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“Where was this when I was talking about relativity?” he says, pretending to my bite my shoulder while I try not to laugh.
When my mom gets home, I’m ready with my phone camera for a video that will disappear by tomorrow but I know she’ll want to replay at least twenty times tonight.
“Hello?” she calls, and my heart starts speeding up. “Joss?” Then her eyes land on the scene in the living room, and she freezes in place, her purse hitting the floor with a muted thump. “Oh—oh my god.”
Jocelyn appears from the kitchen, looking radiant in a shimmery gold jumpsuit. “Mollie.” Her voice shakes in this way I’ve never heard before, and it makes my own knees go weak.
Miles’s arm fits around my waist, anchoring me to the earth like he’s been doing it for much longer than a day. And maybe he has.
My mom’s hand flies to her throat, as though she knows what’s about to happen but doesn’t quite believe what she’s seeing. “Oh,” she says again, soft and full of awe.
“These past two years have been unreal,” Jocelyn says. “As you can see, I tried to capture some of the highlights. Although I couldn’t figure out a way to re-create that time you accidentally summoned a flock of New York City pigeons because you fed one of them a pizza crust.”
“You have to admit, some of them were cute. The ones that didn’t look demonic.”
Jocelyn laughs. “But being with you isn’t just about trips we’ve taken, or wild stories we tell our friends. Sometimes my favorite thing to do is just sit on the couch watching a movie, or cook breakfast together. Because when we’re together, every day feels like we’re on an adventure.”
“I feel the same.” My mom’s voice a notch above a whisper.
Miles clutches me tighter, and I drop my cheek to his shoulder. This is it. The moment I thought the universe had stolen.
Jocelyn drops to a knee, removing a small velvet box from her jumpsuit pocket.
And my mom lets out an audible gasp before getting down on her knees too. “Yes,” she says emphatically, which makes Jocelyn’s eyes go wide.
“I haven’t even asked yet!” she says. “You totally just stole my thunder.”
My mom attempts to compose herself. “Sorry. Sorry. What was that? I’ll make a big show of considering my answer.”
“Mollie Rose Bloom. Will you marry me?”
I didn’t know those words would make me feel like crying, but now that she’s said them, of course my eyes are about to spill over. Miles’s hand is warm on my shoulder, and everything about this is too good. I couldn’t have missed it—I know that now.
Suddenly it feels like a great kindness from the universe, the fact that I’m able to experience this today. I can’t picture it happening on September twenty-second. I can’t picture anything but this, my mom and her fiancée embracing in our living room as a dozen greeting-card monuments collapse around them.
And then I can’t stay hidden anymore.
“Barrett!” My mom gets to her feet, pulling me in for a hug. The ring glitters on her hand. “You were here this whole time?”
“I had some help,” Jocelyn says. “They were amazing.”
My mom nods toward Miles. “And we have a special guest, too?”
“Miles,” he says, extending a hand in this formal, very Miles way. “I’m Barrett’s…”
But when his voice trails off, it isn’t awkward. I’m Barrett’s ellipsis—somehow, it fits.
As they shake hands, my mom lifts her eyebrows at me. I just shrug, but I can’t contain my smile. I have a feeling I won’t be able to for the rest of the night.
Jocelyn suggests going out, but I don’t want to share these people with anyone. Not today. Everyone I need is here in this room. So we order way too much takeout and argue over board games and then my mom and Miles bond over movies. There’s something so domestically normal about it, the two of them discussing late-nineties cinema, of all things. Eventually we’re full and happy and draped across the couches in the living room, and it all feels so right that I can’t bear to leave it in the past.
When Jocelyn nods off around midnight, my mom taps my arm and beckons me into the kitchen.
“That was really something,” she says, dropping a few plates into the sink. “I think I’m speechless.”
I wrap my arms around her from behind, resting my chin on her shoulder and inhaling her comforting floral scent. “You’re the best. I love this for you, and I love Jocelyn,” I say. “But if you don’t let me pick my own maid-of-honor dress, I’ll make a slideshow of that summer you thought you could pull off pigtail buns and play it during my toast.”
“Oh, you’re that confident you’ll be my maid of honor?” she quips before turning around, and I try not to think about when—or if—that wedding will happen. Slowly, she raises one eyebrow. “I didn’t know what to think when Miles appeared. But the way you two keep looking at each other…”
