He pauses by the kitchen counter. "The event client was Ryan."
My hands still on the keyboard. "Ryan. My Ryan?"
"He's not your anything. But yes."
"Calder assigned you to---" A laugh escapes. Not bitter. Not anxious. The genuine, full-bodied laugh of a woman who has moved so far past her ex-boyfriend that his existence has become absurd. "Tucker. Was it weird?"
"He called you settling down."
"Of course he did."
"I told him you upgraded."
The laugh deepens. I close the laptop and cross the kitchen to wrap my arms around him. He smells like cologne and the coast, and his arms close around me with the reflexive certainty that still takes my breath away.
"You said that? To his face?"
"To his face."
"I love you."
"I know."
We cook together---or rather, Tucker cooks and I maintain quality control from my spot on the counter, stealing bites of roasted garlic and offering commentary on his technique. He makes his grandmother's pasta---the real stuff, flour and eggs and strong hands working the dough---and the kitchen fills with the smell of something ancient and good.
"Remember the inn?" he says, rolling the dough with military precision. "When we danced?"
"The jukebox. The vending machine picnic. The worst wine I've ever had in a water glass."
"Best assignment I ever had."
"Better than Kabul?"
"Kabul didn't have Scrabble."
The pasta goes into boiling water, and I pour wine---actual wine, not hurricane rations---and we eat at the table by the window while the harbor turns gold and then violet and then dark.
"Want to know a secret?" I ask, twirling pasta around my fork.
"Always."
"I rewrote that manuscript ending. The one you read at the inn."
"Yeah? How does it end?"
"The hero proposes."
The silence that follows has texture. Tucker sets down his fork. His hand moves to his pocket---then stops. His eyes find mine across the table, and the expression on his face is one I've never seen before. Not calm. Not controlled. Open. Vulnerable. The face of a man who has been carrying something heavy and is about to set it down.
"Funny," he says. His voice is rough at the edges. "I had the same idea."
He reaches into his pocket and produces a small velvet box.
My heart stops. Actually stops---a full cardiac pause that my brain registers with the clinical detachment of a woman who writes physical reactions for a living.Heart stopped. Breathing suspended. Time dilated.
He opens the box.
The ring is sapphire. Dark blue. The color of the ocean at dusk, the color of my book launch dress, the color of the Tidehaven sky on the night we first danced. It's perfect---not perfect in the generic, expected way but perfect in the specific, deliberate way that means he paid attention. He listened. He remembered.
