The meeting went well. Mary got the next stage of the work, though the client still wanted to try the gold. She told Adam that on Monday evening, and he said he'd always believed in it.
On Wednesday she took him to the little cinema because she wanted to see a comedy that had come out years before. He admitted, as they sat down, that he'd already seen it and hadn't liked it much. She offered to leave. He said he could survive ninety minutes if she shared the popcorn.
She laughed at the bits he didn't. Once, she laughed so hard she pressed her face against his sleeve. Afterwards he could quote a line she'd missed because she had still been laughing, and she made him repeat it all the way home.
On Friday they went shopping for dinner. Mary wanted to use ingredients she didn't usually buy. Adam wanted to follow a recipe. She insisted that several small changes would be harmless, then changed so much that the result could no longer be called what the recipe called it.
They ate it anyway. She didn't mention that she had already imagined doing this with him on an ordinary Friday in November.
By Saturday, she had stopped waiting for the awkwardness she usually felt once someone began to like her back. She could ring him without inventing a reason. He could see her flat when it was untidy. She had told June how happy she was and endured a long, affectionate warning about not disappearing.
“I haven't disappeared,” Mary had said.
“You've become difficult to get to the pub.”
So she had gone to the pub on Thursday, and left Adam to his own evening. It had been good to talk about something other than him. It had also been good to find a message from him when she got home.
On Saturday she went to his flat for dinner. He opened the door before she knocked. She could hear a pan hissing in the kitchen.
“You're early,” he said.
“I'm hungry.”
“That's fine. I can use you.”
He gave her green beans to cut. She stood beside him at the counter, stealing an occasional one to eat raw. The flat was tidier than hers, but the table had a stack of post on it and the washing basket sat just outside the bedroom door. She liked seeing what hadn't been prepared for her.
After they ate, Adam cleared a space on the table and came back with a small box.
Mary looked at it. The room seemed to grow very quiet, though the extractor was still running in the kitchen.
“What is that?”
He sat opposite her. “I think you know.”
She did. She had imagined this often enough. She had imagined herself graceful and sure, rather than suddenly unable to remember what to do with her hands.
“Adam.”
“I know it's quick.”
“We've known each other three weeks.”
“I know.”
He opened the box. The ring had a small clear stone that caught the light above the table. She wanted to touch it and was afraid that touching it would answer the question before he'd asked.
“I want the life you talked about,” he said. “I want you coming through the door. I want to know what happened at your meeting, even when there are forty things I don't understand about it.”
Her throat tightened. He reached across for her hand.
“I like that you tell me when I'm wrong. I don't always like being wrong, but I like knowing you'll say it. I like going somewhere with you and not knowing what we'll end up doing.”
“Or eating.”
He smiled briefly. “Or eating.”
Then his grip changed, a little firmer.
“I don't want to spend months trying to act as though I want something less. Will you marry me?”
Mary looked at their joined hands. It was the question she wanted. She had never thought of receiving it as a reason to become cautious, but she could hear June's voice clearly enough to know that caution wasn't ridiculous.
“How can you know already?”
“I know I want to be with you.”
“That's not everything.”
“No. It isn't.” He rubbed his thumb once across her fingers. “We'd have things to work out. We will whatever happens. But I don't want this to be something we keep vague until one of us gets tired of asking.”
She knew that kind of tiredness. She had carried it for too long once and been proud of how little she demanded.
“We could keep seeing each other,” she said. “We don't have to decide tonight.”
He took a breath. “We could.”
For a moment she thought he might close the box. She discovered how much she didn't want him to.
“I'm asking because I want you,” he said. “Not because you have to give me an answer to stay.”
Mary looked up at him. He was hopeful and frightened, and she loved how much he wanted her to say yes. She hadn't planned to use the word loved yet, even inside her own head. It was there anyway.
She would still have her work. Her own flat. June. Things she wasn't handing over with her answer. There would be time to learn the parts of each other that hadn't come out in a few weeks.
She wanted to take that time as his fiancée.
“Yes,” she said.
He didn't move until she said it again. Then he stood, and she was standing too, and the chair scraped the floor as he pulled her into his arms.
She laughed against his neck. When he stepped back to put the ring on her finger, his hands shook enough that she steadied the box for him.
“You can keep asking,” she said.
“What?”
“What happened at my meeting. Even after we're married.”
“I intend to.”
She kissed him. The ring felt strange between their hands, a small hard edge belonging to something she had only pictured before.
They sat on the floor because the chairs had been pushed away and neither of them wanted to stop touching the other long enough to put them back. She tried to photograph her hand. He suggested better light. She told him she wasn't staging a product launch.
“You'll tell June?” he asked.
“She'll kill me if I don't.”
June answered on the third ring. Mary said the words aloud and heard them become something she had done.
“We're engaged.”
There was a short silence.
“You and Adam?”
“Who else?”
“I'm checking. You've been busy.”
Mary laughed. June congratulated her, then asked if she was happy. Mary said she was, and she could hear her friend's smile in the answer.
“Then I'm glad. I do need to see you.”
“You will.”
“Soon. Without him.”
“Yes.”
Her mother took longer to answer. Mary could hear the television being turned down before Ruth asked whether everything was all right.
“Everything's good,” Mary said. “Adam asked me to marry him.”
Adam rested his chin against her shoulder. She covered his hand with hers while she waited.
“And you said yes?” Ruth asked.
“I did.”
“Oh, darling.”
Mary held the phone closer. This was the warmth she had wanted at dinner.
Ruth said she must see the ring. She asked whether Adam was there, and Mary put the call on speaker so her mother could congratulate them both.
“There's plenty of time to think about a wedding,” Ruth added. “Enjoy being engaged.”
“We will,” Mary said.
When the call ended, she turned in Adam's arms. She didn't want to think about bookings or dates yet. She wanted to look at the ring, then at him, and be allowed to be exactly as happy as she was.
“My fiancé,” she said, trying it out.
He kissed the corner of her mouth. “I like it.”
So did she.