Page 104 of Beware of Dog

The fridge opened and slapped shut. Ice clinked in a tumbler, and she heard two corks get pulled, the sounds different from the wine and the whiskey bottles, respectively. She set her latest panel for the gallery show up on an easel and tilted it so she could glance easily out the window at the building across the way, which she was using as a backdrop in the painting.

She heard his socked feet scuff across the carpet as she squinted at her half-finished work, trying to decide what was wrong with it. “I think the perspective is off on the building,” she decided, and his arm came down over her shoulder, full wine glass held out in offering. “Thank you, baby.”

She took it, and took a sip. “What do you think?”

His arm retracted. “I think art’s way above my paygrade. But.” His arm returned, and there was a ring sitting in the center of his palm.

“Oh, Frank,” she gasped, heartbeat spiraling. “Is it for me?”

“No, it’s for the mailman.” He lifted his hand closer to her face. “Yeah, it’s for you. See what you think.”

All day she’d worried that he would back out, would change his mind; had worried that he was having secondthoughts…and he’d been ring shopping. For her. So he could marry her.

There were no candles, no rose petals, no bent knee, no grand gesture. Just his familiar, smooth-callused palm held before her, and his breath warm and tickling against her scalp, and this ring that he’d picked out for her, his undramatic promise of forever.

She swapped her wine glass to her other hand so she could pick up the ring, fingers trembling faintly.

It was white gold, the band thin and delicate, with the tiniest little leaf detailing around the square-cut diamond. It was feminine, and a little old-fashioned, and not a thing like Raven’s massive rock, or the chunky bands and broad stones so popular lately.

“I thought,” he said, haltingly, “that since your hands are small, it should be…I dunno. Not too big. But if you don’t like it—”

“No.” She didn’t realize until she spoke that she’d started to cry, her voice watery. “It’s perfect.”

“Yeah?” He sounded nervous, but hopeful.

Slowly, the shaking getting worse, Cass set her glass down on her art stool, so she could turn and see his face.

She’d never seen him so nervous, his head half-ducked, looking up at her through his lashes, mouth tight, like he thought she might hit him.

She smiled through her tears, and lifted the ring. “Would you…?”

“Oh.” His brow smoothed; his whole expression cleared, and became something wondrous. “Yeah. Sure. I can—yeah.” He took the ring back—it looked tiny between his fingers—and then took her hand in his. He was shaking, too, she saw, when he slipped the band on her finger.

He cleared his throat, and said, very formally, “I always thought I’d be absolute shit at this, but I don’t think that anymore. Not with you.” He took a deep breath, and, thumb smoothing over the ring, his gaze boring into hers, said, “Cassandra Jane Green, will you marry me?”

She gazed down at the ring, the diamond winking up at her. At his large fingers, with their blunt nails, and then up at his handsome, hopeful, bashful face.

“Yes!” she shrieked, and laughed, and tackled him.

He caught her around the waist, and spun her around, and laughed into her hair. “Fuck yeah! Let’s get married!”

“Fuck yeah!”

~*~

Shep woke with the sense that something was wrong. That preternatural awareness he’d first developed in the Army. An inaudible hum in the air, a prickling along his skin.

His eyes snapped open. The right was full of Cass’s dark hair, and the left could pick out the blind-width bars of light across the wall and closet door. They hadn’t crashed out, sated and deeply happy, until after midnight, and they’d been asleep long enough for him to reach R.E.M. His dreams had dissipated slowly, and then he’d woken all at once.

Cass was still asleep under his arm, her breaths regular and deep against his chest.

He pushed up onto his elbow, blinking the crust from his eyes, and she murmured a protest and tried to snuggle in closer. That was when he heard a sound out in the living room. A faint, muffled thump.

“Babe.” He shook her shoulder gently, and then sat all the way up. “Cass, wake up.”

“Wha…?”

“There’s someone in the apartment.”

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