I took her left hand in mine, noticed in some detached corner of my brain that her hand wasn’t steady, and maybe mine wasn’t, either, and said it. “Hope, I love you. Will you marry me?”
“It’s…” Her eyes were shining. “It’s too much.”
“No,” I said. “It’s not enough. But it’s a start.”
“Hemi,” she said helplessly. “No. It’s so gorgeous.”
The breath of a laugh left me. “You’re meant to say ‘Yes,’ you know. I’m not getting any younger down here.”
She laughed, but there were a couple tears on her cheeks, too. Hope hated to cry, but she was crying anyway. She reached out with both hands and tugged me to my feet. “Yes,” she said. “Yes. I’ll say it again. And I love you, too.”
If I’d been nervous before? I was floating now. I took the ring carefully from its velvet nest, shoved the box back into my anorak pocket, and picked up her left hand. The surf wasn’t pounding any harder than my heart as I slid the diamond-encrusted platinum band onto her slim finger.
I had the first part of what I’d told her I wanted. My ring was on her finger, and even the gloom of the day couldn’t dim the three carats of flash from the round stone in the center, or the delicate curlicues of platinum around the setting that said “Hope” in a way my eye, and my heart, had recognized the moment I’d walked into the shop weeks earlier.
The ring was bright, it was beautiful, and it was absolutely and completely feminine. In other words, it was perfect.
“It’s yours,” I told her, still holding her hand in mine. “And it always will be.”
After that, we walked some more, both of us quiet now, our arms around each other, until even Hope had had enough rain. And then we went back up to the apartment, changed into dry clothes, and went to lunch in a cafe.
You could say it wasn’t glamorous, but it was right all the same.
“So,” I said when I was tucking into a beef and mushroom pie and a bottle of Waikato Draught and realizing once again how much New Zealand had to teach the world about food, “I’m thinking this means we’re good to get married this week.”
“Very restrained of you.” Hope smiled at me from over her pumpkin soup. She was all but glowing. She took my breath away. “Why do I imagine that the first way that sentence was formed went something like, “Now that that’s settled, we’re getting married this week”?
“I’m not telling,” I said, which made her laugh. “But seriously. It’s Sunday. I’m thinking we do it next Saturday, at the marae, I hope, though Koro’s still checking. I’ll get as much of my whanau—my family—here as I can for it. We can leave most of the invites to Koro.”
“Wait,” she said. “When could you possibly have arranged that?”
“Well…yesterday, when Koro and I were fixing the fence, if I’m forced to be honest.”
“Huh.” She looked up at me through her lashes. “A little confident, weren’t you?”
“I tend to run that way,” I admitted.
“I noticed.”
“So,” I said, “whoever you want to invite—ring them, and then tell me. I’ll fix that as well, get them over here.”
Some of the animation left her face, and she said, “I hate to say this. It’s embarrassing. But I don’t really have anybody to invite.”
I was startled, I’ll admit. “Nobody?”
She laughed, though she didn’t look comfortable. “Doesn’t that sound pathetic? But I’ve been taking care of Karen since my senior year of high school. And friends…” She shrugged. “Friends haven’t been so easy to come by, you know? My friends from high school…they went off to college, got new lives, moved on, moved out.”
“I can see that,” I said, because I had to say something. And besides, she’d been poor. That, I knew for sure. Poor, still a teenager, and with an eleven-year-old sister to raise? I imagined that might have limited her social life more than a bit.
“Otherwise…” she went on, clearly determined to make a clean breast of it, “I do have neighbors, and lots of acquaintances, I guess you’d say, in the neighborhood, and I got to know some of the models pretty well, working for Vincent. I’ve had Karen’s friends over sometimes, too. But again, I’m a good fifteen years younger than those girls’ mothers. And,” she said, smiling again, trying to lighten it up, “I somehow don’t think you’d appreciate my inviting Nathan. He’d be surprised anyway, I guess. Work friends are work friends. So, no. Nobody to invite. Isn’t that sad? Do you want to change your mind?”
She said it lightly, but it wasn’t light. It made something happen in my chest, in fact. Hope had been made to love people, and to be loved in return. From now on, that was what she was going to get.
“No,” I said. “I don’t. And it’s true for me, too, you know. I have acquaintances, allies, people I’m friendly with, but the closest thing I have to a friend, other than my cousins, is probably Eugene. Debra’s husband. My trainer. When you’re trying to get ahead, you don’t share too much, don’t let down your guard.”
“Except with me.”
“Except with you. And only when you drag it out of me. So we’ll have your family, because you have Karen. I’ll have my family, because I’ll have Koro, and some other people who may or may not add value to the party. We’ll assume they’ll be on their good behavior. Hope for the best, eh. And we’ll have each other. That’s all we really need. So—Saturday?”
“Yes,” she said. “Saturday. So do you mean, your parents…”
We weren’t going there. Not today. I’d shared more than enough already. “Tomorrow, I’ll take you and Karen to Auckland, and we’ll do some shopping, buy you a dress. I’ve got an idea.”
She sighed, but dropped the subject of my parents, to my relief. “Why does that not surprise me? The groom’s not supposed to see the dress, you know.”
“Tell me tomorrow. I’ll have a marriage license to collect as well.”
Which was when the trouble really started.
Hemi
The next morning at eight-thirty, when I left to get the license, Hope wanted to go with me.
“I’ve never applied for a marriage license before,” she said.
“It won’t be exciting,” I said. “Standing in a queue.”
She looked sideways at me. “It’s New Zealand. Just how much of a queue are you expecting at the…where?”
“Katikati Library. You don’t know how many old ladies will be paying their rates or renewing their dog licenses. And I have calls to make. Things I need to get sorted for today. I need some time. I’ll be back in an hour, and we’ll go to Auckland.” I stepped closer and took her in my arms, heedless of Koro and Karen at the kitchen table, our interested audience. “Let me make your day beautiful. Let me make it right.”
Her eyes softened. “How am I supposed to argue with that?”