She took her time. She’d learned Lizanne the way you learned something you intended to keep and she used everything she knew now. Lizanne’s composure cracked in increments: the sharp breath when Rose’s mouth found her hip, the way her hand tightened in Rose’s hair, the single low sound she made that she immediately suppressed.
When Lizanne finally came it was with Rose’s name in her mouth and her hand pressed to her own lips, her whole body arching and then settling, and Rose felt something loosen in her chest that she hadn’t realized had been held tight for two weeks.
She moved back up beside her. Lizanne’s breathing was still uneven. Rose lay her head on her shoulder and waited.
Afterward they lay in the narrow bed in the thin light with Rose’s head on Lizanne’s shoulder. From the kitchen something fell with a crash. Quinn said something. Her mother replied with something considerably more pointed.
“Your family,” Lizanne said, at the ceiling.
“Our family,” Rose said.
A pause.
“Our family,” Lizanne agreed, “is a natural disaster. I love them,” Lizanne said. “I would also like it noted that our house has enough square footage that you cannot hear every single thing that happens in the kitchen from the bedroom.”
Rose laughed—properly, the kind that came from her chest. “You think that’s bad. Four of us in a three-bedroom house growing up. Quinn used to narrate his video games out loud.”
“Out loud.”
“At volume. Full commentary.”
Lizanne looked at her. “We are going to find a middle ground,” she said. “Between your family and my square footage.”
“That almost sounds like a proposal.”
“It’s a practical observation.” She turned to her then. “Although… I think you are owed a proper proposal.”
“Lizanne…”
“No…You are. Rose… Despite the fact that we are already married and you already live at my house with your family, I want to ask you this…Will you take me, Lizanne Elizabeth Connors, as your wife? Despite all of my shortcomings?”
Rose’s eyes grew. “Your middle name is Elizabeth? Your name is … Liz Liz?”
It wasn’t the right answer. Rose knew that. Lizanne did too. And yet, as they both broke into laughter, they each understood that it was, in its own way, the perfect one.
“I do. Liz Liz. But after this revelation, I do not want to hear one more joke about how mom, Daisy, and I are a bouquet of flowers.”
“I promise,” Lizanne replied and the two kissed once more, this time, more united than ever before.
Epilogue
Rose
Six months later
The house was quiet in the way it only got on weekend mornings. Daisy was at her grandmother’s. The crew were not due until Monday. The gate cameras showed nothing but the usual slow circuit of a single photographer who had long since given up expecting anything interesting.
Lizanne had her hands in Rose’s hair and Rose had stopped thinking about anything.
They had been in bed for most of the morning. Lizanne had woken her with her mouth at the back of her neck and her hand already moving at Rose’s hip with the patient, deliberate intent of someone who had nowhere else to be. Rose had turned into her and they had found each other slowly, without the compressed urgency of the shop or the relieved tenderness of her mother’s spare room. This was something else. The ease of two people who had learned each other thoroughly and were no longer in a hurry about it.
Lizanne had taken her time; she moved through everything with an attentiveness that felt, on the receiving end of it, like being the only thing in the room. She had pressed Rose into the pillows and worked her way down with her mouth and Rose had let her, her fingers loose in Lizanne’s hair, her breathing coming apart by degrees. By the time Lizanne’s mouth found where she wanted it Rose had stopped trying to be composed about any of it.
Lizanne knew what she was doing. She had always known, but there was a difference now between knowing and being known back — between the early months when they were still learning and now, when Lizanne could read the exact pitch of her breathing and adjust accordingly, when she knew to slow down precisely when Rose wanted her to hurry and to stay precisely where she was when Rose’s hand tightened in her hair.
She kept her there until Rose’s whole body pulled taut and then released, and she stayed through it and after it, her cheek against Rose’s inner thigh, waiting.
When Rose finally pulled her up Lizanne came easily, settled beside her, and Rose kissed her with the gratitude of someone who had just been taken completely apart and was not yet reassembled.
