Page 109 of Plus One

Their food had arrived and sat outside their door while they were…

He struggled, even in his own mind, to articulate what just happened.

Monique came out of the bathroom, wearing her slip. Her short, salt-and-pepper afro was curlier than before and glistening. She looked content. She asked, “What are you smiling about?”

He sat up and watched her pull his shirt on and smell the collar. “You.”

The smile she answered with made his heart stutter.

“What’d you get?” she asked, rifling through the bag and pulling out a container of soup. “This mine?”

He nodded. “I got a little bit of everything. It’s all probably cold by now.”

Monique shrugged and glanced around the room. She found a microwave in the TV cabinet.

He really needed to get out more.

Thiswas normal. Just being. He’d never considered that it could be this simple.

Neither of them noted the time. The sun had already gone down, and the lamps cast the room in long, amber shadows. Monique was sitting at the desk chair, and he was on the bed. They ate and talked. About the future, and…

“Would you consider moving here?” Monique asked.

His eyes went wide.

“I’m serious. I don’t want to be alone anymore. Hell, I never wanted to be alone in the first place. But I’m tired of losing, of things being taken from me. I want you in my life, and I’m sorry that I wasn’t brave enough in Puerto Rico to reciprocate your feelings.” Monique poked at her food and then looked up at him, relaxed and happy. “You came all the way here to see about me, and that is everything, Maurice.Everything. My life is here, and I like my life.” She looked into her soup, being careful with her words. “I want to share my life… with you.”

Monique raised her eyes to meet his, and it took a moment for Maurice’s heart to beat again. He already knew about the Chicago program. Deb had told him at the airport. The fireworks outside had been the visual aid he’d needed, soldering the practical to the emotional. The shop, the partners, the mission. Monique. It was all there for him. He just had to say “yes.”

He hadn’t expected Monique to just straight up ask.

He stared at her for a long moment, processing. Then his face broke into a smile—not the polite one he gave strangers, but this new one that was easy to get used to. “Okay.”

Monique frowned and squinted. “Justokay? I practically propose to you after doing some of the freakiest shit I’ve ever done in my life, and all you have to say is ‘okay’? Wow, dude.” Her lips quirked into a smile.

He smiled too. But there was something he needed to know. He dipped his cold fries into a glob of ketchup, needing something to do with his hands.

“Monique. Your aunts never talked to you about business prospects here?”

Monique paused, considering what he was saying. “That’s what had me so mad, why I left the spa instead of cussing them out. It felt wrong, manipulative. Like they didn’t think I was capable of making my own decisions.”

He let her words settle between them, just breathing. She wasn’t wrong.

“Me too. I was hurt and, frankly, insulted. But I had a long talk with Deb.”

She was quiet for a moment. “Their scheme made me doubt what I was starting to feel for you. Like what was growing between us was just some kind of theatre they’d staged.”

“I never felt that way,” Maurice said, “but I was too afraid of my actual feelings to know what to do with them.”

“Not gonna lie—I’m working my way through it.” She picked at the hem of his shirt. “Deb would pop up, fill the fridge, send Avery to repair the washing machine. She talks to my kids all the time. But never did she just sit with me. She never said that she saw me—that she was scared too.” Her eyes glistened with tears that she visibly struggled to hold back. “All this care delivered sideways… I never knew how to receive it. I still don’t.”

He sat his plate down and was on her in three steps. He pulled Monique to her feet, wrapping his arms around her. “Those Aunties, though. Sneaky, but brilliant.”

“Don’t take up for them.”

“Why shouldn’t I? Because of them, I’m getting everything I ever wanted.” He squeezed her tight.

Monique’s cheeks pinked. “Really?”