21. Josie
JOSIE
I brought the dinner in two containers and a bag that kept slipping off my shoulder.
Vince stood when I came through the door, then caught himself and sat back down.
The stitches were still in. He moved like someone remembering his body had limits, which was new for him, and I watched the way he winced when he shifted his weight too quickly.
He looked at the bag, at me, and did not ask if I needed help. He just waited.
I appreciated that more than I probably should have.
I set the containers on the table and pulled out the chairs.
The penthouse was quiet in a way it never usually was.
No phone ringing in the other room. No television on somewhere in the background.
Just the two of us and the smell of the food I had made that morning, the same recipe my father used to make on Sundays when I was small.
"I made it this morning," I said.
"You cooked."
"Don't sound so surprised."
"I'm not." He watched me unpack the plates, his eyes following my hands. "I just didn't know you still did."
I had, once. Before the penthouse, before the dinners that came up on carts with white covers over them and disappeared back down the same way.
I had made him breakfast the morning after he proposed, eggs and toast in the apartment we could not afford, and he had eaten all of it and asked for more like it was the best thing he had ever tasted.
That was a long time ago. A different lifetime, maybe.
I sat down across from him and he served himself without comment.
We ate. He did not look at his phone. I did not look at mine.
There was no folder open on the counter, no meeting scheduled for an hour from now, no car waiting downstairs to take him somewhere more important.
It was just the two of us and the meal between us, and I realized with a sharp little kick to my chest that I could not remember the last time we had done this.
God, when had it been? A year? Two?
He realized it too. I could tell by the way he slowed down, the way he looked at the food on his plate like he was trying to make it last. His shoulders were looser than I had seen them in months, and there was something about the way he was sitting there — present, actually present — that made my throat go tight.
"It's been a while," I said.
"Yeah."
I wanted to ask him how long. I wanted him to tell me the exact number of years so I could say it back to him and make him hear it, make him understand what that gap had done to us. But I did not do that. I ate another bite and tasted nothing, my stomach too knotted up to register the flavor.
"I've been thinking about the corner," I said.
He looked up, his fork pausing halfway to his mouth.
"Rosa wants to expand the restaurant, and Omar's talking about updating the laundromat with new machines, and I want to do something with the building next to Mercer's. The one with the broken windows."
"What kind of something?"
"A studio." I set my fork down, my hands folding together in my lap. "For the jewelry. Somewhere people can come watch me work if they want to, or take a class. I've been setting money aside for it."
He did not offer to pay for it. He did not tell me it was a good idea or a bad one, did not suggest I hire someone to run the classes or expand into a second location or franchise the whole thing. He just asked, "How long have you been planning it?"
"A year. Maybe longer."
"Will you do metalwork, or just the beading?"
"Both. I want to teach people how to make a ring from scratch. How to work the metal with their own hands, the way—" I stopped. The way you taught me. I did not say it, but I thought he heard it anyway.
He nodded slowly, his fork resting against the edge of his plate. "You'll be good at that."
"I think so."
"When do you start?"
"I don't know yet. I have to get the permits, and the building needs work. The foundation's solid, but the roof's a mess and the wiring's probably shot. But I want to do it. I want to build something there that people can use."
"Then you should."
I waited for him to say something else, to offer money or connections or a faster way through the permit office, to tell me he knew someone who could cut through the red tape and get me approved in a week.
But he did not. He just asked me questions.
What I would teach first. Whether I would do it during the week or on weekends.
If I had thought about how many people I could fit in the space, and whether I would need to hire someone to help me run it.
He asked, and then he waited, and he let me answer every single one without jumping in.
It felt strange. Good, but strange, like trying on an old coat and finding out it still fit.
When we finished eating he stacked the plates and set them aside, and I did not stop him.
He was moving carefully, keeping his weight off his left side, but he did not wince.
The bandages were hidden under his shirt but I could see the shape of them, the way the fabric pulled tight across his ribs.
He sat back down and looked at me, and the air in the room shifted.
"I love you," he said.
Just like that. No preamble, no buildup, no careful arrangement of words to soften the blow. The words landed between us and I did not know what to do with them. My throat went tight, my pulse kicking up in a way that made me feel like an idiot.
"Vince—"
"I know I haven't said it enough. I know I haven't acted like it." He leaned forward, his elbows on the table, his hands folded together. The muscles in his forearms stood out, and I hated that I noticed. "I need to say some things, and I need you to let me say them."
I nodded. I did not trust my voice.
"I stopped seeing you," he said. His voice was low, rough in a way I had not heard in years.
"I stopped coming home. I stopped keeping the promises I made when I asked you to marry me, and I told myself it was because the work mattered, because I was building something that would take care of us.
But that was a lie. I put a number on my own wife.
Nine years of it. And I was wrong by everything. "
I felt something crack open in my chest, right down the middle.
He was not looking away. He was not making excuses or softening it or trying to spin it into something more palatable.
He was just sitting there, saying it out loud, and I could see how much it cost him.
The way his jaw was tight. The way his hands were gripping each other like he was afraid of what they would do if he let go.
"One apology is never going to be enough," he said. "I know that. I'm not asking you to forgive me because I said the right words once. I'm asking you to let me prove it. However long it takes. Whatever it takes."
God, I wanted to believe him. I wanted to reach across the table and take his hand and tell him it was fine, we were fine, we could start over right now and pretend the last nine years had never happened.
But I had wanted that before, and I had been wrong.
I had spent years waiting for him to notice I was still there, and every time I had let myself hope it had hurt worse when he did not.
"What does that mean?" I asked. My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Whatever it takes."
"It means you tell me. You tell me what you need, and I do it. No negotiating. No excuses."
"You're asking me for terms."
"Yeah."
I looked down at my hands. The iron ring was there, the one he had made himself when we had nothing, when all we had was each other and a rented room and a future we were building one day at a time.
I had put it back on three days ago and I had not taken it off since.
My fingers curled around it, and I felt the weight of all the years I had spent wanting something I could not name because I was afraid if I named it he would tell me I was asking for too much.
But I could name it now.
"A day," I said. "An actual one, kept. Not a breakfast before you leave or an hour at night when you're too tired to talk. A whole day. With me."
He nodded.
"That you walk the corner with me." My chest was tight, my heart beating too fast. "The streets we grew up on. That you come back to it with me and see it the way I see it, not the way you see it from forty floors up."
"Okay."
"That you stop telling me what I mean." I was looking at him now, and I could not stop. "When I say something, you let me mean it. You don't explain it back to me like I don't understand my own words."
His jaw tightened, but he nodded. He did not argue.
"That you defend me in public. That if someone says something about me, or about Mercer's, or about where I come from, you don't let it go. You don't stay quiet because it's easier or because it's not worth the fight."
"I will."
"That work stays out of the room." My voice was shaking now, just a little. "Out of the bedroom, out of the dinners, out of the days you promise me. If you say you're there, you're there. Not half-there with your mind somewhere else."
"Yes."
"That you ask me what I want, and then you wait for the answer. You don't guess. You don't assume. You don't decide for me. You ask, and you listen, and you let me tell you."
He was watching me so carefully, his eyes locked on mine. Like he was afraid I would stop talking. Like he was memorizing every word.
"And that you take my hand," I said.
My voice cracked on the last one. I hated that it did, but I could not help it.
These were the things I had wanted for so long I had stopped believing I could ask for them.
I had carried them around for years, turning them over in my head at night when he was not there, reciting them to myself like a prayer I did not think anyone was listening to.
And now I had said them all out loud, and he was still sitting there.
"Every one," he said. "I'll do every one."
He did not qualify it. He did not tell me which ones would be easy and which ones would take time. He did not explain how he would do them or ask me to be patient while he figured it out. He did not negotiate. He just agreed.
"Josie." He reached across the table, and I thought he was going to take my hand right then, but he stopped just short. His fingers were an inch from mine, close enough that I could feel the heat coming off his skin. "Will you marry me?"
I stared at him. "We're already married."
"I know. But I want to ask you anyway."
"Why?"
"Because I never should have let it get to the point where you filed. I know you did. I saw the papers."
"I withdrew them," I said.
He blinked. "When?"
"Three days ago."
He sat back, something like relief washing over his face, smoothing out the lines around his eyes. But it did not change the way he was looking at me. It did not change the question.
"I still want to ask," he said.
"You don't have a ring."
"I know."
"You don't need one," I said. "You never did."
His hand was still on the table, halfway between us.
I looked at it, at the scar on his knuckle from the first time he had burned himself on the forge, the one that had never quite faded.
I thought about all the years I had spent waiting for him to reach for me first, to choose me without me having to ask.
He took my hand.
His palm was warm, his fingers curling around mine carefully, like he was afraid I would pull away.
I did not. I looked down at our hands together, at the iron ring catching the light, and I felt the weight of everything we had been and everything we still could be pressing down on my chest until I could barely breathe.
We sat there like that, neither of us saying anything. For the first time in years, I believed him.