Page 81 of Even If the Sky is Falling
The heels in combination with a stranger’s University of Kentucky sweatshirt and Hale’s boxers was a look, but I wasn’t about to walk through a public bathroom with bare feet, even at end of days.He asked me to marry him.“Some kind of psychosis must be settling in.” My side comment to no one ricocheted off the walls as I washed my hands and studied myself in the mirror. The bananas thing was, I’d wanted to say yes because the thing I hadn’t said, the thing I should have said, was that competing against him had cemented for me that I belonged at the school, which was what gave me the courage to leave the premed track. Over the four years, I’d gotten the sense Hale had pressure on him to succeed, too. Only everyone in his life assumed he would do it, while I always felt like I was having to defy society’s expectations of me. But he never treated me like that. He always treated me like a worthy adversary and I was. I took that for granted back then—I took the confidence, but I didn’t let myself see how much Hale had to do with my newfound self-awareness. I sighed, nearing the door, our little love nest until a meteoroid shower plummeted the world into chaos and destruction. It was a silly idea.Marry him.He’d said he was in love with me back then and my ridiculous heart, the soft part in the back I hid from everyone, hoped he still was.
There was a yellow Post-it on the door when I got there. Brenda’s butt note was crossed out and in its place, in Hale’s tiny, serial killer handwriting, wasMeet me in the bio classroom —H.
I hustled down the hall. Maybe he heard something or maybe he just wanted to do the 2:00 a.m. thing back on the stage, but either way, I didn’t want to lose any time. Only, when I got close, a familiar song started playing through the speakers and Hale was standing at the front of the room as the beginning of “Yeah!” filled the room.
“What is going on?” I had to yell over the opening beats as I hurried to the front of the room. “What is this?”
“Don’t marry me,” he said, holding out his hand and tugging me close.
“Yes, we already agreed on that.” I let him pull me in and he was swaying to the music. “What are you doing?”
“I missed the chance to dance with you all those years ago. If you won’t marry me, will you dance with me?”
“You’re losing it,” I said, dancing with him in a beatless shuffle. “You’re genuinely losing it.”
“I know.” Hale started singing along near my ear. “Go with it.”
“Will you show me the dance you learned?”
He grinned and sang along, looking like nothing was wrong in the world. For the second time that morning, I wondered if he’d had Scotch for breakfast. “Will you agree to marry me if I do?”
“No.”
“Date me?”
“Date you?”
“Date me.”
“Yeah, okay. Show me the dance and I’ll date you for as long as we have left.” I stepped back and watched him twist his body in the throwback of the early part of the century. He was good—really good—and I clapped and hooted, enjoying it most when he’d start laughing and messing up the steps.
“Okay,” I said, standing from the desk. “Okay. I relent.”
He did an impressive rockaway and I pulled his face down to mine. “You’re still a nerd.”
Hale’s arms wrapped around my waist. “Joke’s on you, forty-one. You’re dating me, now.”
“That my new nickname?”
“It will remind me you’re smarter,” he said, brushing his lips over mine. I sank into the kiss and his hands moved under the sweatshirt to rest against my bare back. The song had ended, throwing the room into a startling silence.
“For what it’s worth, you’re pretty smart, too.” I cupped his cheek. “I wish we had more time.”
“The 2:00 a.m. thing is going to take at least thirty minutes if done right.” He leaned against my touch. “If we survive this, I’m going to ask you to marry me again eventually.”
I opened my mouth to tell him how ridiculous it was to keep bringing it up. I’d braced both hands on his biceps and looked him straight in the eye when a deafening alert sounded, once, twice and then a third time. Our expressions matched because if we survived this, I might be tempted to say yes. “That was three alerts. That’s the all-clear sign, right?”
His phone buzzed on the stage where he had it hooked to the speakers and we ran to it together and he grabbed for it. His eyes widened and he read it out loud, “‘This is an official announcement. Your area is now confirmed “ALL-CLEAR” from aerial debris. Please exit your shelter safely.’”
“We’re safe!” I yelled. At some point I started crying and then we were in each other’s arms again.
“We’re safe,” he repeated, kissing me hard, but when he pulled away, he looked stricken.
“What’s wrong?”
“I vandalized a vending machine. Like, I really destroyed it.” He ran a hand through his hair. “And we had sex on a stranger’s desk. A presumably underpaid and overworked stranger.”
“A few times,” I added. “They’re definitely going to take away our alumni awards for that.”
He grinned and twirled me around, dropping a soft kiss on my lips. “That’s okay. This reward feels harder earned.”
“I think you’re right.”
“I’ve waited fifteen years to hear you say that,” he said, before kissing me again.
