21. Wilson #2
“Will you let me prove that I can keep a promise when it matters?” I squeeze her fingers and hold my face together. “One more chance, Izzy. That’s the whole ask. Just one more chance to be the man you thought you were marrying.”
She stares at the ring, then at me, then at the string lights swaying gently in the evening breeze over the place where we danced to music from my phone speaker while I sang off-key and she laughed until she cried, back when we were broke and absolutely certain of each other.
“Ask me again in a month.” She says it steady and sure, even with her face soaked.
The bottom drops out of my chest and shatters somewhere around my knees.
“What did you just say?”
“Ask me again in a month, Wilson.”
She cups my face in both hands and tilts it up so I have no choice but to look directly into her eyes.
“I love you so much it terrifies me to admit it. I never stopped loving you, not for a single second, even when hating you was the only thing I wanted to feel.”
“Izzy, please…”
“Seven years I watched you mean things until the crisis passed and the urgency faded.” Her thumbs press into my cheekbones, gentle and ruthless at the same time.
“I stayed through every conversation this past month. I’m still sitting on this rooftop with you. That’s how much I love you, Wilson.”
Her fingers tighten against my jaw.
“But I need to see who you are when the lights come down and nobody’s watching anymore.”
I open my mouth. She shakes her head.
“Thirty days of just… normal. No big romantic setup, no ring in your pocket. Just you showing up and keeping your word on a boring Tuesday when it would be so much easier not to.”
“It’s real this time, Izzy. I swear on everything I have and everything I am.”
“Then it’ll still be real in thirty days.” She leans in and rests her forehead against mine, her breath warm on my lips. “Show me the man who keeps promises when there’s no rooftop and no ring and no champagne. That’s the man I’ll marry twice.”
“I can do that. I’ll do anything you ask, anything at all.”
“I know you can.” She pulls back just far enough to look at me, and her expression, fierce and certain, takes my breath away. “But I have to see it with my own eyes before I can trust it with my whole heart again. You understand that, don’t you?”
“So this isn’t a no?”
“This is the opposite of a no, you absolute idiot.” A laugh escapes her, watery and broken, the best sound I’ve ever heard. “This is me wanting to believe you so badly that I’m terrified of saying yes too soon and watching everything fall apart again because I was too desperate to be careful.”
“I won’t let it fall apart this time, Izzy. I swear to God.”
“Then prove it to me.” She tugs at my hands, trying to pull me up off my knees. “Now get off the ground before you completely destroy those pants I dragged you to four different stores to find.”
“The pants don’t matter at all right now.”
“They’re the birthday ones, Wilson. The ones that actually fit your impossible proportions.”
“Izzy, I do not give a damn about the pants while you’re sitting there crying.”
“Well, I care about the pants because I spent an entire Saturday hunting for them, so stand up before you ruin them and I have to start the search all over again…”
I surge up off my knees and kiss her, cutting off whatever else she was going to say about the pants. She makes a startled sound against my mouth, and then her hands fist in the front of my shirt and she’s kissing me back with a hunger that empties my head of every thought except her.
“I love you,” I say against her lips, barely pulling back enough to get the words out.
“I know you do, you impossible man.” She bites my lower lip and I groan. “Now shut the hell up.”
“We’re on a rooftop in Brooklyn where anyone could come up.”
“I’m aware. I was at the reception too.”
“The super has a key.”
“Then he’d better knock first.”
She shoves against my chest and I go down onto the blankets.
She climbs over me, her dress riding up around her thighs, and the weight of her pressing me into the rough wool blanket makes my breath catch. Her hair falls around us like a curtain, blocking out the string lights, and I reach up to push it back just so I can see her face.
“Hi there,” she whispers.
“Hi yourself.”
She leans down and kisses me, slow at first, almost careful, like she’s testing whether this is real. I slide my hands up her thighs, under the bunched fabric of her dress, and she shivers against me.
“We’re on a rooftop,” I manage to say against her mouth.
“I know where the hell we are.” She bites my lower lip and I stop caring about anything except getting closer to her.
My belt gets stuck and we both start laughing, her forehead dropping against my shoulder while I fumble with the buckle.
“This is not how I pictured this going,” I admit. “Fucking buckle.”
“Shut up and figure it out, Wilson.”
I do.
After that there’s no more laughing. Just her breath and mine, the cold December air on my skin wherever she isn’t touching me, the soft sounds she makes when I find the spots I still remember.
She takes her time. I let her lead.
And when she finally collapses against my chest, both of us breathing hard, I hold on and don’t let go.
“I love you,” she whispers against my neck.
“I love you too.” I press my mouth to her hair. “Enough for the rest of everything.”
We lie there watching the stars come out, and for the first time since Tokyo, my chest doesn’t ache when she goes quiet.
“Wilson? Still awake?”
“Yeah. Barely.”
“My answer in a month is going to be yes.” She props herself up on one elbow, hair wrecked, makeup ruined, the most beautiful she’s ever been. “I just need you to know that so you don’t spend thirty days dying inside.”
“Then why make me wait?”
“Because you need the practice.” She traces my jaw with one finger. “And because I’m still a little angry, and I want to watch you work for it.”
“That’s fair, and I deserve it.”
“I’m always fair.” She grins. “Now pour me some of that terrible champagne.”
I reach for the bottle, keeping her against my chest with my other arm.
“To thirty days,” I say, raising my cup.
“To the man who’s going to spend them proving he can be trusted.” She clinks hers against mine.
“He loves you very much.”
“I know.” She settles against me with a sigh. “That’s the only reason he’s getting a month instead of a door in his face.”
I laugh and hold her tighter, and the city glitters below us, and for the first time in longer than I can remember, the future looks like a place I want to live.