“Each ice cream costs fifteen dollars?” he grumbled.
“Inflation’s a real bitch.” She marked the tallies on the envelope, exchanging Elliot’s cash for two cookies-and-cream bars from the chest freezer. Once she’d placed a ten in the envelope (pocketing the twenty for gratuity), she climbed back onto the counter to shimmy out the window. He extended his hand to her as her feet met the pavement, his grip warm and firm, and released it just as quickly.
She unwrapped her ice cream bar and took a neat bite. “So now we have ice cream. Are you satisfied?”
“Not yet.” His back leaned against the empty counter, his eyes roving her face. Her hand wiped the corners of her mouth for crumbs, only to drop it the instant his lips seemed to twitch with amusement.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he responded, too satisfied for her comfort. “Actually, there was something I wanted to discuss with you. Can we find somewhere to sit? It’s important.”
“Is Sebastian dead? I won’t be your alibi.”
He sighed at the gold-hued sky as ifshewas the one asking something ofhim. “Can you stop for, like, two minutes? I have a proposal for you.”
Her skin prickled. “A proposal? Thatisimportant. Let me set down my ice cream for this.” She took a large bite, tucked the ice cream bar into its wrapper, and set it on the counter.
His eyes widened and twitched, like an agitated animal. “I was thinking more about our situation…”
He watched her for a moment as though waiting for her to interrupt. When she didn’t—mouth full—he almost looked disappointed.
“And I’ve come to the conclusion that the only solution is for us to get married. To each other.”
Lainey choked on a hunk of frozen Oreo cookie.
And not in a cute cough-cough-then-on-with-her-day kind of choking but a lodged-so-deeply-in-her-windpipe-that-her-loved-ones-flashed-before-her-eyes fight for her life.
“Oh my god,” Elliot said, appropriately urgent, considering the way she was silently dying on a street corner between a bait, tackle, and toys shop and an ice-cream shack painted to look like an igloo. Part of her always knew it would end this way. “Are you—do you need an emergency abdominal thrust maneuver? You should know, my Red Cross certification has lapsed.”
If she’d possessed the ability to, she would’ve scoffed. Instead, she nodded.
He positioned himself behind her so he could wrap his arms around her middle with a stiff, firm hold.
“I’m going to press in with the heel of my hand, okay?”
His breath brushed the tip of her earlobe. She couldn’t breathe.
“Okay?” he repeated with greater urgency.
She nodded, the movement inadvertently pressing his mouth into her hair.
He pulled her body into his chest, pressing his hands in and up at the spot just below her ribs. Once, then twice, until a hunk of partially chewed cookie shot out of her mouth and onto the ground.
Coughing, followed by silence.
“You okay?” he asked, spinning her around to face him.
She wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she went with the first thought that popped into her head.
“Did you just propose to me next to the Dairy Cave? There’s an opossum eating a Push Pop ten feet away from us.”
“I’m notproposingproposing,” Elliot explained, a bit more offended by the prospect of genuinely proposing marriage to her than she would’ve liked. “I was thinking more about what you said on the drive back from Pottery Barn, and though I don’t have the cash to pay you the monthly rent you need to cover your medical expenses, I work for the federal government, and as bleak and soulless as that may be right now, I get great insurance benefits.”
Lainey coughed again, not yet fully recovered from his Heimlich maneuver. “I get it. You have a job. I’ve dated plenty of men with jobs.” She’d also dated many more men who were “between” employment opportunities, but she didn’t need to get into that with him.
She had insurance, too. It was expensive and, due to corporate greed, somewhat useless, but shehadit. If she wanted to marry a man who didn’t like her just because he had a different but equally useless health-care plan, she’d do what sensible women did and enter into a lavender marriage with a gay grad assistant who had an expiring student visa.
“And I called my provider, and the migraine medication you got the other day—the eye-wateringly expensive one—is covered. Thirty dollars a month.”
