The next day, I couldn’t hold out any longer. I called Jeremiah. I told him I needed to see him, that he should come over, and my voice shook as I said it. Over the phone, I could hear how grateful he was, how eager to make amends. I tried to justify calling him so fast by telling myself that I needed to see him face-to-face in order to move on. The truth was, I missed him. I, probably just as much as he did, wanted to figure out a way to forget what had happened.
But as much as I’d missed him, when I opened my door and saw his face again, all the hurt came rushing back, hard and fast. Jeremiah could see it too. At first he looked hopeful, and then he just looked devastated. When he tried to pull me to him, I wanted to hug him, but I couldn’t let myself. Instead I shook my head and pushed him away from me.
We sat on my bed, our backs against the wall, our legs hanging off the edge.
I said, “How would I know that you wouldn’t do it again? How would I be able to trust that?”
He got up. For a second I thought he was leaving, and my heart nearly stopped.
But then he got down on one knee, right in front of me. Very softly, he said, “You could marry me.”
At first I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. But then he said it again, this time louder. “Marry me.”
He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a ring. A silver ring with a little diamond in the center. “This would just be for starters, until I could afford to pay for a ring myself—with my money, not my dad’s.”
I couldn’t feel my body. He was still talking, and I couldn’t even hear. All I could do was stare at the ring in his hand.
“I love you so much. These past couple of days have been hell for me without you.” He took a breath. “I’m so sorry for hurting you, Bells. What I did—was unforgivable. I know that I hurt us, that I’m going to have to work really hard to get you to trust me again. I’ll do whatever it takes if you’ll let me. Would you… be willing to let me try?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “I’ll try so hard, I swear to you. We’ll get an apartment off campus, we can fix it up nice. I’ll do the laundry. I’ll learn how to cook stuff other than ramen and cereal.”
“Putting cereal in a bowl isn’t really cooking,” I said, looking away from him because this picture he was putting in my head, it was too much. I could see it too. How sweet it could be. The two of us, just starting out, in our own place.
Jeremiah grabbed my hands, and I snatched them away from him. He said, “Don’t you see, Belly? It’s been our story all along. Yours and mine. Nobody else’s.”
I closed my eyes, trying to clear my head. Opening them, I said, “You just want to erase what you did by marrying me.”
“No. That’s not what this is. What happened the other night”—he hesitated—“it made me realize something. I don’t ever want to be without you. Ever. You are the only girl for me. I’ve always known it. In this whole world, I will never love another girl the way I love you.”
He took my hand again, and this time I didn’t pull away from him. “Do you still love me?” he asked.
I swallowed. “Yeah.”
“Then please, marry me.”
I said, “You can’t ever hurt me like that again.” It was half warning, half plea.
“I won’t,” he said, and I knew he meant it.
He looked at me so determinedly, so earnestly. I knew his face well, maybe better than anybody now. Every line, every curve. The little bump on his nose from when he broke it surfing, the almost-faded scar on his forehead from the time he and Conrad were wrestling in the rec room and they knocked a plant over. I was there for those moments. Maybe I knew his face even better than my own—the hours I’d spent staring at it while he slept, tracing my finger along his cheekbone. Maybe he’d done the same things to me.
I didn’t want to see a mark on his face one day and not know how it got there. I wanted to be with him. His was the face I loved.
Wordlessly, I slipped my left hand out of his, and Jeremiah’s face slackened. Then I held out my hand for him, and his eyes lit up. The joy I felt in that moment—I couldn’t even put it into words. His hand shook as he placed the ring on my finger.
He asked, “Isabel Conklin, will you marry me?” in as serious a voice as I’d ever heard him use.
“Yes, I’ll marry you,” I said.
He put his arms around me, and we held on to each other, clinging like we were the other’s safe harbor. All I could think was, if we just get through this storm, we will make it. He’d made mistakes, I had too. But we loved each other, and that was what mattered.
We made plans all night—where we would live, how we would tell our parents. The past few days felt like another lifetime ago. That day, without another word about it, we decided to leave the past in the past. The future was where we were headed.
