By the time I reach my room, I’m holding eleven broken pieces of black glass with as many note cards, and the tears are falling freely down my face. I push the door open with my foot and find Oliver sitting on the roof outside my window, holding a little white box in his hands. I walk over, placing the glass pieces on my desk and duck my head as I make my way to him. He frames my face with his hands and wipes my tears with his thumbs, but the motion makes me cry harder, until I’m laughing and crying at the same time.
“I’m sorry. I think the tears are stopping now,” I say, wiping my nose with my hand as I kneel in front of him the way he’s facing me. He opens the box as he looks in my eyes, and mine leave his only to see what’s in the box. It contains more broken glass pieces, but these are colorful and vibrant.
“For every smile,” he says, taking out the first piece and putting it beside us.
“For every happy tear,” he sets down another.
“For every laugh.”
“For every time your eyes light up.”
“For every piece of good news.”
“For every piece of bad news.”
“For every fight.”
“For every kiss.”
“For every hug.”
“For every morning.”
“For every night.”
“For every wrong I’ll try to make right.”
When he’s finished setting down every piece, he looks at me. “I want an October 21st,” he says, and continues when I just stare. “I want to travel back in time and go back to the beginning. I want to tell my father he was wrong about life. I want to tell him that it doesn’t wait for anybody, and that you can’t put love on hold for trivial things like money. I want to climb back on this roof and shout on the day I fell in love with you. Because I do love you, Elle. And despite my stupidities and my running away, I never stopped being in love with you. I want to go back to that party and make myself stay in bed with you so I could have dealt with this.” He points at his chin. “And we could have figured out the consequences together. But most of all, I want to go back to all the times I dodged your questions about love and tell you that I did find the one. I found her crying on this roof one night. I found her in a coffee shop when I needed her. I found her dancing with another guy and planting edible trees. I found her caring for strangers and kids who needed someone to listen to them.”
“And how do you know she’s the one?” I whisper, wiping the tears spilling down my face.
He brings a hand up to my cheek and caresses over it with his thumb. “I know because, when she’s not with me, I feel like I lack oxygen, and even when I am with her, I feel like I can’t breathe enough. You asked me if I want kids, and the answer is, that I want anything—everything—you want to give me. I want your mornings and your nights. I want your bickering and your eye rolls. I want your nudges when I’m hugging you too tight at night. I want your groans when I tell you a joke, and your moans when I’m making you feel good.”
“And what do I get?” I ask, my voice a hoarse whisper.
“You get everything,” he says, looking at me like I’m insane for even asking. “My career is just starting, and I have a million student loans. I don’t have a million dollars, and I can’t buy you a gallery yet.” He pauses to flash me a smile. “Or take you on a hundred trips. And it might take me some time to find a job here with more stable hours than the hospital has to offer, but if you’re with me, Elle, I don’t care. My body is yours.” He puts my hands on his chest. “My mind is yours. My hands are yours. My heart is yours. Everything I have is yours. Everything I am is yours.”
I lean up on my knees and take my hands from his, wrapping them around his neck. “For every time you made me feel smart,” I say, dropping a kiss on his temple. “For looking at me like I’m the only girl in the world.” I kiss the edge of his eye.
“You’re my favorite girl in the world,” he murmurs, closing his eyes and breathing deeply as if he’s claiming my scent as his.
“For treating me like I’m important.” I kiss his cheek.
“You’re the most important person in my life,” he says, opening his eyes to meet my gaze.
“For giving me space so I could grow.” I kiss the side of his mouth. “For loving me.” I kiss his jaw, over his stitches. He watches me in awe when I back away and smile.
“Marry me,” he says with a determination in his voice that makes my heart shake uncontrollably. “I don’t mean get engaged for a year and just live together. I don’t want to put a ring on your finger to claim you so the world can know you’re mine. I want to know you’re mine. I want you to know I’m yours, and that this isn’t some relationship we can easily get out of. I want your forever, and I want it to start now.” He takes a breath, his eyes flickering between mine to make sure I’m still with him. “Let’s go get married tomorrow. If you want the big wedding, we can do that after.”
When I pause for too long, because I’m in complete shock, he chuckles. “Or not. If you just want to move in together, let’s do that instead, but I don’t want to do this thing where we go our separate ways after our dates. I don’t want the one drawer in each house. I want the whole closet full of both of our clothes,” he says, grabbing both sides of my face. “I want the bumping into each other when we’re trying to get dressed in the morning. I want it all, Elle. I don’t—”
I lean in and kiss him, swallowing his pending words and hopefully whatever thoughts are running through his head. The picture he paints is too beautiful for me not to want it. I want all of his mornings and his nights. I feel like I’ve been waiting to hear those words from him for ten years, and even though I had the engagement and the living with somebody else for a while, I never got the what if it had been Oliver out of my head. We kiss for a long moment, our tongues intertwined, my fingers buried into his hair, his hands on my face, and our heart beating against each other. When we break the kiss, I nod furiously, and he sighs the longest, relieved breath, and looks like he just won some kind of silent auction.
“I want that too. I want everything,” I whisper, earning a huge grin from him. “I can move, you know . . . my lease on the gallery is almost up.” I pause to take a deep breath. “I can move with you, anywhere,” I say, smiling up at him when we climb back into my room.
“Move? Are you kidding? I’m thinking about putting down whatever I have in my savings account to buy that cottage you’ve been living in.”
I laugh. “I’m just saying that—if you want to go—you have my full support.”
“This is home, Elle. I want to stay.” He stops when he reaches the bottom step and brings his hand to my face, brushing over my lips. “Besides, I’m simple. I just need you.”
And that’s the promise we made to each other. No matter how crazy life gets, we’ll always stick by the other. We’ll share our dreams, our failures, our smiles and our frowns. Day after day, we’ll drive each other a little crazy and remind the other how head over heels in love we are. Because that’s the kind of love we have—the kind that doesn’t come in a bottle, but can fill thousands of them, because we have that much of it to spare.