Chapter Twenty-Two
IT WAS four days later, and Aaron was so nervous that it felt like he’d swallowed a colony of bees as he sat across the table from Daniel in the best restaurant he could book on somewhat short notice.
They hadn’t spoken much about the night . The one where they almost annihilated their relationship and then their bodies with ruthless words and some of the best sex of his life, which had been… confusing. It wasn’t even that his sweet, nervy boyfriend had transformed into a hissing baby badger, but it was like that night had unearthed a pivotal truth he’d somehow managed to deny.
Daniel wasn’t happy. Daniel needed more.
“Aaron.” Daniel snapped his fingers, then twirled a palm around. “What is going on with you? Why are you being so weird?”
That was an excellent question. It’d been business as usual after the night , barring the eggshells Daniel seemed to be walking on around him. He’d been extra affectionate and smiley and hadn’t even given him the side-eye when he had to stay one of those nights with Marco.
“Weird?” he asked, wiping his palms on his pants. “How am I weird?”
“Well, for one, it’s 5:22 and we’re at dinner.” Daniel shrugged a delicate shoulder, spreading his palms around the restaurant. “What in the geriatric buffet are we doing here so early?”
Making them come to the restaurant so early might have been a detail he’d overlooked, but in his defense, Daniel wasn’t happy. Daniel needed more. The sooner he could give him more , the sooner he’d be happy. Aaron had come so close to losing him. He needed to cement their relationship with a promise.
“Is it because of what I said last night?” Daniel asked.
“What’d you say last night?” He took a sip of his champagne, scanning the restaurant for the waiter, who should’ve been here by now.
“When I told you to come inside of me deep enough to get me pregnant. ”
Aaron spat his champagne back into his glass. Goddammit. He hunched over the table, champagne dribbling down his chin. “The stuff that comes out of your mouth sometimes? You need a muzzle.”
“And you need to put a baby inside me.” Daniel was grinning too ridiculously for it to not be contagious as a waiter approached the table.
No. Not just any waiter. The waiter.
“It’s one little baby, Aaron,” Daniel said, his voice sexy. “Don’t be so selfish—”
He kicked Daniel’s shin under the table.
“You ordered dessert, sir?” the waiter asked Daniel, standing over him with one hand positioned behind his back and a white cloth napkin draped over one arm.
“No, I did not,” Daniel said, his smile scrunching his nose as he peered up at the guy. “But I should. Looks yummy.”
“I think you did order that dessert,” Aaron said, the colony of bees at full buzz as the waiter placed the plate in front of them.
“No, I really didn’t.” Daniel twisted around to flag the guy, but he’d vanished. As planned. “Where’d he go? And when would I have ordered dessert? I swear, this isn’t mine.”
“Kid, look at it.” Aaron swallowed, bouncing in his seat. “It is yours.”
Daniel finally looked at the dessert. He stared, rather, unmoving. It’d worked out better than expected. It’d worked out beautifully. A thick chocolate mousse dusted with cocoa powder atop a cookie crust sat in the middle of a white dish. From the center of the mousse, a sugar-encrusted sprig of rosemary jutted out like a tiny tree branch. Hanging from the branch?
A ring.
Daniel blinked. Eyes rounded and mouth wide open, he blinked. Of course he was shocked. They’d never spoken about marriage. But they’d never come so close to breaking up either. Something wasn’t working—Daniel wasn’t happy. Daniel needed more. Aaron had to give him more. He had to give him a promise.
His insides wound around themselves tightly enough to make his limbs tremble as he stood from the table and fell to one knee in front of him. He whispered, “Kid. Look at me. I have something important I need to ask.”
Daniel finally blinked up from the ring to meet his gaze.
Around the restaurant, forks were clinked down on plates and shushes exchanged between couples. Even the pianist playing in the background stopped to provide them with silence. Aaron had always heard moments like this happened in slow motion, but that was an understatement. It was so slow that he had time to scan his entire body for an ounce of hesitation only to come up with Ask him. Do it now.
He dug into his pocket and unfolded a crinkly piece of paper with his smudged handwriting. His voice shook as he cleared his throat and said, “Daniel. You make things make sense in a way I’ve never had. With you inside my house, it feels like a home. With you in my life, it feels like I’m finally growing roots. You are technicolored and dazzling. You’re precious .”
Daniel’s hands snapped to cover his face.
“You’re it for me, kid. You’re so it. You can take this as a promise.” He stuffed the paper back into his pocket to grip one of Daniel’s hands. The memory of him standing outside of a restaurant flashed across his mind— Come get me . He’d looked so shattered. “I choose you. I absolutely choose you. Please hang in there with me.”
He didn’t know when it would be. Someday. Someday when he had enough, when he’d saved enough, when he was enough, he’d able to quit. Until then, all he could do was promise.
“I promise to take care of you. To keep you safe. I promise to always choose you.”
Daniel’s tears streaked down his cheeks. It wasn’t clear if he understood the secret meaning at first, but then he nodded. It was barely there.
Aaron’s smile washed over him. But barely there counted. The ring—he needed the ring.
He stretched his neck long to see the dessert, which was slightly out of reach. When he tried to carefully fetch the plate, the ring, having been obediently balanced on the rosemary sprig the entire damn time, plunked into the mousse the second he touched it.
“Oh shit,” he whispered. “Dammit, did that just—? Well, son of a….”
He was at a disadvantage where he knelt on the floor, because he couldn’t see what he was doing, which seemed to be burying it farther into the mousse the harder he tried to fish it out. His cheeks were getting hot, probably because every person in the restaurant seemed to be waiting on him.
Daniel clenched his teeth into a shaky smile. He tapped his fingertips together and cleared his throat. “Do you, uh. Do you need help, or—?”
“No.” His whisper sounded frantic, and he was definitely sweating. “I’m sorry. This is not—hang on.” He’d been trying to save the dessert, but it was far less important than not making a complete fool of himself, so he destroyed it as he seized the ring .
Once silver and glossy, the poor thing was now globbed in brown. Aaron tried to suck chocolate off his fingers, probably smearing it onto his face as he searched the table for a napkin. He couldn’t very well slide this mess onto Daniel’s finger. He widened his eyes as the answer dawned on him. Then he stuffed the entire thing into his mouth.
Daniel looked like he couldn’t take it any longer. He burst into laughter, loud like an air horn as Aaron held up a shaky finger and worked the ring around in his mouth. A rumble of giggles began to fill the restaurant until most everyone was laughing too.
Aaron spat the ring out in his palm to inspect it, but because of wet fingers, slippery metal, and the fact that somewhere along the way he’d pissed off the gods, he dropped it.
The crowd grew loud with gasps and Oh no! s and What happened? Was that the ring?
He’d never be able to replicate the perfect storm of physics to make such a thing possible as the ring chinked on the floor a few times and then started to roll. It was a fast little sucker—faster than outstretched arms could catch, faster than what should’ve been possible. It also seemed determined to ruin his night, because it traveled five table lengths, then pinged off the shoe of the only man in the room who was not paying attention.
“Tom!” The man’s date hurled her napkin at him and pointed at his foot like it was on fire. “Get it. The ring. Get the ring. Pay attention!”
Tom hmmed as he lifted his sole, glanced around the floor, then stepped on it.
“Oh for the love of God, it’s under your shoe, Tom! Your damn shoe.”
Aaron buried his face in his hands, but he didn’t need to participate, because everyone else was yelling at Tom for him.
Tom, a very apologetic cartoon turtle of a man with a shiny bald dome, black-rimmed glasses, and his head kind of sunk in the bulk of his body, heaved for breath as he first rushed the ring to a guy tying his shoe and not proposing to anyone, then finally to Aaron, the other person kneeling.
This was the most explicit torture he’d ever experienced, but he thanked Tom through pursed lips even though he’d really rather find an oven to lay his head inside. And he still had to propose. Not that Daniel was going to be able to see him through his tears or breathe through his laughter. Hopefully he could hear him ?
“Okay, um, here we go. Dear Daniel—shit. No.” He finally broke into agonized laughter of his own. “Okay, I just, I wanted to ask, if you will, like—shit. Don’t say like . And I’m gonna stop cussing.”
Daniel palmed his cheek and whispered, “Oh please let someone be recording this.”
Aaron inhaled a gust of air and blew it out slowly through his mouth. This person was the lens through which he saw his future, the subject of every other thought he had, and his brightest reason for waking up hopeful. His tiny dancer. His light. His Daniel.
Wriggling his posture straight, he held the ring up. Then he finally said with that moment’s version of normalcy, “Daniel Alexander Greene, will you marry me?”
Daniel wiped his eyes as his chuckling finally quelled.
“I’ll take care of you,” Aaron whispered as he linked their fingers. “Whatever you need. Marry me, kid.”
Daniel’s permasmile set up camp as he swabbed the last tear away. “Yes.”
The restaurant erupted into a thousand whoops and applauses, and Aaron slid the band on his hand.
“Aaron Leonardo Silva.” Daniel cupped his face as the surrounding sounds ebbed into dim white background noise. They were the only two people in the room when he pressed a single kiss on Aaron’s lips and said, “You are it for me too.”
DANIEL WAS a giddy, babbling mess as he tossed his arms over Aaron’s shoulders, swaying them side to side to music that wasn’t playing in their moody kitchen, lit only by the clocks on the appliances. He was positively drunk on dopamine (and one and a half pear martinis), gazing down at the ring on his finger and up into beautiful blue ice.
“Fiancé,” he whispered, and goose bumps rushed down his arms. “Aaron. We’re fiancés .”
“Fiancés.” Aaron smiled and twirled him around, then pulled him back in. “Husbands-to-be.”
“You sure?” He buried his face in Aaron’s neck and breathed. “You sure you want to marry me?”
“Yes. If I knew what I know now, I would’ve asked you the first day I met you. ”
Daniel grinned and wiggled his fingers over Aaron’s shoulder to see the ring. “I admire that level of decisiveness.”
“Right? That’d be the story we’d tell the grandchildren. Sit down, little Perry. Let me tell you the story—”
“Perry?”
“—of how I knew your grandpa was the one. It all started when he made me the world’s worst cocktail at a party. How bad was it, you ask? It was unfit for human consumption—”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“Absolutely gut-churning. So naturally, I finished it, then demanded he give me his number. He technically had a ‘boyfriend’ at the time, so I did have to steal him, which took forever—”
“Five minutes. Maybe four.”
“Why yes, little Perry. That’s an excellent observation. I would compare it to a highly skilled heist. But I pulled it off.”
Daniel chuckled, rearing back to see Aaron’s face. “How’d you do that?”
“How’d I heist him? Game, obviously.” Aaron shrugged. “So much game.”
“Game, really?” Daniel cocked his head. “Are you sure it wasn’t because he could see the outline of your dick through your pants?” He yelped when Aaron gripped his waist and slung him in a circle, his feet catching wind.
“Whatever it takes,” Aaron said, settling him back to the floor. “I gotcha now, kid. You’re about to be so married to me.”
He melted into Aaron’s arms. The past couple of weeks had been a roller coaster, and it felt like they were finally nearing the end. I choose you. I’ll always choose you. Please hang in there with me.
“Please hang in there” insisted there was an ending worth hanging in there for. Tomorrow, maybe he’d broach the subject of a timeline. Tonight, he’d just enjoy being engaged. Tonight, he’d just enjoy the hell out of his fiancé.
“You want to take a bath with me?” he asked. “Or a shower or something? All this excitement has taken a toll. I feel like I need to decompress, but I don’t want to leave your arms.”
Aaron’s phone vibrated as he pressed up to his toes to peer at it over Daniel’s shoulder, squinting at the bright screen through the darkness. He patted Daniel’s ass. “No, you go ahead. ”
“You sure you don’t want to join?” He stretched his neck as he filled a glass of water from the sink. “And I know what you’re thinking. Just because we’re engaged now doesn’t mean we suddenly need to start taking baths together. What’s next? We sit on a log somewhere, brewing our own kombucha? It’s actually really tricky with two people in a bathtub, and they always make it look so easy in the movies—” He halted when he spun around to find Aaron frowning down at his phone. “Everything okay?”
Aaron peeled his gaze away from the screen and offered him a lukewarm smile. “Sorry. What now? You want kombucha?”
Daniel glanced down at Aaron’s screen, but then his brain reminded him that he was safe with a still frame image of Aaron on bended knee, saying, I choose you. I’ll always choose you. Please hang in there with me.
“No.” He pecked Aaron’s cheek, then winked on his way to the bathroom. “Drinking kombucha in a bathtub is somehow more ridiculous than drinking it on a log.”
He filled the tub and eased inside, his muscles unkinking as water crowded them. Engaged. They were engaged. He chuckled to himself, biting his thumbnail while fluttering the finger his new accessory hugged. In all the embarrassing amount of time he’d spent picturing his future husband, he’d never pictured someone so desperately swoon-worthy. Someone he couldn’t get enough time with.
He snapped a picture of his ring, sent it to a few people, and had nearly drifted off to sleep when the sound of the front door startled him.
A few minutes later, he’d toweled himself off and padded into the kitchen. Their apartment had a way of feeling a bit like an institution at times. It was all the dove gray and sterilized steel. It was worse when Aaron wasn’t home. Which… Aaron wasn’t home?
“Aaron?” he asked the shadowy apartment, meandering into the bedroom. He wasn’t there either. He was seconds from calling him when he spotted a note on the pillow:
Didn’t want to disturb your bath. Sorry, I had to leave. Get some rest. I’ll be back soon.
He blinked down at the note, his attention divided between it and the texts that began to pour in.
No WAY?!! CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Dawwww! So happy for you two!
Congrats, sweet Daniel! Can’t wait to meet Aaron. I’m sure he’s wonderful .
He tried to recall the same snapshot from moments ago— I choose you. I’ll always choose you. Please hang in there with me —but as he gazed at their empty bed, the only image his mind could conjure looked like this. Him tucked in alone at night. Him wondering when Aaron would be home. Him grasping on to the hope that there was an ending worth hanging in there for.
A single streak of moonlight laced in through the window as he crawled into the bed, twisted the ring off, and held it up. Something was engraved on the inside, but he couldn’t see it. He could never just see what was written. Even with it in front of his face.
I choose you. I’ll always choose you.
He held the ring against his heart, curled away from the moon, and closed his eyes.
“FORGIVE ME.” It was Aaron’s deep whisper coaxing him from sleep.
It had the hazy impression of a dream, but it wasn’t. Daniel blinked his eyes open to find the streak of moonlight had transformed into tones of orange, gold, and pink. Or maybe that was the flowers.
“Please forgive me.” Aaron was in bed behind him, holding a plastic-wrapped bouquet of gas-station roses in front of his face. “Please.”
Daniel rubbed his eyes, his vision blurry with sleep as Aaron edged the flowers to the nightstand. “What time is it?”
“It’s early, but I brought you a coffee and a cinnamon danish thing. Or would you rather go out to breakfast? We can go out to that beignet place you like—”
“You should’ve told me to my face. You should’ve told me you were leaving. It was unfair to leave it in a note.”
Aaron swallowed behind him, inching their bodies flush. “I know.” His whisper sounded weak and sheepish. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you, but of course I still hurt you.”
Daniel inhaled long and slow. “How long does hanging in there with you mean?”
Aaron didn’t respond for a while. “What do you mean?”
“That’s what you said last night. You said to hang in there with you. How long do you think that’ll be? ”
Aaron huffed out a gush of air. “Well. I didn’t mean it would happen right away. We still need to get our ducks in a row, but let me finish things up with Marco, then I promise we can talk about it. He’s the only guy I’m seeing right now anyway—”
“Client.”
Aaron blinked behind him, his long eyelashes scraping the pillowcase. “What?”
“He’s the only client you’re seeing right now. You call them clients. I’ve never heard you call them anything else.”
Aaron swallowed. “Correct. Client. He’s the only one I’m seeing.”
A heaviness troubled his chest. Some emotion he couldn’t quite name. Almost like he’d never felt it before. It wasn’t anxiety. It was bulkier than anxiety. Duller. Achier. Like a slow and patient hum.
“Whoa.” Aaron held Daniel’s hand up in the light. “You took your ring off?”
“Hmm?” Daniel dragged a hand down his face. “Oh, yeah. I was trying to—”
“Do I need to read into that?”
It was probably best not to think about that question too deeply, so he shook his head as he searched the sheets until he found it under his pillow.
Aaron took it from him and gently pushed it back onto his finger. He spent a while twisting it around, warming the metal. When he spoke again, his voice was deep and despondent. “I’ll tell you what, kid. If you need an out, take it off.”
Daniel tried to peer back over his shoulder. “Take what off?”
“The ring.”
Daniel’s brow crinkled as he searched his words for clarification. “What?”
“I don’t know, baby,” Aaron sighed, airing warmth onto his neck. “I don’t want you to have second thoughts, so I want to give you an out—I mean, don’t fucking take it—but an option if worse comes to worst.”
With that, the foundation of the entire proposal got a bit shaky. One didn’t typically say yes with a built-in stopgap for when “worse came to worst.” But their relationship had never been typical. Daniel’s tongue wandered over his teeth. “Like a gesture? ”
“Like a gesture. If you need it to be over between us, you take the ring off, and that’s how I’ll know not to fight it. I’ll let you go with no questions asked.” Aaron kissed his shoulder. “And it won’t be your fault. It’ll be mine.”
Daniel swallowed, the heaviness in his chest humming away in the background.
“But please don’t,” Aaron said. “Talk to me first. I’ll help you breathe. I’ll help you through it. You have to hang in there with me.”
As much as he hated it, there might have been a tiny part of him that softened in relief.
“Daniel.” Aaron shook him. “You want to hang in there with me, right? You want to marry me, don’t you?”
He nodded. “I do.”