“Guess they didn’t take me seriously enough when I said you have huge hands.” She tugged it free and slipped it back into her pocket.
“How’d you know I wouldn’t prefer gold?” he teased.
“Titanium seemed the butchest choice.”
“When you put it like that.”
“Seriously, would you like something different?”
He reached out and cupped her cold, wet jaw, kissed her mouth as the rain ran down their faces. “No,” he said as he let her go. “I want whatever you pick out for me. You really wanna move in with me?”
She nodded. “Only time will tell if it feels like enough space once we’re in each other’s faces twenty-four-seven—”
“Faces and pants.”
“—but if we can swing it, it’d save a lot on rent. I mean, it’d be nice to own a place before…you know. Before a baby came along. Someday.”
“Sure.” He stooped for her umbrella, shaking the water out of it and holding it over their heads.
“Plus I want to make sure you have a chance to see what it’s like to be with me, full time. Because of my depression, I mean.”
“Oh?”
“Don’t get me wrong,” she said, “you’ve been awesome for as long as we’ve been together. But it’s exhausting living with someone when they’re going through mental-health crap. Trust me, my mom taught me well.”
He nodded, thinking of the years Heather had spent suffering through Robbie’s shit after he’d come home from Iraq. PTSD made Laurel’s struggles look like a rained-out ballgame.
“The meds are helping,” she added. “Plus I won’t have the job guilt nagging at me for a change. Maybe I’m worrying too much. Maybe the future’s all glitter and butterflies.”
“A future you’ll be sharing with me,” he said, cocky.
“That’s the plan, it would seem.”
“So, does anything else need to change, if you’re gonna be my old lady, officially?”
She frowned. “Like what?”
He nodded toward the bar’s side door. “You need to lay down the law about me getting punched in the head every week, maybe?”
“What, make you quit fighting? Jesus, that’d be mean. No.”
“No?” He’d been expecting such an ultimatum, if not happy about it.
“One depressed person in a couple is plenty. You do what keeps you sane.” She studied his arm, the one holding the umbrella. “And insanely fit.”
“Good to hear.”
“Were you worried I’d tell you to quit?”
“Not worried, exactly. But Heather’s always told me I better knock that shit off if I expect any rational woman to commit to my ass.”
“I don’t know what that says about me, but I don’t think I could ever ask you to stop fighting. Not unless you were getting concussed. I do like your brain the way it is.”
“You sure? ’Cause it’s got some terrible ideas about what I’m gonna do to you, later.”
“I love it all the more, then.” She paused, distracted by the motion-sensor light that had blinked on above them—the weather had brought dusk early this evening. “Well, I’ve said everything I came here to. Why don’t you finish up downstairs, and I’ll get on top of dinner, and I’ll see you whenever you get home?”
That sounded so bizarre—doing something as mundane as his daily workout with all this news to process. “Not a bad idea. I’ll probably need an hour alone for it to sink in that I’m fucking engaged.”
She laughed. “You and me both. Okay, better say bye before we drown out here. See you in a bit. Hopefully my future apartment will smell like something delicious by the time you get home.”
He gave her a kiss, both their sets of lips chilly, his hand feeling stiff and clumsy as he passed her umbrella back. “I love you so fucking much,” he murmured, letting her hear how fiercely he meant it, letting her see it in his face. “I hope you know that.”
She nodded. “I do.”
“I’ll show you exactly how much when I get home.”
Pink warmed her pale cheeks and she smiled. “I’ll look forward to that.”
He let the rain pelt him as he watched her walk away, down the alley and around the corner. When she was out of sight he punched in the code for the door and headed downstairs. He stripped off his shirt and wrung it out, laid it over a radiator to dry. As he began his warm up, jogging in place, he tried that word on for size again in his head. Engaged. When he got home tonight he’d open up his lockbox and slip that ring on her finger, finally. And soon enough the cat would be out of the bag.
How did you propose? Heather would want to know.
In the middle of the miscarriage. She said no.
Well, how did she propose, then?
In the rain, in an alley next to a dive bar. I said yes.
He smiled to himself, thinking that was just about perfect, somehow.
* * *
Laurel turned at the sound of the deadbolt, a smile cracking her face wide open, too broad and goofy to possibly hide.
“Hello,” she called. She was busy at the counter, wearing pajama pants while her jeans tumbled dry five flights below in one of the building’s coin-op machines.
Flynn stepped inside, looking soaked to the bone. “Smells amazing.”