After the gym, we walked through Clinton Hill. The neighborhood pushed into spring. The bare trees were starting to think about leaves. The brownstones came alive again with people on stoops and windows open. A day for believing in possibilities.
My phone buzzed. My mom: Sunday dinner. Three heart emojis. A performance of affection, but affection anyway. She had been doing this more since the apartment, finding ways to stay connected that weren’t just food or silence. She was learning the language of moving forward.
Ellis’ phone buzzed, too. Venue photos from Megan. She was marrying a woman named Patricia in the spring. Ellis was invited, and Ellis was inviting me, and none of this would have been possible a few months ago.
“Your family’s getting big,” I said.
“Our family,” he corrected.
It still hit me when he said things like that.
The instant we got home, I could feel something was off. Ellis was fidgeting, checking his phone, his energy off, like he was waiting for something.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah.” He didn’t finish. Kissed my forehead instead. “Give me a second.”
He moved into the kitchen. Opened the drawer where we kept the junk, the phone chargers and takeout menus. Reached past the surface stuff and pulled something out from underneath. A small box. The size of his palm. Black, matte, the kind of thing you only buy for one reason.
He came back to me. Didn’t sit. Stood with it in his hand looking down at me with that careful Ellis face, the one that meant he was about to do something he’d practiced and couldn’t quite remember how to start.
“Ellis.”
“I bought it months ago. The week after Megan asked me how I knew.” His voice was steady, but only by effort. “I knew the second I started looking. I’ve been waiting for the right place. I kept thinking the right place would happen, and then we found this apartment, and I realized the right place was home.”
He opened the box.
A matte gold band. Plain by choice, not by accident. Geometric in its restraint. So obviously chosen by him, I almost laughed.
He went to his knees on the floor in front of me. Not a performance. Just down, like his legs had decided for him.
“Marry me.”
Two words. Not a speech. Not the four pages I’d find out later he’d written and scrapped. Just the words, with his voice cracked open in them.
The word from earlier in the day landed back behind my ribs.Permanently.He’d been holding it.
I couldn’t speak. I held out my left hand. He slid the ring onto my finger, similar to placing a thing on an altar. It fit. Of course it did. Ellis had measured.
“Yes.” My voice came shredded. “Yes. Ellis. Yes.”
He pressed his forehead to mine. Both of us were crying again. Both of us laughing. The streetlight moved across the ceiling as another car passed.
“You were terrified.”
“I’ve been terrified for weeks.”
“Weeks?”
“Since I knew I was going to ask. I just didn’t know how to start.”
“You started fine.”
“I was going to start with a speech.”
“Was there a speech?”
“Four pages. I scrapped it.”
