by Jeanne Ray
“Nobody’s home at all,” I said miserably. Wasn’t this all I had ever wanted: A place of my own? A little quiet? Every step we took felt like a foot placed exactly on top of my heart.
But Romeo didn’t hesitate a bit. In fact, it all seemed so easy for him that I suspected something was up. “You’ve been down here before, haven’t you?”
He smiled and squeezed my hand. “I practiced a little bit on my own. I didn’t want to be a nervous wreck in front of you when it was time to go.”
I wiped my eyes with my free hand. “It would have been a little bit easier if we’d both been wrecks together.”
When we got to the foot of the stairs, Romeo kissed me. “You’ve been as good to me as any one person could ever be to another person.”
I hugged him, careful not to press too hard. “You’re easy to be nice to.”
He kissed me again, then stopped and looked up the stairs. “One minute. I forgot my stuff.” And with that he shot right back up again and came down holding all three of his bags, not needing me or the banister at all.
It was then that I realized Romeo had waited as long to go as he possibly could, as a way of helping me. I drove him the ten blocks back to his house, but I didn’t go inside. I just waved and blew him a kiss. Then I cried all the way home.
Everyone had predicted that Romeo would get better, that sooner or later he would get back his strength and leave the nest. I knew as I walked from empty room to empty room that what had happened was only right and natural, even if that knowledge brought me no comfort whatsoever. I tried to make myself a nice dinner, but I couldn’t eat it. I tried to read a few pages of Moby-Dick, but I couldn’t concentrate.
The only thing that could have brought me any comfort from missing Romeo was Romeo himself, but I didn’t want to call him. He deserved to have a little time with his family. After all, we had been together almost every minute of every day since he hurt his back, and I could certainly wait until tomorrow to talk to him, the very thought of which set me off crying again.
When I dried my eyes, I took to staring at the phone like a lonesome teenaged girl. Because I was staring at the phone, I didn’t see him coming up the back steps. He tapped on the glass, and I gave a small shriek.
“I didn’t meant to scare you,” he said once I let him inside.
It had been weeks, months, years since he left, I had never been so glad to see anyone. “I was waiting by the phone.”
“And now it turns out you should have been waiting by the door.”
He kissed me, and I pressed my face against his cold neck.
“Did you forget something?” I said hopefully.
“You could say that.”
“Do you want your copy of Moby-Dick back? I haven’t finished it yet.”
Romeo shook his head. “I was there in my house with my mom and my kids, and when I went upstairs to go to bed I thought, this isn’t my room.”
“That’s strange.” I pulled out a chair for him, and we sat at the breakfast table with our knees touching. My heart was beating like a hummingbird in double time.
“I’ve been sleeping in that room for almost forty years, but when I went back there tonight, I don’t know.” He shook his head. “It was all over.”
“So you’re looking for a place to stay?”
Romeo nodded and pulled out his wallet. “I went by the CVS on my way over.” He took out a slip of paper and put it on the table between us. “I bought us a lottery ticket.”
I picked it up and looked at it. It looked exactly like Sarah’s ticket, just a tiny white slip of paper. “Nobody wins twice,” I said, but I didn’t believe it.
Romeo took my hand and pressed it against his cheek. Never was I so glad or so grateful for anything. There were not enough winning tickets in the world to come anywhere close to this. I closed my eyes so that I could remember everything exactly the way it was, right at that moment at my own kitchen table. Romeo had come back. It was the happiest moment of my life.
When I opened my eyes, I was wearing a ring.
“Romeo?”
“It was really late,” he said. “CVS was the only place that was open.”
The ring was very sparkly and not so big that it couldn’t be believable. Besides, I didn’t have my glasses on. I gave the band a squeeze until I had adjusted it to my size. A little hiccup of a cry caught in my throat. Zsa Zsa Gabor had never had a ring as fine as this. “It’s beautiful.”
“You can’t just buy a ring at CVS, you know. It was a free gift. I had to buy three tubes of lipstick to get it.” He reached into his pocket and put three blue shiny tubes down on the table. “I wasn’t sure which color you’d like.”
“I’ll wear them all,” I said. I wagged my fingers to make the light in the little stone dance. “Do you really want to get married?”
Romeo shrugged. “I feel like we’re already married. We can get married or we can have a long engagement. We can do anything you’d like. I just want you to know—” His voice broke off and he shook his head. “There’s nobody for me but you,” he said finally.
I handed him a tissue from the box I was working my way through. Then Romeo and I started to kiss, a kiss not unlike the one that had gotten us into so much trouble in the first place.
“I’m experiencing déjà vu,” I said.
“We were on our way upstairs,” he said.
“That’s right,” I said. “But this time I’m carrying you.”
He laughed, and we made our way up the stairs together, equal and side by side, dropping our clothes like a trail of bread crumbs, just in case we ever decided to go back down again someday.
From that day forward, Romeo would go to the store and work on arrangements, go and see his mother in the evenings, read to her and get her settled into bed at night, and when everything was finished, he would always come back to me. Lucky me. The house was too huge and too empty for one person. Even Oompah-Loompah was gone. I was, as I had always been these past three years, extremely grateful for Romeo.
The lottery ticket Romeo bought for me didn’t win, but I kept it anyway as a reminder of what it means to get lucky. As for Sarah’s ticket, it took forever to get the money. Sandy and Tony took out a bank loan for the down payment on the house while they waited for the Great State of Massachusetts to pay up. A major investigation was launched after it was discovered that certain lottery tickets might be fakes. The one that had spent such a long time in Sarah’s shoe was fine, but the one that was turned in by Ms. Jo Gottschalk of Lancaster, Ohio, had never been real at all—which meant that an eight-year-old who had found a way to cut back to three million, seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars was restored to her full seven and a half million. Sarah said she wanted to send us on vacation. We’re still waiting to hear the decision of the board.