“What the fuck are you doing here? I thought you were out. Were you sucking face in the reading room again? Because I told you before, that’s gross.”
Zainab stepped forward, and with a roll of her eyes, pulled me by the hand.
She was wearing a mermaid green sequin dress that looked almost black in the shadows with a matching sequined hijab. They both made such a beautiful couple. That didn’t explain why they weren’t somewhere making out or ringing in the new year.
“You need to come,” Zainab said. “I think there’s a cat stuck on the roof.”
“What? The roof?” I tensed. “Which one? How did they get there?”
“I don’t know but you need to hurry. We don’t know what to do,” Alina said, dragging me by my other hand, and we rushed up the two flights of stairs. As I crossed through my apartment to get to the small staircase that led to the roof terrace, I realized the girls weren’t behind me anymore.
“What the—” I started, but then I stepped out onto the small roof terrace, and my breath caught in my throat.
White fairy lights were wrapped around the railings as well as large lanterns lit with candles scattered on the floor. In the middle was a small table with a red tablecloth, a tabletop heater in the middle, and two champagne glasses with a bottle of fizzy apple juice in an ice bucket. But most importantly, Cole was standing there, dressed to the nines in black suit with a white shirt and a red tie holding a red rose. He looked breathtaking against the clear starlit sky; more breathtaking than he’d ever looked, and he always looked amazing.
“Am… am I on The Bachelor?”
Cole laughed and took the three steps necessary to get to me.
“Hey,” he said.
His eyes glittered, reflecting the lights that surrounded us, and I looked into them and got lost in them as my body, mind, and soul relaxed.
“I thought you ran again,” I said.
He shook his head.
“Never.”
I gave him a playful shove, and he laughed.
“Ididneed to put up a ruse while the girls helped me finish up out here.”
I looked around long enough to take it all in, then stared back at him and his wonderful face.
“What is all this?”
Cole shrugged and offered me half a smile.
“I wanted to apologize. For the way I treated you back in Boston?—”
“I thought we’d already talked about that.”
He put his fingers to my lips and nodded.
“But I wanted you to see how much I mean it. How much you mean to me.”
I took a deep breath and took his hand.
“You mean so much to me too.”
“Yeah?” he whispered, and I nodded.
He stepped back and showed me to the first chair and asked me to take a seat, and he sat opposite me.
“H-how did you come up with all of this?” I asked, looking beyond my little romantic rooftop to all the other houses that made up the skyline of this island. Then to the lights around town and the people in all the alleys walking toward town square.
“I had help,” he mumbled.
