Page 115 of Plus One

“Okay…”

“I had this whole speech planned,” Maurice said, pulling the ring box from his pocket. “About how you taught me the difference between surviving and living. About how I want to keep choosing you every day for the rest of my life.”

Monique’s breath caught. Her camera fell to hang from its strap.

“But standing here, all that fancy stuff doesn’t matter.” He opened the box. “Monique Moore, will you marry me?”

She was crying. Laughing. Both. “You’re serious.”

“As a heart attack.”

“We’ve only known each other five months.”

“Six. And I’ve loved you for all of them.”

“I’m difficult.”

“I know.”

“I’ll probably get sick again.”

“I know that too.”

“I come with two meddling kids and a whole mess of people who have opinions about everything.”

“I’m counting on it.”

She looked at the ring—simple, rose gold, a small diamond that caught the light. “It’s perfect.”

“That a yes?”

“That’s a—” She kissed him hard, and the answer was yes in every language that mattered. When she pulled back, she was grinning. “The twins already know, don’t they?”

“Jasmine helped me pick the ring.”

“Of course, she did.” Monique laughed as he slid the ring on her finger. “We’re never gonna hear the end of this.”

“Probably not.”

She held up her hand, studying how the diamond caught the light.

“When?”

“Whenever you want. Tomorrow. Next year. I’m not going anywhere.”

“What about Deb and Don? They’ll want to plan something big.”

“They can plan whatever they want. Long as I get to marry you at the end of it.”

Monique raised her camera, pointed it at him, then turned it around to capture them both—her hand with its new ring in the foreground, their faces behind it, laughing. “For the record,” she said, “I would’ve said yes in January. In the hotel. If you’d asked.”

“I know. But we needed these months. To be sure. To build it right.”

“Are we sure now?”

He thought about the last four months. The fights over where to hang pictures and whose turn it was to take out the trash. The scans that came back clear and the ones that would come. The Sunday dinners and Wednesday meetings and Friday nights on the couch. The ordinary work of choosing each other every single day.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m sure.”