“Izzy,” I whisper, and she lifts her face to mine. “Look up.”
It takes her a moment, too. She laughs.
“Shall I go get Drew, or . . .”
“Shut up, Izzy.”
She’s still laughing when I lay her back across my lap and kiss her under the mistletoe.
December 2023
Izzy
“Good morning, Ms. Jenkins. This is your four forty-five wake-up call.”
I squint at the time blinking on the hotel clock, shoving my new fringe out of my eyes and feeling blindly behind me. Nothing, just empty sheets. What the hell? Is he pranking me? This would not be the first time, but a wake-up call pre–five a.m. is particularly cruel, even by our standards.
“Thanks,” I manage. “Obrigada. Did I . . . request this wake-up call? Like, did I ask you to call me?”
“I’m sorry,” the receptionist says, sounding a little stressed. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say, rubbing my eyes hard with my free hand and rolling over. “Thanks. And Happy New Year.”
I press the button by the side of the bed to lift the blinds, and there he is, being predictably ridiculous: my boyfriend. Doing push-ups on the hotel balcony before the sun is even up.
“What exactly am I doing out of bed at this hour?” I ask him as I slide the balcony door open.
Lucas looks up at me, a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead and chest. His gaze shifts up my bare legs to the sight of me in his white shirt from the night before, and his eyes smoulder. Even after twelve months, he just melts me when he looks at me like that. I scowl at him, like, Don’t distract me, and he smirks, like, I make no promises.
“We’re going swimming,” he says, standing up. He is already in his swim shorts.
“Now? No. That’s disgusting,” I say, turning back towards the bed. “Goodnight.”
I flop forward onto the cool sheets of our king-size bed. He grabs me by the ankle and I shriek as he tugs me back.
“Come on,” he says. “You will love it.”
“It’s nighttime.”
“It is about to be daytime.”
I turn my head to look outside. With all the lights in our room turned off, I can see the sky turning from black to deep indigo; the sea is a shade paler, the sands ghostly white. The majestic P?o de A?úcar—Sugarloaf Mountain—is already visible, rising dark above the horizon. Excitement flutters in my stomach.
“Swimming, like, in the sea? At sunrise?”
“Precisely,” Lucas says.
I spin just in time to catch my bikini when he throws it my way.
OK. Maybe I don’t mind getting up early. We’ve splashed out on three nights at this luxury hotel in Rio de Janeiro for New Year’s, at the end of our Christmas with Lucas’s mum in Niterói. Do I really want to spend any more of my hours here unconscious than absolutely necessary?
Once we’re down in the lobby—with a wave for the receptionist—it’s only a few steps from the hotel to the beach. The air is already warm with promise, as if the sun barely left last night, and as Lucas and I run to the water’s edge the sand shifts feather-soft beneath my bare feet. Lucas goes under first. I swim hard to reach him, the seawater cool enough to make me suck in a breath. I lunge for Lucas just as he spins to lunge for me. We pull each other under, laughing, snorting, spluttering, and end up tangled up with my legs around his hips just as the sun begins to draw a single bright line on the horizon.
He kisses me hard. I realise he’s shaking a little around me, his hands balled in fists—it must be cooler than I realised. I wrap my arms around the familiar solidity of his shoulders and kiss him back just as hard, my fingers in the short stubble of his hair, my knees tightening at his sides. We’re kissing as if we’re saying something we don’t have words for. And that’s what gives me the idea.
Because lately, when I feel like this—that there’s no way to show him how much I love him, that there just aren’t words or kisses fierce enough for this—a question pops into my head. And with the vast, beautiful sky turning pink around us, it suddenly feels like the perfect moment to ask it.
“Lucas,” I say, pulling back from him. “Will you marry me?”
For a long moment, he just stares at me, the droplets on his skin catching silver-pink in the sunrise.
“Lucas?” I say after a moment, gripping his shoulders tighter. “Should I not . . . Do you not . . .” I glance at the skyline. It’s an artwork of pink and purple and orange. “This just seemed like a totally perfect moment to propose.”
“I know,” Lucas says, voice catching slightly in his throat.
He shifts, one arm letting go of me in the water as he moves to show me something in his closed hand.
A ring.
I know that ring. It’s Maisie Townsend’s ring. My hand flies to my mouth.
I saw Mr. Townsend just a couple of weeks ago, before we left for Brazil; I’m still working part-time at Forest Manor while I launch my business. We’d caught up over Arjun’s new afternoon tea, and as I’d walked him back to his room, Mr. Townsend had said something that now makes a lot more sense. Have a good Christmas, he’d said, and then, as the door was closing behind him, he’d added: And Happy New Year from Maisie and me.
My knees go loose with shock, and I almost go under. I grab Lucas, spluttering, as he says, “Why do you think you’re in the sea for the sunrise?”
“Oh my God,” I say, clinging to him, reaching for the ring.
He closes his hand again.
“Izzy Jenkins,” he says, “have you really just one-upped my proposal?”
I throw my head back and laugh.
“Do you know how much planning went into this? There is a picnic breakfast waiting for us on that beach. I had to bribe the receptionist to do a wake-up call—in English—because the hotel doesn’t even offer them. I had to get this ring out of the hotel safe while you were brushing your teeth, and you kept wandering out of the bathroom.”
“Give me that ring!” I say, reaching for his hand.
“Do you even have a ring for me?” he asks, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as I try to peel back his fingers.
“Well, no,” I admit. “It was kind of a spontaneous thing.”
“So . . . no ring,” he says, counting off on his other hand. “No picnic breakfast waiting.”
“Great setting, though,” I say, gesturing to the dramatic sky. “You have to give me that.”
“One-all on setting,” he agrees.
“And a point to me for actually asking the question,” I add, still trying to open his hand. Even the man’s fingers are ridiculously muscular—there’s no budging him. “You haven’t technically asked me anything yet.”
“My apologies,” Lucas says, and he stills my hand with his, catching my gaze. “Izzy,” he says, and now I’m not laughing. “Izzy Jenkins. My love for you grows stronger every day. I want forever with you. I want to find out how big and bright this love will be when we’re old and grey.”
His bottom lip trembles ever so slightly. I’ve long since learned that I was wrong to think of Lucas’s expression as implacable: the emotion is always there if you look closely enough.
“I’ve known I’ll ask you to marry me since that moment at the airport last Christmas, but I wanted to wait until I truly believed enough of myself to trust that you would say yes. I still think this isn’t a question you should ask because you need to know the answer.”
“Oh my God,” I say, beginning to cry.
Lucas’s hand tightens over mine, and then he extracts his fist, unfolding his fingers and holding the ring out to me over the water.
“Mr. Townsend gave me this ring to give to you when the time was right. He knew you had lost a ring that mattered to you, and he wanted to start a new story for you with this one. I wish I could have found the ring your father gave you. But I think this one holds its spirit, maybe.” He smiles. “There’s something I would have never said before I met you.”
I’m all tears and seawater. I swipe at my cheeks with trembling hands.