Page 112 of Office Hours
When he finally lets go, he cups my face in his hands, searching my eyes for something. He laughs, this wild, almost disbelieving bark.
“God, you’re really pregnant.”
“Yeah.”
He kisses me. Not soft, not careful—hungry and real, his lips hard enough to leave a bruise.
When he pulls away, he digs in his pocket and pulls out a small velvet box. I recognize it immediately—a ring box, the kind that comes with a future inside.
He holds it up, then laughs again, almost sheepish. “I’ve been carrying this around for weeks,” he says. “I wanted to do it right, you know? Candlelight, poetry, whatever. But this is the only thing I want, Simone. I want you.”
He opens the box. The ring is beautiful: white gold, tiny diamond, nothing flashy but so much more than I expected.
He doesn’t get down on one knee. He just looks at me, his blue eyes raw and open.
“Marry me, sweetheart?” he says, voice thick. “Your hand in marriage would make me the happiest man on Earth.”
For a second, I can’t breathe. I stare at the ring, then at him, and my mind is a snarl of hope and panic.
I think about all the times I told myself I didn’t believe in marriage, that it was a trap, a lie, a story people told themselves to stave off the darkness. I think about my mom, about the parade of foster moms, about every woman I ever knew who was chewed up and spat out by love.
But then I think about the man in front of me, and how he always lets me go first in arguments, how he never makes me feel small even when I am, how he looks at me like I’m the only thing in the room.
I want to say yes.
I want to say it more than I’ve ever wanted anything.
But something in me hesitates. I think of the baby—this microscopic, theoretical person—and I wonder if he’s only asking because of them, not me.
He must see it in my face, because he closes the box, holds it in both hands.
“It doesn’t have to be now,” Liam says, gentle. “It doesn’t even have to be ever, if you don’t want it. I just—fuck, Simone, I love you. I want you to know that, no matter what.”
I nod, tears finally spilling over, hot and ridiculous.
“Yes, Liam,” I manage in a trembling voice. “Yes, I’ll marry you. I love you too.”
He wipes my cheek with his thumb. “Don’t cry, baby. We’ll figure it out,” he repeats. “Even if it’s messy.”
I laugh, a wet, snorting sound that makes him laugh too.
“Ask me again,” I say. “When I’m not such a disaster.”
He grins. “You got it, Mrs. Thomas.”
Then, he slides the ring on my finger and we both look at it, breathing in the miracle of what’s happening. I will soon say my vows to Liam, and he’ll repeat them to me. We will be bound by everything that life has to offer, including the child in my belly. As if waltzing in a dream, we leave the dishes in the sink and go to the living room, collapsing together on the couch. He holds me, one hand on my stomach, the other tangled in my hair. We don’t say anything for a long time because this is only the beginning.
Just us, and the impossible future, and the promise of something we might build together.
I close my eyes and let myself savor the moment because this time, it’s going to work out, with this man by my side, and our love to bind us together for eternity.
EPILOGUE: FAMILY BEGINNINGS
SIMONE
The sun does its best through the wisteria, but the North Garden is built for secrets. All around me, the vines slouch over brick walls, shouldering their way through trellises with a kind of lazy elegance. By two in the afternoon, the whole patchwork is lit up—petals like tissue paper, benches like altars, each corner promising privacy if you’re desperate enough to need it.
I’ve got a library’s worth of books fanned out on the stone table, highlighters capped and uncapped in a little field around my elbows, and a baby, three months out of the womb and already suspicious of academia, hooked in the crook of my left arm. Emmy has a way of curling her fingers around my lanyard and yanking, as if she’s trying to declare independence from all institutional forces. Today, she’s got a grip on a fistful of my hair, smearing it with sweet potato puree from lunch and the dampness of her own perfect mouth.
