Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Four months later
Matt
“Oh!” Nana exclaimed as Matt guided her through the front doors of the lobby of the North Shore theater. “KINKY! KINKY! ” Her hearing had become worse lately, so to compensate, Nana had begun raising her voice more.
“Yes?” Matt said in a quieter voice, hoping she’d follow his lead.
Amused, if a bit shell-shocked, eyes met his. “I thought you invited me to a show called ‘ Kiki Boots .” Then I thought that was an odd name for a Broadway show, so I assumed it was ‘ Kitty Boots .’ That perhaps you were following a theme, after Cats ?”
“Ah. No,” he said, laughing, as a glimpse of Nessa caught his attention. Mame had needed some extra time in the car to touch up her lipstick, so the pair was behind them. “No. Kinky. Just… Kinky.”
“Matthew,” Nana asked, her voice mercifully lower. “Is this a… porno?”
At that exact moment, Nessa walked up to them, hearing the word loud and clear.
“Oh, goodness, Nana. No! Matt and I would never bring you to a porno!”
Mame heard that and scowled. “Why not? If it’s good enough for you young people, it’s good enough for us.” Her wink at Nana was anything but subtle.
“Can we stop saying that word?” Matt said to everyone. “Nothing wrong with it, of course, but no – this isn’t a porno. It’s a perfectly wholesome Broadway show about a man who goes back to his family’s shoe factory and saves it by making fashionable boots for drag queens.”
“That has nothing to do with kitties,” Nana said, frowning a bit as she pieced it all together.
"The tickets were a gift from the fathers of the bride for a wedding my company managed," Nessa explained again. She shot Matt a look, but he just smiled at her. When Marlo had offered tickets to anyone interested, Nessa had pretended not to hear her, but Matt happened to be in the office, picking her up for lunch. He'd burst out laughing and said it was a sign.
And here they were.
“Let’s take our seats,” Matt said as they walked into the theater, an usher reaching out for the tickets. He hoped the grandmothers could spend three whole minutes not saying the word porno .
The odds were ever against him.
What had started as a joke a few months ago, when he’d run into Nessa and Mame at the Cats showing, had turned into serendipity when he’d overheard Marlo. Nessa had howled with laughter when he’d presented her with tickets, then giggled even harder when he suggested they bring the grandmothers.
As they took their seats, Mame went first, then Nessa, and Nana nudged him to go next.
“You two should sit together,” she said with a smile of approval. The last few months had been extraordinary – the best in his entire life – as he and Nessa had been able to just… date. Like normal people. Hang out, do coffee, do lunch, do dinner.
Do each other….
He’d stayed local, going away for a few weddings, none of them using Wedding Protectors as a service, unfortunately. He and Nessa spent time together during the week, and Matt found that to be a refreshing change.
Ministers were busiest on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
So was Nessa.
Not only were they compatible, but their professional lives were, too. Maybe she was too good to be true.
Maybe he needed to spend the rest of his life finding out.
“Matthew tells me you’re going to New York next Tuesday, to take in a real show?” Nana asked Nessa, bending forward in her seat, talking around him.
“You mean the show at Rogers Theater on Broadway?” Nessa said as Mame leaned closer to hear.
“This is a real show, Nana,” he protested.
She sniffed. “Only Broadway is Broadway.”
“I didn’t hear about this!” Mame called out. “Broadway?”
Matt and Nessa shared a happy look. “Yes,” Nessa explained. “We’re going for two nights and fitting in three shows. Tuesday night, Wednesday matinee, and Wednesday night. I got comp tickets for one of the shows from a cast member who was a maid of honor in a wedding we did.”
Mame’s carefully drawn-on eyebrows lifted. “How lovely. I hear you can do proposals now at Broadway shows. Did you know that, Rosemary?”
Suspicion turned his blood a bit cold.
“Why Miriam, I do believe I heard that, too,” Nana said in the fakest voice ever. “Matthew, are you hiding a secret?”
“Mame!” Nessa was outraged. “And Nana! We haven’t been dating long enough to get engaged.”
“I married Henry within five months of meeting him,” Nana insisted. “You two are perfect for each other.”
“And you’re no spring chicken, dear,” Mame said to Nessa, eyeing her. “You turn twenty-seven soon. Your ovaries don’t have much time.”
Save me , Nessa’s eyes pleaded as he caught her gaze.
Matt imagined he looked much the same.
“When it's time,” he said, clearing his throat, buying a few seconds to think straight, “I promise you I’ll do right.”
“WHEN?” all three women gasped, though Mame was first to recover, a sly smile turning one corner of her mouth up, her eyes catching Nana’s.
Oh, these two. They’d cooked up the whole thing.
The lights blinked. Showtime.
Saved by the LED bulbs.
“Before the show starts, though, I have something to say,” Mame pushed back, making Nessa huff and glare at her, though with an amused patience that Matt himself felt toward his own grandmother. Reaching into her bag, she pulled out –
A small velvet box.
“Oh my God,” Nessa groaned. “MAME!”
“This,” she said, reaching across Nessa’s lap, but halting suddenly. “Oh, my back. Dear, please hand this to him,” she urged Nessa, who flinched and pulled away from the box as if it were radioactive.
“I will not! Mame, did you – did you buy an engagement ring and think Matt would – that he’d – ”
“No! Of course not.” Mame waved her left hand in front of Nessa’s face. “I bought an engagement ring box .”
“You what?”
“I took mine off. It’s inside the box. I want Matt to use the one your grandfather gave me.”
Nana began to cackle as Mame shoved the box into Nessa’s fist, balancing it on top of her thumb. “Don’t drop it,” she said as she winced. “Oh, my back,” she said with a sigh. “I’m so old now. I hope I live to meet my great-grandchild.”
Nessa turned beet red.
“Well, Miriam dear, I knew there was a reason we are friends,” Nana said as she reached into her coat and pulled out…
A red velvet ring box.
“NANA!” Matt said loudly, outrage turning his own face red.
He and Nessa were now highly embarrassed beets.
“Great minds think alike,” Nana said to Miriam. “I want Matthew to pass on our family heirloom.”
“Matt and I have been dating for less than five months!” Nessa said to Nana, then Mame, twisting so hard in her seat she looked like she was doing half crunches. “We’re not ready for this!”
“When you are,” Mame said with great authority, “you have my ring, young man.”
“He doesn’t need your ring, Miriam,” Nana said in a decidedly less friendly voice. “He has mine. My father was a jeweler and designed it himself.”
“You didn’t give it to Dad? When he proposed to Mom?” Matt asked, Mame’s expression becoming predatory at this shift in conversation.
“Your father wanted to choose his own, and Henry, well… he liked seeing it on my hand. Said it reminded him of my father.”
“Awwww,” Nessa said, the sound turning ragged as Mame elbowed her in the ribs.
“Shhh,” Mame hissed. “Whose side are you on?”
“The side of not having two grandmothers pressuring us!” Nessa said in a high, slightly panicked voice.
Nana flipped the top of the box, the light catching a big solitaire diamond in a platinum setting. The old-fashioned cut made obvious that it was a family heirloom.
Like a gunslinger, Mame revealed hers: a diamond eternity band, the circle of stones set so that they appeared to be floating there, untethered.
“Choose your weapon,” Matt muttered.
And then, mercifully, the lights went out, the curtain beginning to rise.
Nessa reached for Matt’s right hand and threaded her fingers through his, leaning her cheek on his shoulder, her grasp tight, her sigh long and frustrated.
Can you believe this? that sigh said.
He laughed through his nose, as if to answer, Grandmas are gonna grandma .
His heart slapped hard against his ribs in his chest, though, and that flush of outrage from earlier had turned into a warm glow. As their relationship had unfolded these past few months, he’d found himself falling – hard. Expecting there to be something that made Nessa less appealing – not so much “the ick,” as the youth group kids called it, but more the small, annoying things that weigh out against the state of limerence, he’d instead found… nothing wrong.
Not one damn thing.
Instead of scaring him, it had thrilled him, deep joy underlying every moment he spent with Nessa. Being with her felt like being planted where he belonged, establishing roots, and seeking light so he could grow.
Grow with her.
Grow in her.
Grow together .
As the opening number began, Matt held Nessa's hand and used his peripheral vision to monitor Nana on his left, Mame on his right. Both slowly closed their respective velvet boxes and set them in their laps, Mame stroking hers like a cherished Yorkie.
Accustomed to mediating emotionally fraught situations, Matt was more amused than worried about the situation, but he could tell from the tension in Nessa's jaw and shoulders that she wouldn't spend the next two hours enjoying the show.
And that made him sad.
Sure, the old ladies were doing him a huge favor, offering to save him time, money, and stress by giving him their rings to use for the engagement.
And when he'd said “when,” it hadn't been an error. A proposal was coming when .
Not if .
He frowned suddenly, breathing in slowly through his nose, holding his diaphragm steady. What if Nessa's tension had nothing to do with the grandmothers fighting over who got the honor of having their ring on her finger? What if, instead, her obvious upset was about being engaged at all?
The opening number ended and Matt willed himself to sink into the show. Nothing could be solved in the dark, with a funny musical in front of their faces. There was a time for everything, and right now, it was time to be bedazzled by glittering red kinky boots.
Soon, all four of them laughed in the right places, clapped on cue, and seemed to sink into the story, transported to emotional highs and lows as they journeyed on the same path as the characters. By the time the cast came on stage for their bows, Matt had all but forgotten about the rings, the audience launching itself to their feet, though Mame took longer than the rest of them to stand. Nessa's hand went to her elbow, but Mame shook it off, rising to full height and squaring her shoulders, clapping along, palming the jeweler's box in her hand.
Nana wasn't getting any younger, either, and Matt let his perspective shift, just enough to feel their love for what it was. Neither woman was being pushy on purpose, and their gifts were extremely generous. They were also driven by a need to see their much-loved grandchildren settled. To be part of their big moments. To be present and remembered, included and, after their deaths, honored.
Matt was in no rush to propose, and it certainly wasn't going to be tomorrow. While he knew, heart and soul and, certainly — body — that Nessa was his forever person, he also wanted more time to breathe with her. Share with her. Discover who he was with her.
And when the time was right - within a year, for sure - he would ask Carmine Martini for her hand, bend before her on one knee, pay homage to the full ritual, and ask her to let him be her husband.
"Hello?" Nessa tapped his forearm. The clapping had died down and people were gathering their things, the bustle in the emptying theater a bit of a jolt. "You're a million miles away."
"Just thinking."
"About proposing?" Mame called out as Nana shook her head. She was in the lead, headed toward the exit, the other three of them following her steady walk, until a blast of chilly fall air hit Matt hard.
"I should have gone first and warmed up the car," he said to them, looking at Nessa. "I'll run and get it and swing over here to pick you up."
"I'll come with!" Nessa insisted, teetering behind him on toothpick heels that looked good, but were completely nonfunctional when it came to running.
But would look amazing in bed, her legs wrapped around him.
A brisk walk would have to do, and Matt looked back once to find Nana and Mame, heads together in heated discussion.
"Can you believe those two?" Nessa hissed.
"Yes."
"I mean, seriously! Matt. I hope you don't think I put Mame up to this. I would never!"
"The thought had never crossed my mind."
"Good!"
"And same here for Nana. She came up with this on her own."
"Ah. Makes sense," Nessa said, though with less vehemence, as if a part of her had hoped he'd put a bug in his grandmother’s ear, had asked her to set this all up.
“Nessa,” he said softly, pausing in the cool night air, his hands on her shoulders, pressing into the soft down coat she wore. “I would never ask Nana to create some kind of set-up like this.”
“Of course you wouldn’t. It’s silly, really.” She made a dismissive pfft sound. “It’s not like we’re even close to being ready for that kind of commitment.”
But her eyes contradicted her words.
And reflected what he actually felt.
“I love you so much,” he replied, the words making her jolt in his arms, her searching gaze one that filled him with a completeness he thought he’d already possessed.
He’d been wrong.
“You – you do?”
The first to say it, he’d wanted to shout it from rooftops for the last few months, but he’d held back, intuiting that she’d be scared off.
“I do.”
Serious and intense, Nessa looked into his eyes as if seeking a shaft of light in pure darkness. Then her face softened, eyes first, mouth next, and she reached for his neck, slim fingers threading at the base of his skull, tickling the hair.
“I love you, too, Matt. I really, really do. I’ve wanted to say it for a while, but I didn’t know – wasn’t sure if you – and I – ”
Quieting her with a kiss came naturally, the stars and the moon watching as she sank into his arms, their lips tender, her hands in his hair, his arms around her, their body heat a warm cocoon against the fall chill. This kiss was everything, their first since they’d bonded over three little words, the world cracking open with possibility and promise.
Nessa’s phone buzzed. She looked at it.
“Mame texted me!”
His phone buzzed, too.
“Nana. Damn.”
“When did Mame learn to text?” Nessa held her phone out to Matt. He burst out laughing at the picture. The grandmas stood huddled together, pretending to be freezing street urchins. Nana had texted him the words: We’re becoming Gramsicles here .
“These kids,” he muttered as Nessa laughed.
“So aggressive! That period at the end of the sentence.”
He threaded his arm around her waist and they searched for his Bronco, finding it a few rows down. Another kiss was absolutely necessary.
You might even say…
@verynecessary.