Page 99 of The Husband I Left

So I pick one up. It’s still warm. Powdered sugar drifts down onto the counter and onto my work slacks, and I do not care even slightly. I bite into it, and the dough is impossibly light, and the filling floods out rich and tart and sweet all at once, strawberry I believe, and I make a sound that is frankly indecent.

“Oh my God,” I say, or try to say, around the mouthful. “Oliver. Oh my God.”

He leans across the counter and drops a kiss on my nose and when he pulls back, his eyes are shining.

“They’re paczki,” he says. “Polish donuts. Joe’s grandmother’s recipe. He used to make them for Janice.” He pauses a moment. “Joe told me months ago that I hadn’t earned the right to make them for you yet. Last week he told me I had.”

That’s what the secret evenings were. He’s been learning to make these. For me. I shove a large bite of donut in my mouth to give myself time to come up with a suitable response.

Oliver watches me with a smile on his face. “Genny,” he says. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” I say. Except that’s not what comes out, because I have just crammed the rest of the paczeki into my mouth like a woman raised by wolves, so what actually comes out is something like “I luff oo hoo,” accompanied by a small puff of powdered sugar.

And that is the moment Oliver chooses to come around the counter and drop down onto one knee.

I freeze. My cheeks are full. My fingers are sticky with strawberry jam, and one of them is in my mouth, because I was licking it, because I am a delight. And Oliver is down on one knee in front of me in the middle of his kitchen, still wearing that ridiculous rooster apron.

I try to make a sound. It comes out as “Mmnhg?”

“The first time I asked you to marry me,” he says, “I did it for all the wrong reasons. Every single one of them. I asked you to be my wife, and I didn’t deserve to be in the same room as you.” His voice is steady, but his hands aren’t quite. “This time I’m asking for one reason. Because I love you. Because you are the best and truest and funniest thing that has ever happened to me.” He swallows. “Last time I asked you to marry me, I promised to give you the world. This time I’m not promising that. This time I’m asking for the privilege of spending every single ordinary day of the rest of my life with you.”

He reaches into the apron pocket, of all places, and pulls out a small box, and opens it.

The ring inside is nothing like the first one. The first one was a diamond the size of a small boulder. A ring designed to show off the wealth of the man who purchased it, a ring that caught on everything and belonged to a woman I never quite managed to become. This one is a ruby, deep and warm, set in gold with two small diamonds flanking it, and it is beautiful and so completely me that my eyes flood instantly.

I need to say yes. I need to say yes right now, and my mouth is still full of donut, so I try to swallow the whole mouthful at once.

This is a mistake.

The paczeki lodges somewhere it should not lodge, and I make a sound like a startled goose, and my eyes go wide, and I catch a glimpse of Oliver’s face, his expression now alarmed, before he’s on his feet thumping me between the shoulder blades with the flat of his hand while I cough and wheeze and cling to the counter, and somewhere in the middle of it I start laughing, which does not help, and he’s saying “Genny — Genny, breathe — ” and I’m laughing and choking and crying all at the same time, and there is powdered sugar absolutely everywhere.

Finally, the donut goes down. I gasp in a full breath, wipe my streaming eyes with the back of my sticky hand, and look at my ridiculous, wonderful man who is currently hovering over me with the ring box still clutched in one fist an expression that’s somewhere between worried and hopeful.

“Yes, you idiot,” I manage, still half laughing, half wheezing. “Yes, I’ll marry you. If you don’t kill me first.”

A smile breaks out across his face and he takes my hand, sticky with jam and all, and slides the ring onto my finger and it sits there glowing like it’s always been mine.

“I notice it’s not a sapphire,” I tell him with a little smirk as I examine my ring.

“Not a sapphire,” he confirms, shuddering a little at the memory.

His phone buzzes on the counter. Then buzzes again. Then a third time, insistent.

He glances at the screen and huffs a laugh. “Leo,” he says. “And Evan. They want to know if you said yes.” He tilts the phone toward me: a string of messages, all capital letters, at least nine question marks, and what appears to be a GIF of a screaming goat.

“They knew?”

Everybody knew. Joe’s been sitting on it for a week. Your mother cried when I asked for her and your fathers blessing and your father threatened to take me back out on the fishing boat again if he didn’t get to walk his little girl down the aisle this time.”

I laugh at that. “Are you going to answer them?” I ask, nodding towards his still buzzing phone.

Oliver looks at the phone. Then he sets it face down on the counter, and he pulls me up off the chair and into his arms and smiles down at me.

“They can wait a little longer,” he says.

And then he takes my mouth with his own.