“Just a few more minutes and we'll dry off, call for reinforcements, and try to get some sleep.”
“Okay.” Brooke rests her head against the shower wall, closing her eyes and taking deep breaths.
I do the same, playing with the ring on her finger and praying we’ve seen the worst of the night. I open the bathroom door and stretch my legs, figuring we’ll have plenty of stuff to clean in the morning so a little water won’t hurt anything. After a few minutes, she slides down the length of the wall, curling so that her body spoons the toilet, but her head rests in my lap.
“Owen?” Her voice is small and exhausted, but she does sound more like herself.
I think the shower might be helping. And, I’m not gonna lie, I feel a warm sense of satisfaction knowing I fought the elements—with no air conditioning, a bum arm, and food poisoning—to care for the woman I love.
“Yeah, Babe?” My fingers tangle in her mop of wet hair. She all but purrs, leaning into my touch. How often has this woman felt the addictive buzz of fingertips brushing throughherhair? Of being cared for in the simplest, but most profoundly satisfying of ways?
Every day, Brooke pampers and makes women feel beautiful with a simple haircut. I’ve seen how, in a single conversation, her clients walk away with renewed confidence, feeling seen or listened to, simply by sitting in her chair and placing their trust in her. It's the same way I feel when I look up into the stands at a game and see her there, hand on her belly, telling me she loves me without even knowing it.
Slipping the rubber band I find from around her wrist, I use what little energy I have left to gather her hair up in a loose, wet bun like I’ve seen her do so many times. Her eyes are closed, and I bet she’d fall asleep right here with the hot water pouring down on us both, if I let her.
With Brooke lying in my lap, fragile but finally and fully trusting me to take care of her, it’s easy to imagine what the rest of our life will look like. Easy getting lost in a fever dream of possibilities. Late nights and early mornings spent loving her well, in every way. Full days doing everything and nothing, at all, but together. I want to brush my fingers through her hair every night as she falls asleep, hoping and praying for another day with the privilege to do so. I see laughter and friendship and Brooke’s belly swollen over and over again with our babies. Traveling and exploring and growing. Taking care of one another when we’re sick and when life is hard. Celebrating when it’s good. So much of the life we’ve already lived together but with a permanence Brooke may not have known could exist but will never doubt again.
I see love. A lifetime of love.
“It’s Day Twenty-Five,” she whispers, unaware of the way my heart’s beating faster, fighting harder than ever not to spell every one of my thoughts out to her—that I’m in love with her andalways have been. When I don’t say anything, she turns so that her face is lifted to mine. “Ask me.”
I love you. I love you. I love you.
My heart’s bursting to tell her, but, instead, I ask her, “Will you be my wife today, Brooke?”
“Yes.” She takes my hand, still buried in her mop of hair, and brings it to her mouth, pressing the lightest kiss to my knuckles. “Please ask me again tomorrow.”
The production team was quick to not only bring Brooke and me supplies in the early hours of the morning, once we were strong enough to pull ourselves out of the shower, but they also sent in a cleaning crew to take care of the path of destruction. Brooke and I, out of necessity alone, all but carried each other, our provided fluids, and a couple clean blankets up the ladder to the roof of Tink and attempted to get some rest. Though rest at the moment looks like watching the sunrise with my wife wrapped in a blanket and curled against me.
“Did you ever imagine we’d be doing this?” she asks sleepily. I’m hoping after the cleaning crew leaves and we face our Day Twenty-Five offer, we’ll find ourselves in bed for the rest of the day.
“Did I imagine listening to you throw up all night while I puked into a flower pot? Yeah, I always dreamed of it, but—”
She lightly elbows my gut, which is far too sore to take such treatment. “Owen, I’m serious. It’s been over a month and…”
I tuck an errant hair behind her ear, and when she clasps my hand to her cheek, staring up at me, it takes everything in me not to close the distance and kiss her. I never thought I’d be thankful for what happened to us over the last eight hours or so, buteveryday I’m fighting harder than the last against my physical attraction to Brooke. I know if those boundaries fall completely, exactly where things will go, and as much as I want that with her, I can’t go there until I’m positive Brooke is on the same page with our relationship. That this marriage—we—are permanent.
“What I mean is…” Her thumb passes back and forth over my hand. Every nerve where she touches, suddenly alive. “Did you ever think you and I would… get to this place?”
She bites down on her lip, worried. It makes me want to laugh, and also, throw a party. Preferably for two. Soon. Because this isn’t a question of where we’ll go from here or if the idea ofusis even possible, but, instead, whether I knew without a doubt that this—she and I and forever—was always the conclusion to our story?
I reach down for her ring finger, twisting the band and running my finger over the familiar sapphire. “Do you know how long my Gramps and Gram were together?”
Brooke only shakes her head, obviously confused.
“They met when Gram was fifteen. Gramps was seventeen. They got engaged on her sixteenth birthday.”
“No way! Really? At sixteen they just… knew?” I watch as she catches up, that sixteen isn’t so young not to know who you want to spend your life with. When tears fill her eyes, I can see how we’ve been working our way to this conversation with every moment we’ve shared since that day in the cafeteria when we bonded over dinosaur T-shirts.
“Oh...” She swallows slowly, blinking against emotion.
I want to say“clever girl”for finally catching up to me, but, instead, I kiss her ring finger. “Gramps put this ring on my Gram’s finger all those years ago and promised her forever.”
“This ring?” She looks at the ring with new eyes. Her lip trembles, so I nod and let my fingers trail along her mouth and jaw, giving her the time she needs.
“Did I ever imagine we’d be here someday?” I sigh, feeling the warmth of the sun coming up around us and a serene sense of gratefulness for where we’ve ended up.
It’s been an endless night, but a beautiful new day has finally broken through the darkness. Birds chirp, Woodyrat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tatsjust beyond the treeline, and all I can think isthis is how it was always meant to be.Brooke was worth the wait.
