*
five months later
Six months into my job at King Evans Creative and I've already been given a raise. I couldn't believe it when Aisha set up a meeting with me to discuss my first half a year in the company and told me that I was an invaluable asset, that my work warranted reward. Storie and I had already been planning a summer trip so that was just the boost I needed, solidifying my confidence in my job and myself, and I felt a little less guilty about splashing out on the full bedroom for our ride on the Sunset Limited.
We flew to New Orleans ten days ago and after a couple of days there, soaking in the culture and the spooky stories that weren't quite so spooky in the middle of a warm July day, we hopped on the train for the first leg of our trip. Fifteen hours across Louisiana and Texas, most of it in the daylight, until we got to San Antonio just after midnight and checked into a hotel for a couple days. From there we had a sixteen hour trip that ended up being eighteen hours, depositing us in Tucson, Arizona, where we spent a night and a day before catching the next train out of town, ten hours all the way to Los Angeles. The views were phenomenal, desert and mountain for days.
Now, after three days in Los Angeles, where we stayed in Santa Monica and spent most of our time on the beach when we weren't being tourists in Hollywood and Beverley Hills, we're back in Ohio. It's a bit of a downer to be back, to be honest. I wasn't sure Los Angeles was gonna be for me when we first arrived at Union Station in downtown LA, but I was sold when we went up to the Griffith Observatory and saw the city from above, when we cruised past the celebrity homes in the hills and dug our feet into the soft sand of Santa Monica, when I paid way too much for watermelon and chili from a woman trawling up and down the beach with a bucket full, and then bought more anyway 'cause it was so damn good. Sure, Hollywood is a pretty gross dive, but I could get used to the rest.
So, yeah. I'd rather not be back in Ohio right now. At least our vacation isn't totally over yet. We've still got a couple more days and instead of flying straight to Cleveland and going back to our apartment, we flew into Detroit instead and rented a car to drive round the western edge of Lake Erie to Five Oaks. It's about time we spent a day or two with Storie's family. We may see Kris quite a bit, seeing as he lives in Cleveland too and as much as he travels, we still grab a drink or a meal with him once every week or so, but Five Oaks is just far enough from the city that we don't make the effort as much.
As for my family, well, it's been a while. Work's been ramping up recently and with our trip already booked, there hasn't been much time to go to Cincinnati. Ninety minutes to Five Oaks is one thing; four hours to Cincy is quite another. We can go see Storie's parents in a day trip but it's pretty hard to wanna get back in the car the same day if I've already driven two hundred fifty miles. It's been a couple months since I last saw my parents, but at least this time it's for a positive reason: I've been busy doing a job I love, travelling with the woman I love. The last time I went so long without going home was because I was stuck in a deep depression and couldn't bear to face my family, couldn't bear to let them see how far I'd fallen. Now I'm flying high.
"Mom wants to know what time we'll be there," Storie says, one arm hanging out the window of the rental car. "We're not far, right?"
"About half an hour," I say. We haven't long crossed the Maumee River, a depressingly brown river that cuts Toledo in half and feeds into Lake Erie. "Who's there?"
"Mom, Tad and Jasper, and Nav and Gray," she says, pulling in her arm to put the window up when we pass by a truck leaving a trail of disgusting black exhaust. "I can't wait to see Gray. It feels like forever."
Although we were last in Five Oaks maybe five weeks ago, that was just to see Jen, Tad, and Jasper. It's been a couple months since we last saw Gray, and I still can't believe he's about to be a father. Navya's due date is less than a month away now, and I still see her husband as a gangly, overenthusiastic child. Obviously he's not, but twenty-three still seems so young.
After our month of travel, it's this final thirty minutes that seems to drag the most, time slowing from the rush of a river to the trickle of syrup as we get closer and closer to Five Oaks. Ninety minutes behind the wheel has wiped me out after ten days of train journeys and intense sightseeing, and it's a relief to pull up outside Tad and Jen's house with our tired bodies and ten days' worth of laundry. I can't wait to have a good shower and clean clothes.
Gray throws open the door the moment we step onto the porch like he's been watching out the window, waiting for us; he pulls Storie into a typically tight Gray hug, and then me. Our relationship has gone through several evolutions over the last few months and now he has pulled me into the fold like a brother. Like Storie, he is all or nothing, and once he decided to forgive me for good and embrace the fact that Storie and I are together, for real, he dropped all signs of his grudge. I guess he's got bigger things to worry about, after all.
"Oh my god, I want to hear everything," he says, pulling us into the house. It's cool inside to offset the blast of summer heat, although Ohio's July heatwave is nothing compared to the humidity we've survived in Louisiana and Texas. "The weary travellers have returned!" he calls, as though we've been away for months, rather than a week and a half. But he isn't wrong, we are weary. Hard to believe that this morning we woke up in a sea view hotel room in Santa Monica and now the beach is more than two thousand miles away.
"In a minute, Gray," Storie says, dumping her bag in the hallway. "I want a shower first."
"Me too. The woman in the row in front of us kept spraying perfume like she was trying to cover a bad smell and now I think it's taken up permanent residence in every pore." I wrinkle my nose and shed my shoes and bag next to Storie's stuff. "I think I need a nap, too."
"Pfft. Nope. You've had four hours on a plane to nap," Gray says. "I haven't seen you guys for a whole month. Napping can wait. I want to hear about your trip."
"And I want to hear about how your nerves are, considering your wife is two weeks from her due date," Storie says with a sweet smile, though I know her tactic: distraction. And it works. Gray's face changes instantly, terror taking over.
"I'm shitting myself." He laughs and runs a hand through his hair. "It still doesn't feel real but I'm literally gonna be a dad?" Another laugh, this one a bit shakier. "Doesn't that sound crazy?"
"Totally crazy," Storie agrees. "But, hey, you've got a couple weeks to learn how to cook." She squeezes his cheek and pats his shoulder. "I'm going to go and have a shower and get changed."
We leave Gray pondering the imminent change to his life and head upstairs, where Storie flops onto the bed in her childhood bedroom. It's more of a guestroom now. After four years in the tiny little box office that was converted into a nursery for Jasper, he's now taken over Gray's old room and Storie's room is available to guests on a first come first served basis. Gray and Nav aren't staying over so tonight it's all ours.
Half an hour later, feeling refreshed and a lot cleaner, we head back downstairs and find everyone out in the garden. Gray is shirtless, playing in a paddling pool with Jasper; Jen and Tad are in a couple of loungers with a pitcher of iced tea between them; Navya is lying under the shade of an umbrella, one hand on her bump and the other holding a book. She's already such a small person and that has stayed true throughout her pregnancy, her bump so tiny that it's hard to believe there's an almost fully grown baby chilling in there.
"There you are!" Jen cries out, jumping up to greet us. Her hug is a lot gentler than Gray's, her volume a lot easier on the ears. "Come on, pull up a seat and tell us about your trip. Your pictures have been so wonderful, I'm so envious!"
Nothing gets between Storie and her mom. Our whole trip, she's kept her updated in real time with photos of every landmark we visited, every cool view from the train, every grinning selfie we've taken in front of every funky wall. We've really perfected our selfie game now, slipping into the perfect position and expression with ease. Our heights are just close enough that I don't have to duck to get in the frame, Storie doesn't have to stretch up on her tiptoes.
We dig out a couple loungers from Tad's shed, which is mostly filled with Jasper's garden toys and his old pram, which Jen still hasn't got rid of even though she's fifty now and the chance of another surprise child is, like, less than zero.
"I'd get up but I'm finally comfortable," Navya says from her position under the umbrella, lying on her side with a pillow between her knees and another curved around her stomach.
"Don't you move a muscle," Storie says, dragging her lounger close to Nav, so the five of us make a slightly wonky circle. Gray jogs over to join us, sitting down on the warm grass, and Jasper giggles that cheeky kiddy giggle when he runs from the paddling pool onto his dad's lap, instantly soaking Tad. Tad just laughs and wraps his son in a towel, swaddling him so tight he can't wriggle away.
With seven of us here, we can almost match the chaos of my family, only with fewer squealy girls and fewer judgmental brothers. There's no Daria here to deafen us, no George here to scoff and question how my girlfriend tolerates me. There's just Storie's gentle family, who have pulled me back into the fold with open arms. I think I've proved myself to them: I am here for the long haul. I'm not going to fuck this up a second time. I couldn't live with myself if I ever hurt Storie again. There are no third chances.
"We're going to have to start planning our next trip because I already miss it," Storie says. She pours a couple of iced teas and hands one to me.
"Quick, what was the best part?" Gray asks.
Storie pauses to think but I predicted a barrage of questions from Gray and I've prepared my answer. "Louisiana swamp tour," I say. "So many alligators and wild hogs. That was pretty freaking cool."
"Worst moment?" Gray opens his arms when Jasper decides to ditch his dad for his brother. I don't know why Gray's so worried when he's had four years of practice with Jasper. He's already proved himself competent and capable.
"When two guys got in a fistfight between Deming and Lordsburg," Storie says. That, to be fair, was the only lowlight of our entire trip. One minute we were watching the desert go by from the observation car and then all of a sudden, these two guys started throwing punches. A couple other guys jumped in to try to break it up and one got a bloody nose. Luckily we weren't far from the Lordsburg station at that point, so we got waylaid there for a bit longer than expected while the police were involved. Both guys got dragged off the train, and Storie and I figured that was as good a time as any to head back to our room and watch the scenery from there.
"Best food?" Tad asks.
"New Orleans, for sure," Storie says. "We had the best catfish, and oh my goodness, the crawfish etouffee, that was to die for."
"Remember that gumbo from the second night?" I salivate at the thought of it. "And the beignets that we waited way too long for."
"Oh, god, yeah." She rolls her eyes at the thought, her smile growing. "You guys have got to go to New Orleans," she says to her parents. "We'll take Jasper for a few days, you two should definitely go. You'd love it, even if only for the food."
"And the architecture," I say. Tad nods sagely. He appreciates old buildings and those with a rich history, and New Orleans is in no short supply of buildings with a story. That was another highlight, the walking tour of the city that delved into the dark history of the place. Hearing about Madame Lalaurie chilled me to the bone. I'd come across the story before, but never the true extent of the torture she carried out.
"New Orleans definitely had the strongest sense of culture. Like, I really enjoyed LA, but it doesn't feel like it has its own identifiable culture. Unless skinny blonde women in workout gear and overpriced vegan food is culture," Storie says.
Her mom laughs and flexes her arms. "I think I'd fit right in."
"Not quite. You need a bit more plastic surgery first," Storie jokes, pressing her hands to her cheeks to pull them taut.
We easily spend two whole hours talking about every city we've visited, all the food we've eaten and the trains we've taken and the people we've met. We polish off the pitcher of iced tea and Jen makes another – she's really perfect southern sweet tea, as good as my mom's – and when the sun moves, so do we. Storie smothers us both in sunscreen, and I get the nap I wanted when I fall asleep on a towel on the grass while she's rubbing sunscreen into my back.
When I wake up, all the girls have gone. The sun's still high and warm in the late afternoon but the blanket under the umbrella is empty and two of the sun loungers have gone back into the shed. Tad's still out here, sunglasses on as he reads a book, and I can hear Gray's and Jasper's distinctive voices in the kitchen.
"Where'd everybody go?"
Tad jumps. I must've been asleep for a while. He puts his book down, folding the page and dropping it on the grass. "Jen took Storie and Nav to the café. They wanted a girls' trip," he says. I sit up as Gray and Jasper come out with ice creams and a coffee for Tad. "Just the boys for now."
"That's ... perfect, actually," I say.
"Oh?" Tad tilts his head at me. "Need advice, do you?"
"What's this?" Gray drops down on the blanket and bites into an ice cream. "You need advice?" His eyes darken. "What've you done?"
"Nothing!" I cry out. "No, no, I don't need advice," I say. "I need ... your blessing?"
Gray furrows his brow, and then his face clears, going through a hundred expressions before he looks up at his dad and then back at me. "Oh my god."
I rub the back of my neck as I try to find the right words. "I know this is a bit old fashioned but Storie loves you guys so much, she's such a family girl, and I need your acceptance and support."
Tad looks at me. "Are you asking what I think you're asking?"
"I want your blessing to ask her to marry me," I say. I know I don't need her brother and her stepdad's permission, but I want it. After everything that's happened, I want to know that I've got their support when I ask Storie to be my wife. They may have only been in her life for a little longer than I have, only five of her twenty-four years, but they are everything to her.
"Hmm." Gray taps his chin. "I'll have to think about it."
Tad glances at him, holding back a smile. "Graham," he says, teasingly admonishing. "Don't be too hard on the guy." He looks back at me and says, "I don't know about Gray here, but of course you have my blessing, Liam. I know how happy Storie is with you. I'd be delighted to see the two of you married, as long as it's what Storie wants."
It's one of those things that keeps coming up in conversation, part of our banter repertoire, and it comforts me to some degree, because it lets me know that yes, it's something she thinks about too; yes, she'll probably say yes when I ask. Oh, god, I hope she says yes.
"Thanks, Tad. That means a lot."
Gray's still watching me through narrowed eyes. "You want to marry my sister?"
"I do."
"You want to be my brother-in-law?"
"Well, I did, but you're kind of putting me off now," I say. That makes him grin.
"Good. I wanna intimidate you."
Tad rolls his eyes but says nothing.
"I can't picture my life without Storie," I say. Even in the four years we were apart, she lingered in my mind; I have never been without her since knowing her. "She's the only person I've ever loved, and I know we've only been back together for eight months but I'm not going anywhere, and if she'll have me, I would love to be her husband. She's my everything."
Gray presses his lips together and nods once. "I like this," he says. "I like when you plead your case to me. I feel so powerful."
"Gray." Tad tuts and shakes his head.
"Can I officiate the wedding?"
I laugh at that. "Um, I think that's up to Storie?"
"Oh man, I'd be an awesome officiant."
"I take it that means you're okay with me proposing to Storie? I mean, if you're inserting yourself into our wedding then you must be happy for me to ask her?" I raise my eyebrows at him and he cracks.
"Yeah, you're all right, Liam." He shrugs. "Storie kinda likes you. That's what matters."
"I like to think so."
"In which case, I gift you my blessing. As long as you promise not to secretly elope."
"I think I can promise that," I say. Storie may have no interest in a big wedding, but she'd want her family there. "Thanks, Gray. Thanks for being cool about this. About me, I guess."
"Storie loves you and I love Storie," he says, "and it sounds like you've made amends. Plus, she told me like a month ago that she wants to marry you and she warned me to not be a dick. I would never be a dick. You know I'm only messing with you. I like you, Liam, and I like how happy you make Storie, and if you guys get married then I know family dinners will always be fun." Leaning close to stage whisper, even though Storie's miles away, he says, "I was never that sure about Marcus, to be honest."
While I haven't dug too deep into Storie's dating history in the years we were apart, I know that Marcus is the guy she nearly got engaged to. They were together for a year and a half, so if he didn't win Gray over in that time, there must've been something wrong with him. But still, eighteen months is a long time. Way longer than we've been together, even if you add up both times we've been a couple. It does plant a seed of doubt in my mind, that if she rejected his proposal after so long, why would she accept mine after seven months, after the hell I put her through all those years ago?
Nothing good comes from this line of thought. I shake it off and say, "Are you sure about me?"
"Yup." He says it with such confidence. It makes me feel a bit better. "With Marcus, I kind of got the vibe she was ... settling. And don't get me wrong, he was a nice guy, and he was hot. Like, capital H Hot. But he didn't make her shine."
I feel slightly challenged by Gray's emphasis on Marcus's hotness, but I tamp that down and bask in the glow that comes with his insinuation: Marcus didn't make Storie shine, but maybe I do. Not that she needs me to shine when she is radiant all on her own.
*
The tree Storie planted for her dad has grown pretty tall. It must be at least eight feet by now, though that's nothing compared to what it will be when it's fully grown, easily seventy-five feet or more. The trunk is still narrow but it's sturdier than it looks, strong enough for Storie to use it as a backrest as she and I enjoy the late evening sun. Gray and Navya have gone home, Jen is putting Jasper to bed, and Tad's cooking dinner, so it's just Storie and me out here. It's so quiet, so wonderfully peaceful, like we're the only ones for miles around. I could stay out here all night. It probably wouldn't get too cold, and I'd love to sleep under the stars someday.
"Here's to cross-country train travel," I say, taking a sip of beer straight from the bottle, the neck still cold and wet with condensation from the ice bucket Tad was keeping the drinks in earlier.
"Here, here," Storie says, tapping the neck of her bottle against mine.
I'm nervous. I shouldn't be, not when I'm sure this is the right question, the right time, the right place, but I am. I can't afford for this to go wrong.
"I wish we could stay here longer," Storie says with a sigh. She rests her head against the tree trunk and looks up through the leaves that provide a smattering of shade. "I love our apartment but I would really love to have a garden."
"With a pond?"
"Ooh, yes. And oak trees." She smiles wistfully. "I'd love to be surrounded by oak trees."
"I think somewhere like that might be a bit out of our budget."
"For now," she says. "Maybe one day."
Maybe one day, we'll have our own house with a garden full of trees, somewhere with plenty of space for us to grow our own family – somewhere like this, with space and peace.
I take a deep breath and hope she didn't hear. It's now or never. "Hey, what's that?" I nod at the branches of her father's oak.
"What?"
"There's something tied there," I say, hoping she stands to investigate because my whole plan kind of hinges on it. She cranes her neck and squints her eyes and when she can't see it, she stands at last and reaches for the slip of paper that I carefully tied around one of the branches earlier. While her back is turned, I get into position. Down on one knee, heart hammering so hard I think I might pass out.
"It says turn around," she says, and then she does. She turns around, and I'm waiting, and her hand flies to her mouth when she realises what this moment is. "Oh my god, Liam."
I'm grinning so hard my cheeks ache, and I swallow hard to dislodge the lump that's trying to make me cry. "I love you, Storie Sovany, more than I can put into words, but I will spend the rest of my life trying." I look past her to the tree that has come so far in five years, the tree that has grown from her father's ashes. "I know I can't ask your dad for his blessing, but I could at least involve him in the moment."
She's crying already. Her hand is still clamped over her mouth and her eyes are wet and she has to lean against the tree to steady herself.
"Will you marry me, Storie?"
I don't have a diamond ring. She doesn't like jewellery. But I have a ring box in my pocket that I hold out to her, and a laugh bursts out of her when I open the box to reveal a strawberry-flavoured ring pop.
"Of course I will," she says, laughing as I pull the ring pop out of the box with shaking hands and push it onto her finger, the candy diamond so garishly huge and pink.
"It fits," I joke. She pulls me to my feet and buries her face in my chest, her arms wrapped around me like a vice. I hold her even tighter, my face buried in her hair. I don't know how long the embrace lasts but I don't want it to end. But like all good things, it does. There's a clink behind us and we let go of each other to turn towards the house to see Tad holding a bottle of champagne in one hand and a couple of glasses in the other.
"Celebrations or commiserations?" he asks. Jen's behind him and even from this distance I can see that she's crying too. Her little girl just got engaged. It makes me realise I'm gonna have to tell my family at some point. Mom's gonna sob and Daria's going to scream and it'll be a whole big thing, telling them that I'm getting married.
Storie laughs and beams at Tad. "You knew?" She turns to me. "Did you tell him?"
"I couldn't get your dad's blessing, but I could get your Tad's," I say. That sets her off again, her eyes filling up and spilling over, and I pull her in close again and whisper in her ear, "I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with you."
*
you knew this was coming and i hope you liked it!