Chapter Twenty-three
Then
It’s our last night at the beach house. We leave in the morning to head back to Connecticut. Graham has a meeting he has to be back for tomorrow afternoon.
I have laundry to do before I go back to work on Tuesday. Neither of us is ready to leave yet. It’s been peaceful and perfect and I’m already looking forward to coming back here with him. I don’t even care if I have to kiss my mother’s ass for the next month in order to plan our next getaway. It’s a price I’ll gladly pay for another weekend of perfection.
It’s a little bit colder tonight than the last two nights we’ve been here, but I kind of like it. I have the heater turned up high in the house. We freeze our asses o for hours near the re pit and then cuddle up in bed to thaw out. It’s a routine I would never get bored of.
I just nished making us both cups of hot chocolate. I take them outside and hand Graham his, then sit down next to him.
“Okay,” he says. “Next question.”
Graham found out this morning that, even though I love looking at it, I’ve never actually stepped foot in the ocean. He spent the majority of the day trying to gure out other things about me that he didn’t know. It’s become a game to us now and we’re alternating questions so we can nd out everything there is to know about each other.
He mentioned the rst night we were together that he doesn’t talk about religion or politics. But it’s been six months now and I’m curious to know his opinions. “We’ve still never discussed religion,” I say. “Or politics. Are those still topics that are o the table?”
Graham edges the cup with his lips and sucks a marshmallow into his mouth.
“What do you want to know?”
“Are you a Republican or a Democrat?”
He doesn’t even hesitate. “Neither. I can’t stand the extremists on either side,
so I sort of hover in the middle.”
“So you’re one of those people.”
He tilts his head. “What people?”
“The kind who pretend to agree with every opinion just to keep the peace.”
Graham arches an eyebrow. “Oh, I have opinions, Quinn. Strong ones.”
I pull my legs up and tuck them under me, facing him. “I want to hear
them.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything,” I challenge. “Your stance on gun control. Immigration.
Abortion. All of it.”
I love the look of excitement on his face, as if he’s preparing for a presentation. It’s adorable that a presentation would even excite him.
He sets his mug of hot chocolate on the table beside him. “Okay . . . let’s see. I don’t think we should take away a citizen’s right to own a gun. But I do think it should be one hell of a dicult process to get your hands on one. I think women should decide what to do with their own bodies, as long as it’s within the rst trimester or it’s a medical emergency. I think government programs are absolutely necessary but I also think a more systematic process needs to be put in place that would encourage people to get o of welfare, rather than to stay on it.
I think we should open up our borders to immigrants, as long as they register and pay taxes. I’m certain that life-saving medical care should be a basic human right, not a luxury only the wealthy can aord. I think college tuition should automatically be deferred and then repaid over a twenty-year period on a sliding scale. I think athletes are paid way too much, teachers are paid way too little, NASA is underfunded, weed should be legal, people should love who they want to love, and Wi-Fi should be universally accessible and free.” When he’s nished, he calmly reaches for his mug of hot chocolate and brings it back to his mouth.
“Do you still love me?”
“More than I did two minutes ago.” I press a kiss to his shoulder and he wraps his arm around me, tucking me against him.
“Well, that went better than I thought it would.”
“Don’t get too comfortable,” I warn. “We still haven’t discussed religion. Do you believe in God?”
Graham breaks eye contact and looks out at the ocean. He caresses my shoulder and thinks about my question for a moment. “I didn’t used to.”
y q
“But you do now?”
“Yeah. I do now.”
“What changed your mind?”
“A few things,” he says. He nudges his head toward the ocean. “That being one of them. How can something exist that is that magnicent and powerful without something even more magnicent and powerful creating it?”
I stare out at the water with him when he asks me what I believe. I shrug.
“Religion isn’t one of my mother’s strong suits, but I’ve always believed there was something out there greater than us. I just don’t know exactly what it is. I don’t think anyone knows for sure.”
“That’s why they call it faith,” he says.
“So how does a man of math and science reconcile his knowledge with his faith?”
Graham smiles when I ask him that question, like he’s been dying to discuss it. I love that about him. He has this adorable inner nerd that appears sometimes and it makes him even more attractive.
“Do you know how old the earth is, Quinn?”
“No, but I bet I’m about to nd out.”
“Four and a half billion years old,” he says. His voice is full of wonder, like this is his absolute favorite thing to talk about. “Do you know how long ago our
specic species appeared?”
“No idea.”
“Only two hundred thousand years ago,” he says. “Only two hundred thousand years out of four and a half billion years. It’s unbelievable.” He grabs my hand and lays it palm down on his thigh. He begins tracing over the back of my hand with a lazy nger. “If the back of your hand represented the age of this earth and every species that has ever lived, the entire human race wouldn’t even be visible to the naked eye. We are that insignicant.” He drags his ngers to the center of the back of my hand and points to a small freckle. “From the beginning of time until now, we could combine every single human that has ever walked this earth, and all their problems and concerns as a whole wouldn’t even amount to the size of this freckle right here.” He taps my hand. “Every single one of your life experiences could t right here in this tiny freckle. So would mine. So would
Beyoncé’s.”
I laugh.
“When you look at the earth’s existence as a whole, we’re nothing. We haven’t even been here long enough to earn bragging rights. Yet humans believe we’re the center of the universe. We focus on the stupidest, most mundane issues. We stress about things that mean absolutely nothing to the universe, when we should be nothing but grateful that evolution even gave our species a chance to have problems. Because one of these days . . . humans won’t exist. History will repeat itself and earth will move on to a dierent species altogether. Me and you . . . we’re just two people out of an entire race that, in retrospect, is still way less impressive at sustainability than a dinosaur. We just haven’t reached our expiration date yet.” He slides his ngers through mine and squeezes my hand.
“Based on all the scientic evidence that proves how insignicant we are, it was always hard for me to believe in God. The more appropriate question would have been, ‘Could a God believe in me?’ Because a lot has happened on this earth in four and a half billion years to think that a God would give a shit about me or my problems. But, I recently concluded that there’s no other explanation for how you and I could end up on the same planet, in the same species, in the same century, in the same country, in the same state, in the same town, in the same hallway, in front of the same door for the same reason at the exact same time. If God didn’t believe in me, then I’d have to believe you were just a coincidence.
And you being a coincidence in my life is a lot harder for me to fathom than the
mere existence of a higher power.”
Oh.
Wow. I’m breathless.
Graham has said so many sweet things to me, but this wasn’t sweet. This was pure poetry. This was beyond an expression of his intelligence, because I know he’s incredibly smart. This was sacricial. He gave me purpose. He made me incredibly relevant—crucial—to him, when I’ve never felt relevant, vital, or crucial to anyone else before. “I love you so much, Graham Wells.” It’s all I can say because I can’t compete with what he just said. I don’t even try.
“Do you love me enough to marry me?”
I lift o his arm and sit up straight, still facing him.
Did he seriously just ask me that?
It was so spontaneous. He probably hasn’t even thought it through. He’s still smiling but in a few seconds I think he’s probably going to laugh because he accidentally blurted it out without even thinking. He doesn’t even have a ring, which proves it was an accident.
p “Graham . . .”
He slips his hand under the blanket. When he pulls his hand back out, he’s holding a ring. No box, no gift wrap, no pretenses. It’s just a ring. A ring he’s been carrying in his pocket for a moment he obviously did think through.
I bring my hands up to my mouth. They’re shaking because I wasn’t expecting this and I’m speechless and I’m scared I won’t be able to answer him out loud because everything is caught in my throat but I somehow still whisper the words, “Oh my God.”
Graham pulls my left hand from my mouth and he holds the ring near my ring nger, but he doesn’t attempt to slip it on. Instead, he dips his head to bring my focus back to him. When our eyes meet, he’s looking at me with all the clarity and hope in the world. “Be my wife, Quinn. Weather the Category 5 moments with me.”
I’m nodding before he’s even nished speaking. I’m nodding, because if I try to say yes, I’ll start crying. I can’t even believe he somehow made this perfect weekend even better.
As soon as I start nodding, he laughs with a heavy sigh of relief. And when he slips the ring on my nger, he bites his lip because he doesn’t want me to see that he’s getting choked up, too. “I didn’t know what ring to get you,” he says, looking back up at me. “But when the jeweler told me that the wedding ring symbolizes an endless loop without a beginning, middle, or end, I didn’t want to break up that endless loop with diamonds. I hope you like it.”
The ring is a delicate, thin gold band with no stones. It’s not a reection of how much money Graham has or doesn’t have. It’s a reection of how long he believes our love will last. An eternity.
“It’s perfect, Graham.”
