CHAPTER 48
TREY
The proposal happened on a Wednesday.
In Brooklyn.
In Paula’s apartment.
During takeout.
Which was exactly why she did not see it coming.
Trey had spent the evening helping her assemble a filing cabinet she insisted did not require instructions.
On the day he planned to ask, Trey was calmer in court than he was tying his tie.
That annoyed him. He had argued before appellate panels without dry mouth.
Yet one small box in an inside pocket made every movement feel newly deliberate.
The nerves were not about whether Paula loved him.
They were about honoring the magnitude of asking another person to make a future legally, socially, financially, and emotionally shared.
It required instructions.
They argued.
The cabinet survived.
Paula sat on the floor eating lo mein from the carton.
Trey looked around the apartment.
This place had held her before him.
Her ambition.
Her loneliness.
Her law-school applications.
Her late nights.
Her independence.
He did not want to propose in a place he had manufactured.
He wanted to ask inside a life she had already built.
“Paula.”
She looked up.
“What?”
Trey reached into his pocket.
Her eyes widened.
“No.”
He smiled.
“Yes.”
“Trey.”
He got down on one knee.
Paula put the carton on the floor so quickly noodles nearly escaped.
“Wait.”
He stopped.
Immediately.
She stared at him.
Then started laughing.
Not rejection.
Shock.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
Trey waited.
Paula wiped her eyes.
“You can continue.”
He laughed.
Even now.
Terms.
Permission.
Choice.
“Paula Kelly.”
Her face crumpled.
“I loved your mind before I knew what your hand felt like in mine.”
She covered her mouth.
“You changed the direction of your own life. You let me witness it. You let me love you without asking you to become smaller.”
Tears slipped down her face.
“I don’t want to take care of everything for you anymore.”
Paula laughed through the tears.
“I want to take care of things with you.”
Trey opened the box.
The ring was elegant, warm, unmistakably chosen for her.
“Marry me.”
Paula looked at him.
Not at the ring.
At him.
“Yes.”
Trey exhaled.
She laughed.
“Yes, Roosevelt.”
He slid the ring onto her finger.
Paula immediately climbed into his lap on the floor.
“You proposed next to a filing cabinet.”
“You love that filing cabinet.”
“I hate that filing cabinet.”
“You refused the instructions.”
“I am engaged. Do not criticize me.”
Trey kissed her.
Her phone rang.
Danielle.
Paula looked at it.
Then at Trey.
“How does she know?”
“She doesn’t.”
Paula answered.
“Hello?”
Danielle spoke.
Paula screamed.
Trey laughed.
Within twenty minutes, everybody knew.
Within forty, Anthony had added him back to a renamed group chat:
THE ENGAGED COMMITTEE.
Trey left immediately.