Page 116 of Everything's Better With You
Joe stepped back and the crowd protested.
“No?” Joe asked, horrified. “You’re saying no?”
Leslie sloshed water out of the cage, he moved so fast to the front.
“I was going to propose! Tonight! I had it all planned, dammit! You beat me!”
Joe’s mouth fell open and he laughed as he approached the cage. “Well, yeah, that’s why you’re in the cage and I’m not. But Leslie! Will you freaking marry me?”
“Only if you’ll marryme!”
“Jesus, you two, get on with it!”
Leslie looked over to see Randy filming them. Agnes, Barry, Evelyn and Sandy stood next to him waiting anxiously.
“Yes on three?” Leslie said to Joe.
Joe rolled his eyes. “One…two…three—”
“Yes!”
“Yes!”
The crowd burst out in cheers and Leslie kissed Joe through thecage, being sure to splash him and soon the two of them were laughing hysterically, tears streaming down Joe’s cheeks.
“Does this mean we still have to do the stunt?” Terrell asked.
Joe spun around to see his cheerleaders there and he laughed. “You were in on his plan too?”
“I may not have convinced him to play for me, but he had my back when it counted,” Leslie said, nodding to Terrell.
“Well get out of there, already,” Joe said. “Hurry before I climb this damn cage.”
Leslie climbed back onto the platform and Sandy helped him out of the dunk tank. He ran for Joe and nearly tackled him with the force of his hug, neither caring that it was freezing and now they were both soaking wet.
“I love you, baby,” Joe said. “Put your ring on.”
“No fair, yours is—”
“I got it, I got it,” Sandy said, running over with the box.
Leslie opened it for Joe and Joe gasped at the gold band nestled in black velvet.
“I had matching ones made,” Joe said and Leslie laughed.
“I did too!”
They hugged and kissed and everyone cheered. The Greenvale community had brought them both to the school a year earlier to help bring the community together. The plan had been for them to initiate a revamp of the athletic programs with alumni who were experts in their fields and to give the school athletics worth rooting for. Then a tornado ripped through campus and nearly derailed their plans.
Joe and Leslie had nearly been derailed as well. Their fifteen-year courtship was put to the test numerous times before they finally were able to set some ground rules and common language. Their future, however, looked bright, as did the rest of the Jackets’ sports programs.
Joe’s proposal for the dance degree program was approved. The dance major was created, and Joe was able to hire an assistant, one Marti Simmons, and Joe was able to talk one of his mentors, Mayra Delgado, into leaving Broadway and returning to her Midwest roots to head up the department, which gave Greenvale the academic experience the board feltwas necessary. Joe did, indeed, receive a five-year contract, and he letDance Machineknow he would be available for the summer road show, but after his contract was up, he would no longer be available as a series regular, only a guest. As for Broadway, Joe opted not to audition forKinky Boots, but Guillermo Diaz wouldn’t take no for an answer to a future collaboration, so Joe got his dream of choreographing a major show, a revival ofHairthat would start casting the following year. Joe would headline the first week and then step down. Leslie had been ecstatic for him.
Leslie’s book did indeed sell at auction for well over six figures, and he donated all of his earnings to CTE research. Malcolm convinced him that they would write it together, that both of their names would receive equal billing, and Leslie was pleased to be so involved in the project that meant so much to his family.
“So how do you want to do it?” Joe asked him at the end of the night when they were tucked into bed together.
Leslie cupped Joe’s generous ass and sighed. “I was thinking you could turn around and lay with your head that way and we could—”
