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A bedroom with no ghost of Yolanda.
“You okay?” He kisses my temple. Not a question, more of a check.
“I’m gonna need a neck brace and a priest,” I tell him, “but I’ve never been more okay in my life.”
I feel him laugh, the whole chest of it. “Told you. Wicked destiny.”
God, I love him. It sneaks up at the dumbest moments and takes the air out of me every time. I love his weathered, handsome face and the gravel in his morning voice. The way he goes stupid and useless right after he comes. Our quiet time being couch potatoes. Making dinner together. Watching him perform. Helping me study.
I didn’t realize I could love someone this deeply and stay upright.
Most days I barely manage the upright part.
“Marry me,” he says the way other people ask you to pass the salt. He asks most nights before we go to sleep. Easy. Unbothered. A man staking his claim and waiting for me to catch up.
“You know my answer.” I swat him.
He pinches my nipple. “I know your answer’s stupid.”
“My answer is: yes, the second Billie and I can be in a room together without her wanting to light me on fire.” I flatten my hand over his heart. “I’m not marrying you while your daughter is still grieving Yolanda. I won’t do that to her. I won’t do it to us.”
Something sad crosses over his face. The Billie thing is the one wound all my patience can’t close. He covers my hand with his and doesn’t argue. He knows I’m right.
What Billie still can’t fathom is I’m not with her father for a single reason the tabloids have printed. I’ve got my own plan and Beau supports me in keeping it. I’ll take the LSAT in six weeks, my prep books are in the guest room we used to sleep in, which is now my office. Once I get my score, I’m applying to the two law schools in Seattle because I’m not going to uproot Beau.
“I want to look at the Hunts Point place this weekend.” His thumb traces a pattern on my shoulder. “This bedroom renovation is a temporary fix. As soon as you’ll marry me, we’re gonna start fresh with something ours.”
On this part we agree completely. He wants to sell this house, and God, I’m relieved. Even with our new room and my new office setup, nothing else has changed. It’s still Yolanda’s everywhere else.
“I’ll come look,” I concede. “I’m still not gonna let you put me on the title.”
He exhales through his nose, a sound he makes when I say something he finds ridiculous. “We’ve been over this.”
“Stop.” I push up on an elbow so he can see I mean it. “Beau, I don’t have any money. You and Yolanda were equals. I won’t stand next to you pretending I’ve earned fifty-fifty yet.”
He’s quiet a moment. Pulls me up his chest until we’re level, nose to nose.
“I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told a soul.” His voice drops. “The last hour. She knew it was time and made me promise not to do the noble, stupid thing and shut myself in this house with her pictures and call it love. She forbade it. Flat out. Told me I was dead when she found me and she wasn’t going to leave me dead when she left.” His eyes are wet. “She said I was gonna be lucky one day when someone loved me the way she did and I was to let them. This was the last thing she ever asked of me, and I spent a year and a half knowing she was wrong. I could never possibly find the love we shared again. Then you sat down next to me and everything in me knew.”
I can’t breathe right.
“I’m telling you, baby, because you keep diminishing who you are to me. Like you’re getting away with something by being with me,” he snugs me closer. “You’re not. Yolanda spent her last breath making room for you in it. She’d have liked you and you would have liked her too. We are equals in every way. She’d be furious with Billie, by the way.” He almost smiles. “Yolanda was the last person on earth who’d want me to be alone and would never want you shrinking yourself to make anyone, including Billie, comfortable.”
I put my face in his neck so he can’t watch what his words do to me. He lets me stay there a while.
“If it makes you uncomfortable, I’ll drop the title thing, for now,” he whispers into my hair. “You’ll come to it your own way, or you won’t, and either way I don’t care whose name is on a deed because it’s gonna be your house when I’m gone anyway. As far as the rest, whether you ever marry me or not, I’ve got more money than God and you’re not carrying a dollar of law school loans on my watch. Marry me. Don’t marry me. Please stop measuring whether you’re allowed to be fully loved by stupid criteria. I won’t work because I love you so completely, Elodie and that isn’t going to ever change.”
I lie there in the dark of the remodeled master with my cheek on his chest and can’t draw a full breath. It’s too much. The man who I love more than life itself, who has already lost a great love of his life is telling me, without hedging, he loves me equally.
“You’re quiet.” He kisses my forehead.
“You’ve broken my brain.”
His hand moves slowly up and down my spine. “Want to know what you’ve done to mine?”
I nod against him, because my voice isn’t up to much.
“When Yolanda died, I was done, Elodie. I’d made my peace with being a man who used to have a great life. Then you sat down next to me and treated me like a person instead of a tragedy. You’ve never once, not one time, handled me like I might break.” He shifts so he can see my face. “You make me laugh. Do you have any idea how long I went without laughing? You argue with me. You give me hell when I’m wrong. You’re so open and trusting in front of me and you never apologize for it. I love you because you take me exactly as I am and want me anyway. I’d forgotten what it feels like to be wanted instead of worried about.”
