by Julia Kent
I’m not nervous.
This isn’t anxiety.
I’m just hyperaware. It’s a skill.
“How was your day? Did the meeting with the Sultan go well?”
I crack a smile and watch her eat the bread. She has this cute way, breaking off tiny pieces, dabbing them in the oil until the piece is completely soaked, then sprinkling salt on it before eating.
I just drink my wine and polish off the bottle.
“Hey there, cowboy. Slow down.”
“Why? Gerald’s driving.”
“I haven’t seen you for nearly a week. I want you functional tonight.”
“Define functional.”
Her leer is all the answer I need.
“The Sultan? I know you were hoping for a win on that.”
“Actually, I have to thank Jessica for her help on that.”
Amanda drops the piece of bread between her fingers. It plops in the oil with a tiny drop of backsplash that lands in the web of her hand.
“Jessica?”
“Funny story. Her Twitter feed—the one I killed—may have helped me close a nine-figure deal.”
Amanda resumes her oil-soaked-bread lovefest. “Explain.”
Every move she makes is enchanting. Every word that comes out of her is intriguing. Has she always been so alluring, or are my senses heightened by the presence of the ring in my pocket? I felt like this at Walden Pond for a split second, but it was tempered by the silly pageantry of the Pride and Prejudice scene.
This is pure. Unalloyed.
“Andrew?” She nudges me. “Eat some bread. You look like you’re already a little drunk.”
Drunk on you.
Without thought, I imitate her, pulling a tiny piece of bread from my larger chunk and dipping it in the oil. I never do this. She laughs.
The laughter carries on the wind, over the water, and around the earth in full circumference to find its way back to me.
Maybe I am a little drunk.
“The Sultan saw Jessica making nasty tweets about my Pride and Prejudice stunt. She got pictures from God knows who. Turns out, he has a wing of his palace in Dubai that is an exact replica of Pemberley. He called for a video chat and because I am practically an Austen scholar—”
Amanda snorts.
“—we had an extensive conversation, then an intense negotiation, and now Anterdec is the official developer for their new resorts.”
“How wonderful!” she claps. “But how did you shut down Jessica? You were the one who killed her Twitter stream? Was this your wedding present to Shannon and Declan?”
“No, but that would have been a great idea.” I chuckle as the server brings another bottle of wine and pours. This time, I sip. “No, I had Anterdec’s local media buyer contact every single outlet where we advertise and gently inform them Anterdec’s ad money would go elsewhere if they didn’t stop retweeting her.”
“But that wouldn’t shut down her account.”
“And I called my former husband, Josh—”
She starts choking on her bread.
“—who is an accomplished hacker. Gave him a video. He uploaded a link on her Twitter account. She killed her own account all by herself.”
“What was the video?”
“Can we talk about something else?” The server brings two ramekins filled with some kind of dip and a pile of fist-sized shrimp. The video is a secret I’d like to hang onto for a little longer. No need to air out everything in my past just yet. “I’d like a dinner out that doesn’t involve Jessica.”
“Or videos of transvestites who look like her, kissing you.”
“Or images in my mind of you actually kissing her,” I add in an acid tone.
She giggles and digs in. I eat, but my stomach is battery acid poured on top of a hundred pounds of feathers.
A sudden breeze lifts Amanda’s hair from behind just as she’s raising her glass to drink, the ethereal glow of the string of lights behind her adding to the mystique. She’s a wild spirit, a witchy woman in that second, and my heart beats for her, like a planet revolving around a heavenly body only because it knows no other option.
“Nine figures, huh?” She smiles, then sighs. “I guess I’ll need to figure out the time difference between here and Dubai. You’ll be there for the next two years.”
“No. Declan will...oh.” She’s right. Declan’s got his own company and this will fall on the new VP of Marketing in the long run, but for now, it’s me.
“Let’s not talk about work,” she says. “Even if I do work for you now.”
“Let’s mix business with pleasure.”
“If it involves going to Dubai and dressing like Elizabeth Bennet, no way.”
“How about going to my bedroom and dressing up as Miss Bennet?”
“Pervert.”
I laugh as my heart slams against my breastbone like a calypso drum.
Consuela herself delivers the main course.
“Lobster and steak?”Amanda asks, delighted.
“Simple yet elegant,” Consuela explains. “And no cilantro.” She tosses me a mock-angry look and leaves without fanfare.
We eat.
Rather, Amanda eats. I push food around on my plate and feel like time collapsed into three molecules on a steeplechase in my brain.
“Are you okay?” she asks as she finishes her food, pushing the plate away with a little groan of satisfaction.
“Yeah. Fine. Why?”
“You seem weird.”
“It’s been a long day.”
“No. Not tired. Weird. Are we okay?
I pat my front pocket with the ring. “We are great.”
“Good.” She gives me a shy look, then reaches down to a bag next to her, on the ground. “Because I packed an overnight bag.”
“Even better.”
“With a whole change of clothes for work to leave at your place.” The words come out in a rush, as if she thinks saying them quickly will make them less powerful.
“You’re moving in?”
“If leaving a single change of clothing is your definition of ‘moving in,’ then yes.”
I just smile.
“It’s a first step,” she says.
I touch the ring.
And the server appears with orange balls.
Yes.
Orange balls.
“Dessert!” the server says, leaving two ramekins of hot chocolate sauce next to a series of cheese puffs with fondue skewers.
“What’s this?” Amanda asks.
Consuela appears, frowning. “Andrew asked me to make you a special dessert. It was made to his exact specifications. Butter. Marshmallows.” She winces like she’s swallowed a bug. “Cheetos.” She sighs. “The chocolate sauce was my own doing. How do you eat these monstrosities without chocolate?”
Amanda laughs, pokes a ball, dips it, and eats. “Oh, Consuela! Chocolate sauce on balls is divine.”
I wisely keep my mouth shut. Consuela departs.
“Try one, Andrew!”
“I’m good.”
“C’mon! Live a little.”
“Those are for you.”
“They should be for us. Share with me. I want you to enjoy this, too.”
I follow her lead and try one.
They’re surprisingly good.
And the taste is familiar. I’m remembering Vegas. Orange stains.
“What a lovely night,” Amanda says with a sigh. The wind’s picking up, and the sound of people walking on the streets below filters up, the conversation boisterous.
And then the conversation gets louder.
And louder.
“I think he said up here,” Dad says, loud and clear.
“I’ve had dinner plenty of times at Consuela’s, Dad. She’ll greet us and tell us where to go.” That’s Declan.
“Andrew said he rented the entire rooftop.” And Terry.
Amanda gives me a confused look. “Is that Declan I hear? And you rented the entire rooftop? Why?”
I stand quickly and pull the damn ring out of my pocket.
I told them all to come at 8:30, and Amanda was late, so—
“CONGRATULATIONS!” Dad booms as he explodes through the main door, followed quickly by Declan and Shannon, then Pam carrying Spritzy in a new red leather handbag that matches her red dress. Terry’s in the mix, and is that Josh?
“Andrew? What is going on?” Amanda asks, taking in the sudden rush of all these people we know.
People who just interrupted the most important moment of my life.
Our life.
“James!” Consuela appears, giving Dad a hug and a double kiss on the cheeks. “So good to see you, but your timing is lousy. Andrew has not yet completed his task.”
“Task? He hasn’t asked her yet?”
Amanda grabs my hand. “Asked me...what?”
I open my palm. The glow of the lights makes the purple velvet glitter in the night.
“Oh!”
I guess I’m doing this with an audience.
“I brought you here tonight because I love you.”
I bend down on one knee and look up into her lovely, captivating face.
“You are everything to me. I spent two years fighting it, punctuated by two stupid kisses in closets that were driven by a part of me that couldn’t stay away from you.”
“Stupid kisses?” One corner of her mouth turns up in a smile, her eyes on me, so big the irises don’t touch her eyelids, and I could lose myself in her. Isn’t that the point? To do so with intention.
And a ring.
“Yes. Stupid. None of your kisses are stupid in and of themselves. I made them stupid. I knew, more than two years ago, when you pulled me into my office closet to hide from Shannon that I was hopelessly falling for someone who would challenge me. And I was weak.”
She gasps.
“That’s right—weak. I was too weak to let myself admit I wanted you from the first moment I laid eyes on you in that meeting. The one where my stupid brother met the love of his life. Turns out I do copy my big brother—at least in one way.”
She smiles.
“We both met the love of our life in that boardroom meeting that day.”
“Oh, Andrew,” she says with a sigh. Her voice trembles, wobbling like my heart, which is flopping in my chest like a poorly-programmed Mars Rover robot in a cyclone, screaming Please say yes please say yes please say yes.
I’ve stacked the deck. Like walking into an intense negotiation with a great deal at stake, I’ve done my homework. My plans are airtight. I’m pretty certain this deal is going my way, and that the terms and conditions will be satisfactory to both parties.
Mergers are delicate business situations.
But heart and soul mergers are another animal entirely.
And then there’s the body...
I’ve accounted for every contingency I can think of, save one.
If she says no, I don’t know what to do.
Please say yes.
“This is my ring for you. I hope it’s my penultimate ring, and that the final one will be our wedding band.”
She gasps again, one hand splayed across her collarbone, the other reaching for my shoulder, stretching down. All my earlier nervousness fades. Memories of Vegas, of awakening to the rings on our hands, of the insane search for the truth, the exhalations of relief that we weren’t married, all come barreling into my stream of consciousness.
Unnecessary panic and worry. Wasted anxiety. Childish agonizing.
It’s all gone.
I have never been more sure of any choice in my life.
And now I hope she feels the same certainty. Please, I think. Please.
Looking up at her, the stars suspended in the dark sky above her, framing her as if she’s a celestial body, I don’t see Amanda.
I see my future. She is the love of my life, but even more—she is love itself.
Life would not be the same without that love.
“Please,” I say, struggling to keep my voice steady. I open the box, the hinge like a heart valve. “We were practically married already.”
Her laugh combines with a funny sniffling sound, and the hand on my shoulder digs in.
“But this is a first for me,” I continue, determined to get this right. “I’ve never proposed to anyone before.” Our eyes meet. She sends a charged signal through me, the words easier and harder, the struggle to take infinite emotion and distill it down to a few paltry sentences too brutal.
“Me, too,” she murmurs, her smile adorable. “My first. So show me how this is done. You’re the CEO. You take the lead.”
I laugh, the sound more a pressure valve than true amusement, and startle to find we’re surrounded by an audience that laughs along with me. I’d invited Dec and Shannon, Dad and Pam, and Terry, Josh and Grace to come to dinner after our engagement, to celebrate with joy, but all the crazy delays meant that I was proposing too late.
Time kept us apart.
I won’t make that mistake again.
“I met you more than two years ago in a business meeting. You weren’t Toilet Girl. I wasn’t Hot Guy.”
“You are so Hot Guy,” she protests.
“But not Hot Guy Hot Guy.”
My dad clears his throat. “Andrew is the only man who could get into an argument during a marriage proposal,” he says in sotto voce, though not sotto enough. I should never have invited anyone.
“Dad, shut up,” Terry says in a friendly voice. He’s the only one of us who can get away with that.
“Fine,” Dad mumbles.
“You brought an audience for your proposal?” Amanda asks, her voice shaking. “What else? Is Jessica Coffin behind the chef’s herb garden, on Instagram now?”
“Oh, God, she isn’t, is she?” Shannon asks with a gasp.
“But,” I say in an exaggeratedly loud voice, my eyes matched to Amanda’s, everyone else shoved away by the hand of love, “all I saw at that table was you.”
“More like her breasts,” Declan mutters.
“OUT!” I shout. “Consuela! Get them all a round of drinks or tiramisu or—”
“Check the tiramisu for engagement rings, though,” Dad whispers.
“This was a mistake,” I say to Amanda. “Not the proposal, but them.” Why the hell did I invite them in the first place?
“Nothing about any of this is a mistake, Andrew.” She reaches for my hand and pulls me away from the crowd to a small door next to Consuela’s herb garden. Amanda opens it, peers in, and yanks my arm, then closes the door.
“Ask me here.” The tiny space smells like soil and clay, metal shavings and aging wood. It’s the scent of work, of art, of nature.
The crowd outside laughs.
“Here? In a—” What she’s doing hits me.
“Closet.” I can’t even see her face, but she reaches for me, fingertips brushing against a bare spot on my neck, and all the emotion roars to the surface, as if my heart dances on my skin.
“You’re it. You’re everything. You keep asking me how I know, and Amanda, I can’t keep trying to find the right words. I give up. I surrender. I don’t know how to say it in a way that makes you understand how I know. You’re my bedrock. I live in a world where business is complex and twisty, sabotage and intrigue rife, and where thinking you know something can be the worst form of arrogance. But this I know: you’re my person. You’re my soul mate. I don’t want anyone else but you. And every minute I’m not married to you is like dying a slow, suffocating heart death.”
“Oh!” Her warm breath tickles my nose. I smell her hair, a coconut-lime scent from the shampoo at my apartment.
“You fit. You’re the puzzle piece that makes the whole picture of my life fall into place. We can spend years trying to justify what we already know, or we can just do it. Please.” She still hasn’t said yes.
“Andrew, I—”
I reach into the velvet box, going entirely on touch, and pull out the ring. “Please. Amanda—�
�� I frown and blink hard. Shit. What’s her middle name? She’s told me this, right?
“It’s Hortense.”
“What?”
“My middle name.”
“Your middle name is Hortense?” I can’t keep the incredulity out of my voice.
“That’s a deal breaker, isn’t it? Sorry. Family name. Some great-great-grandmother from France.”
I can’t stop laughing. “Hortense?”
“You have a fabulous middle name. James is easy. I got stuck with Hortense.”
“Is that why I didn’t know your middle name?”
“If you were stuck with Hortense, would you run around sharing it?”
Can’t stop laughing.
“It sounds better when you say it in French!” she protests.
Enough. I take a deep breath and start over.
“As long as you don’t stick one of our kids with that name, I’m fine.”
“Trust me, Andrew. No problem.” She laughs, the sound fading into a breathy anticipation.
“Amanda Hortense Warrick, will you marry me? Will you let me finish what we started back in Vegas? Will you let me love you for the rest of my life? And give me a lifetime to make up for denying you the right to love me? Because I was—”
Her mouth is on mine and I almost lose my grasp on the ring, fumbling at the last second and feeling the cool metal in my palm, fingers folding over it into a fist. Damned if I’m losing another ring.
“Yes. Oh, God, Andrew, yes! Of course. I love you so much. And it took you long enough.”
“What?”
“I couldn’t believe you. Couldn’t. Not that I didn’t trust you, but I couldn’t believe you felt the same stone-cold certainty inside that I felt.”
I am stunned. “You felt it, too? All this time? Then what was with all the ‘ridiculous’ comments?”
“I was terrified. I figured you didn’t feel this. I had to cover up my own feelings.”
“I can’t believe this.”
“We really are a pair, aren’t we?” she says with a tiny sound of joy.
“We are now.” I pull my phone out of my pocket and turn on the flashlight app.
“What are you doing?”
I show her the ring. The inscription.
“‘There’s a pair of us,’” she reads slowly. I tuck the phone in my back pocket, find her left hand, and slowly slip the ring on her finger.