Page 71 of Pretend You Love Me

“We should probably head home,” I say to the room at large. “These two are going to crash hard, and I’d rather it happen in their own beds than in the middle of the café floor, Luca.”

Nobody responds. There’s a beat, just a second, where the room feels suspended, and then Harper says, with careful attention, “Maybe in a minute? I just want to finish this chapter. The one I’ve been stuck on. With the… plot thing.”

“The plot thing,” I repeat.

“The one where the hero realizes he’s been an idiot,” she says. “It’s a very important moment. Very emotionally significant. Can’t rush it.”

“I wasn’t rushing it,” I tell her. “I was suggesting we go home. Those are different concepts.”

“They’re adjacent concepts,” Luca says, appearing from the back room with a tray of what appear to be more cupcakes. “Rushing and leaving. They share emotional space.”

“They share nothing,” I tell him. “They’re completely different verbs with separate definitions.”

“They share the quality of happening too fast,” he says, already placing the tray on the central table. “Which is the opposite of what we’re doing right now. We’re taking our time. Enjoying the moment. Living in the present.”

“I’m living in the present where my children need naps,” I say. “A very specific present with very specific requirements.”

“They’re fine,” Liv says, without looking up from her tablet. “They’re having fun. Look at them. Having fun. With the… cupcakes. And the… atmosphere.”

I look at the twins. Milo is sitting on the floor near the biography section with what appears to be an entire cupcake smashed into his palm. He looks up when he notices me watching, gives me a smile that contains at least three separate shades of mischief, and then deliberately licks his entire hand in one continuous motion.

“He’s fine,” Liv says. “That’s… normal kid behaviour. Exploring textures. Very developmentally appropriate.”

“He’s going to be sick,” I tell her. “That’s his third cupcake.”

“Third cupcake today,” she corrects. “Not third cupcake ever. There’s a difference.”

“There’s really not,” I say.

Before I can press the point, Noah comes out of the back room and the whole room goes slightly frozen in the way rooms do when everyone except one person knows what’s about to happen. He’s wearing the same clothes he had on this morning, jeans and a blue shirt I’ve seen approximately seventeen times, but something about him is different. His hair is slightly more orderly, as if he’s run his hands through it repeatedly with very specific intentions. His shoulders are set in a line that suggests he’s bracing for something. His eyes find mine immediately across the room, and the expression in them makes my chest go tight.

“Hey,” he says, his voice carrying the particular quality it gets when he’s trying very hard to sound casual. “You’re still here.”

“We’ve been here for hours,” I tell him. “That’s literally the entire point of the gathering. The friend one. With the secret cupcakes.”

“Right,” he says. “The gathering. That’s… that’s what’s happening.”

Noah crosses to the central table with careful attention, his movements slightly more deliberate than normal, like he’s counting his steps. When he reaches it, he turns to face me, and that’s when I notice it, the top that Milo is wearing, a tiny white shirt that reads “WILL YOU MARRY NOAH?” in Luca’s handwriting, the letters slightly uneven as if they were written in a hurry, Luca clearly ran out of time for anything more professional. And Maisie, still balanced on my hip, has somehow been changed into wearing a matching one, making me wonder when she left my arms at all, along with how unobservant I truly am. The words stretched across her small chest in the same slightly wobbly script.

I look down at Maisie’s shirt, then at Milo’s, then at Noah, who is standing in front of me looking more nervous than I have ever seen him, his hands not quite steady, jaw tight, the expression of a man who has rehearsed something and is now watching it dissolve in real time.

“Oh,” I say, the word coming out slightly uneven. “That’s… that’s what the shirts are for.”

Noah takes a deep breath, his chest rising and falling as though gathering himself for something important. “I had a speech,” he says, his voice carrying the warmth that appears when he’s being completely honest. “I wrote it down. Practiced it in the mirror. Made Luca listen to it seven times. It was… it was good. Really good. About how I never expected any of this.”

He gestures at the room, at the twins, at me, at the particular constellation of people and places that have somehow become his life. “Not the café. Not the chaos. Not the twins. Not you.” His voice catches slightly on the last word. “I had this whole plan. This whole life. And then somewhere between a door I held open and a baby who stopped screaming because I pulled a face, I stopped being someone who was passing through and became someone who wanted to stay.”

Maisie, sensing the change in atmosphere, reaches one small hand toward Noah’s face, her palm coming to rest against his jaw with the gravity she brings to moments of great significance. He turns slightly into the touch, his eyes never leaving mine, and continues.

“I know you don’t owe me forever because someone else hurt you,” he says, the words coming out slightly faster now. “I know that’s not how this works. I just…” He pauses, swallows, and when he continues, his voice catches in a way that makes my chest ache. “I just really hope I get to spend mine with you.”

On cue, exactly as if they’ve been given a specific assignment, Milo holds up the ring box he’s been sitting on. It’s slightly damp, probably from cupcake icing, slightly dented at one corner, and being offered with the absolute conviction of a two-year-old who has no idea what’s in it but is fairly certain it’s important. “For Mama,” he announces, with a seriousness that I don’t think I have heard from him before.

And Maisie, not to be outdone, begins clapping with the enthusiasm of a child who has been waiting for her moment, both hands coming together in a rhythm that has absolutely no relationship to time but enormous conviction. “Yes!” she says. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

I’m already crying before Noah properly finishes, the kind of crying I can’t stop and don’t try to, tears running down my face without permission, my breath coming in small, uneven hitches. I look at Noah, at the man who showed up without being asked, and feel my heart fill with a warmth so complete it’s almost painful.

“Yes,” I say, the word coming out steadier than expected. “Yes, of course. God, yes.”