"You have flour on your face," I say.
She touches her chin, then looks at her fingers. "How much?"
"Enough."
"Fantastic." She crosses to me and goes up on her toes and I come down to meet her and her mouth is warm and she tastes faintly of lemon frosting. "How long have you been here?"
"Long enough to witness Agatha and Grace arguing about the tuna salad."
She turns to look at the stove, where Grace is now ignoring Agatha with dedicated focus.
"Agatha's going to win eventually." She shakes her head. "She always wins eventually."
"She does," I agree, because this is simply true. No one can out-stubborn Agatha Thornwood, not even an orc.
Maddie takes my beer out of my hand, has a sip, and gives it back.
"Come outside," she says. "Jazz is cooking ribs."
The backyard is warm and unhurried in the early evening light. Frank departs with a nod and a container of Jazz's rub that he has apparently negotiated for himself, and then it's just the four of us out here. Lenny sits in the good lawn chair and tilts his face up to the sky as the copper color of the setting sun falls over him.
Dinner is loud.
The table is not large enough for all of us, which means we eat all cramped up and elbowing each other good-naturedly. When dinner is over and everyone looks ready to snore themselves into a food coma, I know this is the moment.
It's now or never. Not a different moment. This one.
I push back my chair.
The noise at the table dips by a fraction and I go around to Maddie's side, and when she looks up at me with a small crease between her brows, I go down on one knee.
The kitchen goes so quiet I can hear the wind coming from the bay outside.
She stares at me. Her fork is still in her hand and she brings it back down slowly and deliberately.
I reach for my jacket pocket and retrieve the small velvet box that has been burning a hole in my pocket for the past month.
"Maddie," I say through a closed throat.
"Demetrius, what are you doing?"
She makes a sound that is three-quarters laugh and somewhere in the quarter left over is the beginning of tears.
"You've made me the happiest man on Earth. You're all I have ever wanted and I am ashamed that it took me fifteen years to find the courage to own up to my mistake. And I would like to put you first for the rest of my life, if you'll have me."
Maddie is already nodding before I finish the question. She is nodding so fast her hair is coming loose from the twist and tears are streaming down her face.
"Yes!" Maddie finally shouts between sobs. "Yes, a thousand times yes!"
She's still laughing and crying as I get the ring on her finger. It is Agatha's emerald, the quail-egg stone I have known on my grandmother's hand my whole life, the same ring I offered Maddie on the pier fifteen years ago and carried home in its box when she gave it back. It has waited all that time for the only hand it was ever meant for, and now it is where it belongs. And then her hands are on my face pulling me up. My lips collapse against hers.
From behind me, Lenny starts clapping. Others follow, coupled with Jazz's whistling.
Of course she does.
"About time," Jazz says above the sound of the applause.
"Indeed," my grandmother adds, smugly watching from her chair.
