by Mae Wood
But I’m not in this family, I thought while I said, “Thank you.”
Dinner ended and I was ready to get home.
Wait, I’m not going home. I’m going back to Trip’s.
“Thank you so much for inviting me.”
Can I do this every Tuesday night for the rest of my life? It wasn’t a disaster and Bitsy seems to have repressed the kitchen incident better than I’ve been able to, which truth be told, wasn’t very well.
“Of course. I’m looking forward to seeing you Saturday.” She leaned in and gave me a warm hug as we walked out of the restaurant. “We will have a good time, I promise,” she spoke quietly to me, giving my hand a quick squeeze.
“Jimmy, thank you as well.”
“Anytime,” he said, giving me the peck on the cheek that I’d grown to expect from him.
“Trip, I’ll see you later.”
“Yes, I’ll be home around ten.”
Did he seriously just out us in front of his parents like that? That’s his mess to clean up.
I handed my claim stub to the valet and waited quietly as Trip gently massaged circles into my low back. When my car arrived, Trip escorted me to the driver’s side and placed me inside. “So, your place tonight?” he asked, hanging over the doorframe.
“No, home with you. I brought over my things this afternoon.”
He nodded. Kissed me gently, righted himself, closed the car door, and tapped the roof twice, sending me on my way.
Chapter Twenty-seven
I woke up in the middle of the night to a very drunk and very naked boyfriend crawling into bed. “Hey,” I sleepily called to him. “I waited. Queued up Holy Grail on Netflix and then just crashed.” He pulled me into the curve of his naked body.
SP Two.
I relaxed into him and noticed his breath was irregular and he was shaky. “Are you crying?” I asked suddenly becoming more awake.
“Yes.”
“How drunk are you?”
“I love you so much.”
“Dear God, what did you and Jimmy do?”
“Mom’s sick. The cancer has come back and is in her spine.”
“Oh, dear God.” I could feel him nod and his heart breaking. “Okay, roll over. I’m holding you.” He followed my request. I wrapped him up in my arms. My face in between his shoulder blades. I patted and stroked and cooed as he cried.
How do I make this better? I can’t make this better.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I can’t.”
“Okay. Do you want sex?” He snorted and he shifted to wipe a hand across his face. “Let me get you a tissue.”
“No. Just hold me.” His voice was choked with phlegm and tears. And I did.
I woke up early on Wednesday morning, leaving an exhausted Trip asleep in bed as I slid into my lavender bathrobe. I turned on the coffeemaker, emailed Jane that I would likely be in late due to personal reasons and did the same with Trip’s assistant Jenny. Then, I made our breakfast. I dug around in his oversized kitchen until I located a carafe and a tray. I carried the oatmeal, yogurt, granola, and coffee upstairs and placed it on top of his dresser. At my sound, he began to stir.
“Good morning, love. Let me go get you some Advil.”
“There is a bottle in the linen closet.” He pushed himself up.
“No, you just rest. I’ll go get it. I’ve brought breakfast up, too. Let’s not go face the world just yet.”
He relaxed back down on his stomach and buried his face in his pillow. “Hey, baby,” I urged him to sit up and placed the breakfast tray on the bed. “Here’s your Advil.” He obligingly swallowed the pills down.
“I emailed Jenny and told her you’d be in late for personal reasons.”
He nodded. “You know she probably just thinks you kept me up all night with wild sex.”
“That’s fine with me. I’m not worried about what she thinks.”
“You’re not?”
“Nope. Just want to take care of you. So, are you hungry?” Trip shook his head and rolled out of bed and into the bathroom. When he crawled back into bed, he laid on his back and stared at the ceiling. “Will you try to eat something?”
“Okay.”
“I put raisins and cinnamon in. I know that’s how you fix it on the weekends, so I thought you might like that today.”
He nodded. “That’s how Ophelia used to make it for me when I was little.”
“Good. Just enjoy it.” I picked up my coffee and blew across the top, sending a waft of steam across the room. After a few more minutes of ceiling-staring, he sat up and ate his bowl of oatmeal in silence.
Don’t push. Let him lead.
He returned the empty bowl to the tray.
“Thank you.” He kissed my cheek.
“What else can I do for you?” He took my hands and slid off the edge of the bed onto the floor. “Are you okay?”
“Marry me.”
“What?”
“Please, Marisa. Let’s just skip the next six months of pretending we’re just dating and get married now, before Christmas.”
Before Christmas. Is that Bitsy’s prognosis?
“Trip, I don’t know what to say.”
“Yes, you do. You’re just scared. That’s okay. I’m scared, too, but I know I want to do this and there is no good reason to wait.”
“We’ve known each other like four months.”
“And your point is that we have to wait for when? Whose timeline gets to determine this? I’m going to marry you. We both know this. I’d like to give my mom this. So, please.”
“Trip, last night was awful. I’m sorry. I just don’t think this is going to make it better. I don’t want to do something you’re going to regret, that both of us would regret, to make your mom happy. That won’t make her happy.”
Trip stood up and rifled through his suit jacket, which he’d dropped on the floor last night in his stupor. “I’m not marrying you to make my mom happy. I’m marrying you because it would make me happy and it would make you happy. I’m just asking you to give me a six month allowance here. Even if we got married next spring, no one would bat an eye. We’re both approaching forty, for chrissakes. In ten years’ time this six months will mean nothing to us, but it will mean so much to my mom.” He stopped rustling through his clothes and turned towards me.
Naked as the day he was born, he reverted to his kneel at the edge of the bed and looked straight into my eyes. “Marisa, please marry me. I understand if December is a deal killer. We can negotiate time, place, anything else you want. Please, be with me forever.” He opened his hands to expose a small dove gray leather box.
Oh shit, he is serious.
He opened the box to reveal a simply cut oval diamond on a thin gold band. “This is my grandmother’s ring. I’d asked my dad to bring it to me last night. I wanted to take you to Telluride with me this winter and ask there, but I’m not waiting. I know what I want. I want to be your husband. Please, Marisa, please marry me.”
He’s thought about this. Thought about this before he knew about his mom’s prognosis.
My heart was in my throat.
Be brave. I couldn’t form words. I nodded and started to cry. I reached out to him and pulled him towards me. The ring and box to the floor. Fuck it all. Let’s do it. Let’s get married in a month. “Yes. Yes. I love you. Before the end of the year.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
“I’ve got a lunch meeting today,” I said very articulately while brushing my teeth after our emotionally raw romp in bed. I spat. “Are you okay or would you like me to bow out?”
“Go on and go. I’m fine. In fact, I’m better than fine. I’m really happy.” He gave me a hip check to get space at the sink to brush his teeth.
“Okay. Let’s eat at home tonight. We can just order in Indian, okay? I think you need some R&R.” I turned on the shower.
“I think you need some Trip.”
“And. . . my boyfriend is back.”
“No. You mean your fiancé is back.”
“So who knows about this? Your dad, clearly.”
“Unless he told my mom, he’s the only one who knows. I wanted to give you Grangran’s ring, so I had to ask him for it.”
“And this isn’t a re-gift, if you know what I mean?”
“If you’re asking if I’ve ever even thought about giving this ring to anyone else, the answer is no.”
“Okay, weird question to ask, but when you bought a ring for she-who-shall-not-be-named, what happened to it?”
“It’s in my desk.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I just put it back in my desk in the study.”
“That is so weird. You need to do something with that. Get it out of the house at least.”
“Well, the options are kind of limited. I didn’t give it to her, so it’s still mine. And it was hella expensive, so I’d take a huge haircut if I tried to sell it.” A look of panic crossed his face. “Wait, this is coming out wrong. Let me back up. If you don’t want my grandma’s ring, I will buy you whatever ring you want. I don’t care what it costs.”
“Calm down. It’s not about the ring, Trip.”
“Can you repeat that because I’m pretty sure I didn’t hear what you said.”
I laughed, dropped my robe and stepped into the shower. “It’s not about the ring, Trip. It’s about the sex,” I teased. He followed me in with a very present erection. I kissed him. Hard. Pressing my body flush up against his and letting my hands wander down his lithe frame.
“You’ve got lunch in what,” Trip looked at his tank watch, “an hour? I’m going for the gusto.” He spun me around and forced my back against the cool marble tiles. He tweaked a nipple.
“Oh, yes. Please.” I panted. “The lovey thing was good earlier, but I want you naughty.”
“I live to serve, Miss Tanner.” His hands ran under my ass and he hiked one of my thighs up, suspending me pinned against the wall and positioning himself below me.
“Yes,” I hissed.
“What do you want?”
“You.”
“Well, that’s exactly what you’re going to get.” My eyes got big.
This. This is all Trip. This is the only man I’m going to fuck for the rest of my life.
As I had my head upside down, blow-drying my hair, Trip walked into the bathroom fully dressed for work.
I hate how it takes him like fifteen minutes, including a shave, when I’m still working on my hair.
“Are you going to wear this?” He held the ring out to me.
I righted myself and switched off the dryer. “So, your dad knows. Does my dad know?”
“Really? That’s still a thing? Didn’t that end with, I don’t know, feudalism or the Civil War or at least the women’s lib movement?” I rolled my eyes. “I’ll fix that,” he quickly amended.
“No, don’t sweat it.”
“No, I’ll fix that. Anything else I need to fix about the incredibly, uh, unique way I popped the question?”
“No. It was perfect.”
“So, you are worried what to tell our children about our first date, but that was perfect?”
“It was perfect because it was honest. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“So, I’ve got to scoot out of here like now.” I dipped into the closet and was stepping into a prim navy shift dress when Trip entered.
“Are you really not going to wear it? You haven’t even tried it on. Do you not like it? Are you changing your mind?”
“No. Not at all. On either count. I just want to be able to talk to my parents first, okay? Before anyone else finds out. And in person. This isn’t a phone call conversation. My mom would kill me if I told her something like this over the phone.”
“‘Something like this’?” parroted Trip, employing my trademark air quotes. “You can’t even say it,” he challenged.
“Are you freaking out on me?”
“I think you’re the one who is freaking out here.”
“Zip me, please.” I spun around and offered my back to him. While he zipped, I stepped into my nude pumps. “No, I’m not freaking out.” I quickly moved to flick through my jewelry pouch and pulled out my favorite chunky amethyst necklace and slipped it over my head. “I don’t want this to get to my parents before I tell them. Before we tell them.”
“Tell them what, Marisa? I need you to say it aloud. You’re scared of making this real, aren’t you?” He was imploring me with his blue eyes. Beseeching me to give him the reassurance he craved.
Trip Brannon, nervous. This is new. And yes, yes I am a little scared.
“No. It’s real. I’m just overwhelmed. This is all just so fast.”
“Say it,” he urged me.
“I’m going to marry you.”
“Then wear my ring.” He held it out to me, pinched between his forefinger and thumb. I extended my left hand and he slipped it on. The ring wouldn’t budge past my second knuckle. “So I was planning on enlisting Erica’s help and getting it sized for you. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. That’s an easy fix,” I said, pulling it off and placing it in his palm. “Size seven. Lucky number seven. You’ll be able to remember that.”
“I really don’t like you leaving without something at least. I know that sounds silly, but I want to make it real.”
“Okay. It’s not like I’m going to run off.”
“You want a loaner?”
“Are you fucking serious? Hell no. I want that out of the house. Today.”
“Yes, ma’am. Okay, what about my fraternity pin?”
“Really? Like are you going to gather your brothers under my dorm window and serenade me?”
“I just want to give you something, okay? To make it real. This hasn’t gone exactly how I thought it would, but I want to do it right, Marisa.”
“Fine. Pin me. Do you know the song?”
He snorted. “The only fraternity songs I remember are limericks about sex acts.”
“Okay. Go for it.”
“You seriously want to hear about a man from Nantucket while I pin you?”
“Have you ever pinned a girl before?”
“No. Also like the asking your dad thing, I thought that went out in the 1970s.”
“Fine.” I walked back into the bathroom and applied a little make up. Swiping on my lipstick, I heard Trip clear his throat.
“There once was a man from Nantucket, whose dick was so long he could suck it.”
Really?
“Please,” I held up my hands and turned toward him. “I was just kidding. I do not want to know how that ends.”
He stepped toward me. “Marisa Tanner, will you wear my pin?”
I was overcome by giggles. “Yes. I will wear your pin. I’ll also marry you. Happy?”
“In a second I will be.” He inserted his left hand under my neckline and deftly affixed the small gold shield to my dress. “There. You’re mine.”
“That’s never been in doubt. Can I have the ring?”
“Whose ring?” he asked, angling for me to say it. To make it real once again.
“My engagement ring.”
“Of course. Do you want me to take it to get it sized to lucky number seven?”
“Not yet.” I dug around in my jewelry pouch and pulled out the antique locket my parents had given me for my eighteenth birthday. I slipped the locket off its chain and slid on Trip’s ring. I brushed my chestnut hair over one shoulder and fastened the clasp. I dropped the ring under my dress where it was next to my skin and hidden from view. “Not today. I want this to be real, Trip.”
“It is.”
***
I shoved the morning aside throughout my lady lawyers lunch meeting. I agreed to sit on a panel discussion on gender issues in the workplace for college students, but throughout lunch I kept rubbing my chest, feeling the ring against my skin. “Marisa, are you o
kay?” asked my friend Carly. We’d met studying for the bar exam together and kept in touch even though she practiced tax law at a competing law firm.
“Of course.”
“You just seem a little distracted today.”
Because I am. I’m insanely distracted. I don’t even remember driving myself here for lunch.
“I’m just slammed. I’ve got a trial in three weeks.”
And I’m also supposed to get married to a man I just met in August – what? Two weeks after that? Holy fuck. What did I agree to? This is fucking insane. Who gets married to someone they just met? Who plans a wedding in six weeks? While being in trial? I barely even have time to feed myself or run while I’m in trial.
“Marisa? Hey. You really don’t look well.”
“Yeah, sorry. Maybe I’m coming down with something.”
“There is a cold going around. My husband has it and the baby just got over it. Are you congested? You keep rubbing your chest. Any fever?”
“No,” I shook my head. “No fever.”
I finally made it into my office in a trance. Jane watched me walk by her doorway. “Marisa, are you okay?” she called, her voice full of concern.
“I honestly feel like I might throw up.”
“Can I get you anything?”
“A Sprite? I’m just going to go into my office and work with my door closed. Can you keep folks out?”
“Yes. Why don’t you go home?”
I ignored her concern and plopped my handbag on a guest chair.
Because I agreed to marry Trip fucking Brannon this morning. I’m getting married in about six weeks? Six weeks? Who gets married in six weeks? Is this totally insane? Yes. This is insane.
I exhaled and turned on my computer. I began wading through my morning email and sipped on the Sprite Jane had brought me. One new email popped up. [email protected]. Subject: I mean it.
Oh, emails at work. This is real.
We’d scrupulously avoided personal emails before we’d “gone public.” Too much potential for discovery. With my heart in my throat, I clicked open.
Marisa, I know this morning was unconventional. I know these last few months have been a little nuts. I probably shouldn’t have asked you that way, but I did. You are it for me. I meant everything I said to you and more. Yours forever, Trip.