Page 24 of Chosen By the BRATVA Grump

“He asked me to marry him,” I announce, at a volume that Marianne’s stoneware would not have survived.

Delilah drops a portafilter. Sammie gets to me first, both arms around my shoulders, and Delilah comes around the end of the counter so fast that Rhodes has to relocate.

“Show me,” Delilah demands, grabbing my left hand.

“It’s on the wall.” I laugh when her face twists with confusion.

“Who puts a ring on the wall?” she turns the full force of her face on Natan.

“I’ll get her a ring, but I couldn’t wait any longer to ask,” he says.

Delilah holds up her own hand and points her ring at me like she’s checking a fake bill. “Two of us inside a month. These Federov men are dropping like flies.”

“Congratulations,” Daisy calls from the corner, already reaching for her camera bag. “Do you want that in the paper?”

“Page five,” I say. “And only if you use one where my mouth is shut.”

Sammie is looking up at Natan with her hand still on my arm. “Eduard told me at lunch and I didn’t believe a word of it.”

I turn around. He’s standing in the middle of a cat café with his hands at his sides, taking it on the chin.

“I told him this morning before I told you,” he says to me by way of explanation. “That won’t happen again.”

Delilah puts a slice of cake in front of me that I have not asked for and will absolutely eat. Bill wants to know whether the green out there counts as the something blue. Lilah bangs her banana on the tray. I answer four questions at once and lose track of every one of them, and Natan stands through all of it with one hand flat on my back.

We come out at half past five into a street going orange at the edges.

A car turns into the lot at the end and Mechislav gets out of it. He sees us, takes about a second to work out what he’s looking at, and gives Natan a nod. Natan nods back. Then Mechislav lifts two fingers at me, which is the most affectionate thing he has ever done in my presence, and goes into the café.

“He’s never been on this street twice in one week before” I say.

“No,” Natan agrees, “I don’t think he has.”

I hook my arm through Natan’s and we cross toward my ridiculous green door, and I look at the painting hanging on its own in all that white.

Epilogue

Kimmie

Four months later

The box says three minutes. I’ve used up about forty seconds of that standing at the bathroom sink in my robe with the test balanced on the edge of the basin. I have no plan at all for the rest of them and I’m already losing my mind.

My dress is hanging on the back of the door in a color Delilah calls oxblood red. My hair was curled at eight this morning in Sammie’s kitchen, with Lilah handing her the clips one at a time and getting hairspray in her eye for her trouble. I have been instructed not to touch it for any reason. Downstairs Natan is getting ready with Eduard and Jasper.

The whole street is due at the church on the hill at eleven, and I need to swing by the gallery before that to unlock it. I’m still surprised Delilah wanted her reception there, but she said, besides the cafe, it’s the place she most feels happy. I think it’s because Bea’s painting is still on the wall.

I bought the test yesterday at a drugstore in the city, four streets from the apartment Natan doesn’t live in anymore. Not since he moved in with me. If I had bought it on this side of the bridge, someone would have had the information before the bag was closed and there would be a stroller in my hallway by Thursday.

It’s only been two days. But I’m never late, and I’m the sort of regular you could hang a calendar off, the sort who knows in February which weekend in July is going to be inconvenient.

I check my phone. One minutes and six seconds left, and the little window has already gone ahead and answered.

Two lines. The second one is not faint. The second one is sitting there as blue and certain as the first, and my knees do something unhelpful, so I sit down on the closed lid of the toilet with the stick held in both hands.

I say his name once, at a volume that would embarrass me if I had any attention left over for that.

He’s on the stairs before I’ve finished saying it, and then he’s in the doorway with his shirt open at the collar and one cuff still undone, filling the frame the way he fills every frame he has ever stood in, reading my face for damage.