for the velvet box, then presented it to her without ceremony.
Her eyes widened at the sight, her hand frozen against my chest, as if to keep herself steady as she stared at the navy velvet. “What … what is this?”
I shrugged casually. “Open it.”
She hesitated, her eyes fixed on the box in my hand. One hand was on my chest while the other gripped the vacuum, her lips pulled between her teeth as she lifted her gaze to mine.
“I'm scared,” she blurted, then laughed. “No, I'm not scared, but … God, Noah, what did you do?”
“You gotta open it to find out,” I said, leaning in to press another kiss to her forehead, burying my nose in her pile of curls and breathing deeply.
With a sigh and a shake of her head, she carefully plucked the box from my palm. She sucked in a deep breath, then creaked it open to immediately lay a hand over her mouth to stifle a gasp.
“Do you like it?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“It's beautiful,” she whispered, nodding.
“Good, ‘cause I was hoping you'd wanna wear it.”
“Like … now?”
I laughed. “I mean, that's usually what people do when someone asks them to marry them, so …”
Her chin lifted, and her eyes darted to mine. “But you didn't ask.”
“Shit. You're right.”
Then, slowly, without either of us looking away, I got to my knees. I wrapped my arms around her waist, holding her to me, looking up into her gaze.
“Meghan.”
She swallowed, losing a battle against a smile. “Yes, Noah?”
“Every single day, I look at you and wonder how the fuck I got so lucky,” I said, pulling the words not from some written script, but the warmest, happiest places in my heart.
“So many times, I could've died, I could've been lost—more times than I deserved—but I didn't. I was spared, and I know it was only to spend the rest of my life finding a way to thank you. First, for staying with me when I was all alone, but more importantly, for giving me a chance, and somehow, for whatever insane reason, for falling in love with me.”