Chapter 42
Chapter Forty-Two
FOR REAL? FOR EVER
LOUISA
I pick up the shirt that had been scattered on the floor, and he’s wearing very little else.
It should feel strange, how insanely entwined we can become, fueled by fire and the kind of love people write (and narrate) stories about.
The everydayness of it now, the post-sex sweetness, the normalcy of us standing in the same kitchen that usually smells like lemon dish soap but now just smells like us.
(Sexy us, but us.) It feels instead like something clicking into a place it was always meant to occupy.
We took puzzle pieces and forced them into different spots.
The hatred we believed we were supposed to have for each other.
That didn’t fit. The pretend spouses. That didn’t complete the picture.
But this honest, raw version of vulnerable love, it’s like it was the last open piece in the middle of a complete puzzle and we just refused to see it.
Holding it in our hands, knowing the shape would fit perfectly, but too afraid of what happens when the puzzle is complete.
Do we move on to the next?
No, because no matter how satisfying the metaphor, it’s not really a fucking puzzle at all.
It’s our life. It’s my life. That doesn’t change if the box is shaken, or because of how long we spent forcing the wrong pieces, if we started with building the frame, or some random spot in the middle. It was always going to look like this.
For me, it was always going to be him.
“We still have a lot to figure out,” Hudson says, calmly. I’m sitting with my legs swinging from the counter as he cracks some eggs into a pot. Doing the other thing he’s known for in the kitchen. (Second best, surely.)
“I know,” I reply, the words commingled with a sigh. As much as last night (and this morning) felt like we had escaped the reality of what could be looming, we didn’t. And we all know Hudson loves the logistics of a problem. I’m just waiting for him to pull out a binder.
“Which means, I’m going to need the ring back.” He says it with a sense of seriousness as he moves the scrambled eggs to the back burner and faces me.
“Excuse me?” I say, incredulous. I hop down on my feet, hands on my hips, leaning onto my toes to be closer to his height as he takes a step forward. His hand extended for me to return it.
“Come on, hand it over.” He’s so casual about it, like this isn’t the biggest betrayal of them all. Sure, maybe most people don’t jump from fake marriage to real one, but this is ridiculous. Surely he doesn’t think we’re starting at zero, not after everything that’s happened.
“Ya know,” I say, my voice is already getting loud. “Just when I think you might actually be a decent—” I’m pulling the ruby off my ring finger, my eyes narrowing with annoyance. “You, Hudson James Ellis, are without a doubt, the most infuriating man—” I continue.
He presses his lips together, forcing them flat from the smile he wants to let loose as I berate him.
“Go on, do your worst.” The words are slow and punctuated as I drop the ring into his hand.
“You would be the man who tells a woman he loves her, that he’s been dreaming about her, only to run away from it now. Well you know what, I’m not going to let you. You want the ring back, fine. But you are being a coward and I—” He’s inching closer with every word.
He drops to his knee.
And I drop the end of the sentence in favor of a question that’s answered in the way he’s looking at me.
“What are you doing?”
“You deserved a wedding because you’re a romantic. But you never got the proposal you deserve, not the one that says I’m in love with you. And it’s time I fix that.”
He’s kneeled in front of me, with the ruby held up between us, looking up at me through his dark lashes, the irises of his eyes blooming and catching the light as the sun brightens the space, casting our shadows across the hardwood.
An amorphous shape unidentifiable as two people. Maybe, now, just one.
“Letting you in was the most frightening thing I've done, and you’re right, I am a coward. I didn’t even do it bravely, I did it badly, through argument and pretense.
” His eyes hold mine, and it holds me in place, I would never let myself look away.
“It was the only way I knew how,” he says.
“It was me letting you learn who I am without the pressure of asking you to love me back, not knowing you ever would. Even though I was falling in love with you the entire time. Every word that got through, every wall of mine you penetrated.” He pauses.
“You got through. Pretending to hate you, becoming impossible when loving you, is the most real thing I’ve ever known. ”
My eyes well with tears, the thinking about this version of myself I didn’t believe existed. One who could love like this, and be loved in return, in honesty, and in hatred. The ugliest parts already seen and loved, not in spite, but because of.
“I want to be with you, not because of paperwork, or some deal we made, not because you feel you don’t have a choice, but because you do.
I love you, and that’s not a choice for me, that’s the only thing I know anymore.
That you moved in next door and I have been catastrophically, irreversibly in love with you every second since. ”
We each take a breath, knowing what’s coming next.
“Louisa James Evans Ellis,” he begins. The emphasis on the last name we already share on social media matches the smile stretching across his face as he says it. “Will you marry me?” I see him take a slow inhale, waiting for me to say something in response. But first, I have one more question.
“For real?”
“For ever.”
Happiness blushes across my face as I nod in response, knowing a few tears have decided to celebrate with us. He slips the ring back on my finger that had become as empty as I had without it.
“What do you think, should we kiss?” I ask.
“Now is the perfect time.”
As I lean down into his kiss, his arms come around me, standing from where he was kneeled and brings me back up to his full height with him.
Wrapping my legs around his back, he holds me high against his chest as our kiss deepens into every real thing we’ve never said.
Knowing we have the rest of our lives to say them now.