Page 112 of Tied Over

I grinned at him because that was always good.

“Maybe we can move to some small town in Oregon and I can be the new sheriff and you can buy a bar and dispense life advice over beer.”

“Really?”

“What? It’s as good as me making pottery in my house on the lake,” he said cheerfully.

“I’m never telling you anything.”

But he laughed, and it was a really good sound, and when he took hold of my chin and turned me for a kiss, I simply couldn’t say no.

Gordo just sat patiently and waited, wagging his tail the whole time. He was a very good boy.

“Stop fidgeting,” Bodhi ordered me another two weeks later as he sat beside me on the couch in Dr. Nkosi’s office. Two days before, I’d had an MRI on my shoulder, and I was there for the results. I hoped it was good news, because I wanted to celebrate in ways that definitely required two hands.

“Juggling?” he teased me.

“You’re hysterical.”

He laughed at me, and I reached for his face, turning his head so I could look into his eyes. “Hey, I have something to say,” I told him, then kissed him.

“Mmmm,” he hummed, kissing me back.

“I want us to get married,” I said between kisses.

“Okay.” He sounded out of it.

I sat back and glared at him. “That’s it? Okay? No overwhelming feelings of joy and happiness? I get nothing?”

“I’m happy, you’re happy,” he told me, smiling crazily. “I love you, you love me, I know, you know, everybody knows. You’ve been wearing my ring for the last three, almost four years, so yes. Of course I’ll marry you. We should do it at your sister’s house when we go for Christmas. Small wedding, just us and her family. Is that good?”

I couldn’t even speak. It was perfect.

“You’ll have to wear the dumb octopus ring on your right hand after, because you’re getting a big gold one for the left.”

“Gold ring?” I whispered, because it was so simple and traditional and exactly what I wanted.

“Yes,” he answered, his voice husky with choked laughter.

“What’s funny?”

“You, thinking I wouldn’t know you want a thick band without any stones. It’s why we’re putting up a white picket fence around the yard—because you want the whole happily-ever-after with me.”

“I do. You know I do.”

He nodded.

“And the octopus ring is not stupid,” I made clear.

“I know. It’s how I knew, through everything, that we would eventually be you and me. You never took it off.”

“I couldn’t. It was the piece of you I could have.”

“I’ve always been all yours.”

And I’d hoped for that then, but more importantly, I knew it now.

Dr. Nkosi’s news that I would have two working arms to hold him for the rest of my life was the cherry on the top of the cake.