Page 72 of Most Likely to Match
He laughs. Stops fiddling with something in his pocket to look at me. He takes my chin between his fingers and kisses me. “Hey,” he says again. “I haven’t gotten to do that all day.”
“Yeah.” I kiss him back, a quick brush of our lips that lasts a little longer the next time I do it. “You left too early.”
He’s slowly and unofficially moved into my condo. After he rented a small office space for in-person therapy sessions, it just made more sense for him to live downtown, anyway. And while I don’t necessarily have extra room in my postage-stamp sized condo, I could make some for him. Turns out having a boyfriend is endlessly fun. Even the boring parts of relationships, when you stop punishing yourself, let yourself have one.
Dean takes his spot behind me, and we face the camera, his arms around my waist, his chin hovering over my shoulder.
“Shouldn’t you set the timer?” I whisper.
An announcement comes over the library PA, “The library will be closing in five minutes.”
“Right.” He presses a button on the camera, but all that happens is the flash snaps out of its dock. Dean turns back to me. “You know, I think, if it’s okay, I might make one small change to your wardrobe.”
I look down at myself. It’s a pretty dull outfit. “Again, if I was told beforehand, I could have packed something,” I say.
He waves the words away with his hand. “No. It’s nothing big.” He takes my hand, A-P-E-R closing around my fingers. “Do you trust me?”
I frown, a seed of worry that he even has to ask. “Of course.”
He nods, looks at the camera, shoves his hand in his back pocket. For a second, I practice my explanation of why I don’t want to wear his ball cap in these pictures. But he doesn’t present me with the hat stuffed into his back pocket.
Instead, he holds a ring between his thumb and forefinger.
I frown at it, blink at the thin gold band and the single stone glimmering in the overhead lights.
“Chloe,” he says, the trembling returning to his voice. I meet his eyes when he’s quiet for too long. He smiles crookedly. “I had a whole speech,” he says. “But I’ve forgotten it.”
“Okay,” I say. I think I’m supposed to feel something. Happy, anxious, scared. Different. Whatever I’m supposed to feel, though, is dulled by the heavy glug of my blood through my veins. “Just say…” I say, “whatever feels best.”
He smiles, lifting my hand to his mouth to press a kiss there. “Okay. Well. I love you, Chloe.”
I nod. “I love you, too.”
His eyes shine as his smile widens, and suddenly, whatever it was I’m supposed to feel? I feel it. Happy. Anxious. Scared. Different.
Loved. I feel loved.
“Le plus,” I say.
These words seem to steady him. The tremor is gone. “So, uh…” He holds the ring up to my ring finger. “Do you want to get married?” he asks.
There have been so many times in my life when I have failed him. But even more when I have failed myself. When I was too stuck, too frozen to say the things that needed to be said, the things he deserved to hear, that I deserved to say.
This is not one of those times. “Yes,” I say. “I want to get married.”
I want to stand in front of everyone who loves us and claim him. And I will.
Now, I will.
I don’t know if Dean actually puts the ring on my finger. I’m too busy kissing him. My mouth filled with the taste of his cinnamon gum and his laughter. I cup his hip beneath his clothes, pull him against me. We bump into something; another something thuds mutedly to the carpeted floor. Distantly, I hope it’s not his camera, but I am too preoccupied with huffing the spicy vanilla scent he wears like the newest party drug to check.
Dean hooks my leg around his waist, pressing himself against me.His hand holds me steadily, his palm spread wide across my ass, the other hand gripping the bookshelf above my head.
Forget my moral panic about sex in the library. So help me, I will write the librarians a letter of apology tomorrow if it means this man can fuck me against their books right now.
“Ahem.” A voice breaks through the horny siren blaring in my mind.
Dean covers as much of me as he can with his body as he looks over his shoulder at the source of the throat clearing.
