“What?”
“You’ve been meaning to put up new photos on the wall, right?” He nods his chin over my shoulder, and I start to turn. Again, he directs me back to him.
I push against his palm with my cheek, but he holds fast. “Oh my god, let me look!”
He laughs, his chest shaking against mine, pressing closer. I can feel the beat of his heart. How fast it’s going. “Holy shit, you’re impatient. Let me set it up.”
“I’m going to be old and gray by the time you do.”
Something shifts in his expression, from amusement to hope so raw it wraps a fist around my heart. “I can’t wait to see that.” Before I can respond, he continues, “You wanted to put new photos in the frames on the wall, but you’ve been so busy I wanted to take that off your plate. I thought it’d be cool to come home to it already done.”
“You chose the pictures and everything? All on your own?”
He nods, biting at his lip. “I picked some that I know are your favorites. Kind of a mixture of trips we’ve taken, shots of our families, that kind of thing. I even got a few from Italy.”
Everything inside me melts. “You really are the best, do you know that? If it didn’t benefit me so much, it would be annoying.”
He doesn’t even return with a smug quip. Instead he grins. “Okay. Now you can look.”
I turn. The wall is big enough that it can handle close to twenty frames in various sizes. I start from the top left and work my way across. There are new photos from our road trip with Paul, replacing some of the ones that were there before. Photos from weekend trips we’ve taken, dinners out with friends, one of Paul and my dad, who have turned into hiking buddies, my favorite snapshot of Gram and me, and—
Nestled in the middle are four framed pictures of Theo and me, ones I haven’t seen before. It takes me a second for my brain to realize what I’m looking at, but my heart catches on right away, beating furiously.
In the first picture, we’re on a private boat tour in Positano and I’m facing away from the camera, my hair flowing out behind me. Theo is in the foreground, faced toward the camera, a small smile on his face. He’s holding a piece of paper that says: WILL.
The next picture, we’re at dinner in Florence and I’m gazing out toward a cobblestoned square where a band is playing. Again, Theo’s holding up a piece of paper, a little smirk on his face. It says: YOU.
“Oh my god.” Tears are already falling from my eyes. I move on to the next one.
We’re at the beach in Taormina and I’m staring out at the ocean, hand shielding my eyes. Theo’s a few feet behind me, wearing only swim trunks, looking gorgeous. I can still feel the heat of his skin against my palms when we came back to our hotel and got tangled up in bed. In the picture, Theo’s sign says: MARRY.
In the last picture, we’re in front of a coffee shop in a narrow, picturesque alleyway in Rome. Theo has me wrapped up in his arms and my face is tucked into his neck. He’s looking at the camera, his eyes filled with so much love I can’t help letting out a sobbing laugh. I remember that moment, when he pulled me into a hug so sweetly affectionate. I closed my eyes and soaked it in and thought god, my life is so good.
There’s a ring pinched between Theo’s fingers in the picture, and a piece of paper is held up against my red dress. It says: ME?
In the reflection of the framed glass, I see Theo behind me, kneeling.
I turn around, my hands over my mouth, and stumble to him. He’s holding the ring from the picture between his thumb and forefinger.
“Are you kidding me?” I cry, kneeling down with him. If we’re doing this, it’s going to be together.
He smiles, his eyes crinkling at the corners. I love him. I want to watch those lines deepen with time, until he’s old and gray, too.
“I know we don’t use the word perfect, but the past year and a half has been as close as I’ve ever had,” he says, his voice going hoarse as he fights against the emotion welling in his eyes. “And I know we don’t do secrets, either, but it’s not a secret that I want to spend the rest of my life with you, right?”
I let out a wet laugh. “No, you’ve been pretty obvious.”
He grins, a tear slipping down his cheek. “No one loves me like you do, Noelle. I wake up every morning thinking it can’t get better, and then it does. It’s never going to be perfect, but we can spend the next sixty years or so making it really damn good, if that’s what you want, too.”
“Sixty years, huh?” Even two lifetimes don’t feel like enough.
“At least.” He runs a finger over my wet cheek, then asks quietly, “Will you marry me?”
I throw my arms around his neck, and he teeters with a laugh, wrapping his arms around my waist to keep us steady.
“I will marry the hell out of you,” I say, pulling him to me for a kiss that’s all him laughing, me crying.
“I love you,” he whispers once, then again as he slides the brilliant diamond onto my finger. I say it back, against his mouth, his cheek, right up against his ear so he never forgets this moment and what he’s given me.
After a few minutes of dizzy, euphoric making out, Theo pulls me to a stand.
I gaze at the pictures, imagining someone finding them someday. Wanting to know our story. “How did you do all this without me knowing?”
His hand moves up and down my back in soothing strokes as he appraises them. “I worked it out in advance with someone, depending on where we were—sometimes it was days in advance, like with the boat tour, and sometimes minutes, like that picture in Rome. I gave them my number so they could text me the picture afterward.”
“Who printed them out? Who put them up? My whole family was involved?”
Theo nods. “Thomas and Granddad got them printed. Everyone, including your parents, came and swapped out the old pictures with these.”
That explains the FaceTime call I got from my family two days ago. They were all giddy to the point of hysterical laughter. I chalked it up to a boozy brunch, but now I know they were just beside themselves with excitement.
“You are all so sneaky, oh my god.” I press my hand against my forehead, feeling the cool metal of the ring against my heated skin. “How am I ever going to beat this?”
Theo turns to me, pulling me back into his arms. He gazes down at me, pure happiness and unabashed affection written all over his face. “It’s not a contest, remember?”
I stare down at my ring, mesmerized, before blinking up at him. “Is this real? This is my life?”
“Shepard,” he says, grazing his lips against mine. “It’s ours.”
His glancing touch turns into searching kisses, and I push him back toward our bedroom, yanking at his shirt. He lets me pull it over his head, laughing, bringing my hand up to his mouth so he can kiss my finger right above the ring he just gave me.
We’ve had all kinds of sex many times over—frantic, slow, intense and rough, the makeup kind after a fight, the sneaky type in places we could get caught—but engaged sex is going to be my favorite. I can already tell by the way he grips my hips tight in his hands, by the need in his eyes.