“I did my homework. I'm not going to freeze on your family.”
He looked at the card for a long time. Then he looked at me like I'd done something incredible, which, for me, walking into an airport full of strangers on purpose to meet the family of the man I love, is kind of incredible.
“They're going to love you,” he said. “You know that, right?”
“I'm counting on it.”
Here's the other thing. For about three weeks now, Caleb has been almost saying something. He'll go quiet, and his jaw will do a thing, and then he'll change the subject and go cook. Last week, I caught him on the phone with my father, of all people, talking low, and when I walked in, he hung up too fast and said he was checking on the Ice Mafia freshman.
I ran several scenarios in my head, the way I run everything. There is only one thing it adds up to.
I haven't told him I know. For once in my life, I don't want to see the ending coming. This is the one I want to be standing in the middle of when it happens, all the way present, no list, the way he taught me on a mattress on the floor of his apartment a year ago.
I want to be surprised. I’ve decided to let myself be surprised. It might be the most reckless thing I have ever chosen on purpose, but from what everyone else says, surprises can be good.
He does it the night before his family comes.
Not with them there, which is what I'd braced for. He does it quietly. Just us. Two bowls of buttered popcorn, my show paused on the screen, and he turns to me on the couch and opens his hand.
In it is a bent paper clip.
The bent paper clip. Mine. The one from the conference room, the one he picked up off a table a year and a half ago and kept, the one I left on the boards at six in the morning and was secretly sad about for a week. He kept it. Of course, he kept it. He keeps the stuff that matters.
“I had a whole speech,” he says, and his voice isn't steady, which is how I know this is real and not performed. “I practiced it on your dad, which was horrible, thanks for asking. And then I figured, you've never once needed me to perform for you. So.” He turns the paper clip in his fingers, out and back, slow, the thing we do, the thing that means I see you, come back, stay. “I'm not good at quiet. Ask anybody. But you made a space quiet enough for me to hear myself think for the first time in my life, and I'd like to spend the rest of it being in that space with you. I'm asking you to marry me, Jasmine. With a paper clip, because the ring is in my other pocket, and I wanted to do this part first. This part is only ours.”
I do not freeze.
That's how I know I'm a different person than the one he met a year ago. The biggest moment of my life, the brightest, most overwhelming thing that has ever happened to me, and I don’t lose my shit. I stay. I'm here. I'm all the way here for it.
I’m happy.
“Yes,” I say immediately, because what else would I say to the man of dreams? It’s the fastest I’ve ever said anything in my life. “Yes. Obviously yes!”
He smiles then laughs, and gets the actual ring out of the other pocket, and his hands are shaking worse than mine, and he tells me before he does it, the way he tells me everything, “I'm going to put this on you now,” and he does, and it fits, because Caleb is the kind of boyfriend who finds out your ring size by tracing one of your other rings onto a napkin while you sleep and then makes your father double-check the number.
“You practiced your speech on my dad?” I say. “When?”
“I couldn’t get away from camp to talk to him in person, but I called him. We had a video chat, man to man.” He pulls me into his chest. “I asked his permission to marry you, and he said yes before I even finished the sentence. Then I practiced the speech. Made him tear up, although we’ll both be denying it forever.”
“This ring is pretty.”
“You like it?”
“I love it, Caleb.”
“And you’re sure?”
“Have I ever said yes to anything I wasn’t sure about?”
“Then come over here, Mrs. Adams, and let’s consummate this new arrangement,” he grins devilishly.
I know that look.
And I know what follows is going to be just as delicious as this dinner he’s cooked.
***
Caleb’s family lands the next afternoon, and I meet them at the gate with my note card in my pocket, and I never get to use it, because Bean spots Caleb from forty feet out and screams and runs, and then there are arms everywhere and noise, so much noise.
