“You came,” I say.
“Someone texted me.” She tilts her head, and I make a mental note to find out who and thank them without sarcasm, which is its own kind of progress.
From the other side of the curtain, Shep’s voice drops to a tone almost gentle. “The emotion is happy.”
Gisele looks at me.
I look at her.
The countdown starts. Ten. Nine. Eight. I don’t have to find the feeling or name it or pick it off a wall or locate it in the right section of a color-coded board. It is simply there, the way things are when they’ve always been true and you’ve finally stopped arguing with them.
I lean in and kiss her.
The flash goes off four times.
When the strip slides out the side of the booth, Shep takes it and looks at it for a long moment without saying a word. Then he holds it up for the room to see.
Forty people go quiet.
Every photo is the same. Me, looking at her. Her, looking at me. Our lips about to meet. Both of us wearing an expressionthat does not need a caption, a bingo card, a Post-it note, or any of the forty-seven tools Gisele built to get me to this moment.
Just the thing itself. Plain and obvious and real.
“There it is,” Shep says softly.
And for once in his life, he leaves it at that.
Her Favorite Everything
Gisele
There’s a difference between being wanted for a moment and being chosen for everything that comes after it—the mornings, the quiet routines, the space someone makes for you before you even ask. You can see it in the small things if you’re paying attention. A shelf cleared. A place set. A life adjusted without negotiationbecause the decision was already made somewhere deeper than words. And once that kind of choice is made—once someone looks at you like you belong there—it stops being a question of if. It becomes a question of whether you’re brave enough to stay.
Playlist: “From the Jump” by Kelsea Ballerini
He tells me to come over at six-thirty and to dress for outside.
That’s the entire instruction. Dress for outside. From a man who plans everything down to the minute, who times his coffee steep and structures his mornings with military precision, this is either a breakthrough or a trap, and I genuinely cannot tell which.
I pull into his driveway at six-thirty exactly and sit in my car for a moment because what I’m looking at doesn’t compute immediately.
The fire pit is already going—real wood, burning steady and slow, no amateur hour newspaper-and-lighter-fluid situation. String lights run along the back fence line, warm white against the darkening sky. The patio table has been set up with more food than two people strictly need: hot dogs from an actual butcher, corn on the cob, bread and cheese, and a s’mores setup that takes up half the surface. Graham crackers. Long skewers. Marshmallows.
And my chocolate. The dark chocolate I buy when I think no one’s watching, from the specialty aisle at the grocery store, the brand I’ve never mentioned to anyone because it feels likea slightly embarrassing level of specificity about a personal preference.
It’s sitting in the center of the s’mores setup.
I go still.
Not because I’m surprised, exactly. Because I’m absorbing it. Taking inventory of what I’m seeing and what it means that he knew to get it.
Bennett appears in the back doorway, leaning against the frame with the ease of a man in his own space, watching me process.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.” I get out of the car. Cross the yard. Stop in front of him and put both hands on his chest because I need something to hold onto while I figure out what to do with this feeling. “You did all this.”
“It’s just a fire.”
