Chapter Thirty-One

ONE YEAR LATER

On the morning of the one-year anniversary of our getting back together, Maeve tells me to meet her at Literatea and to wear my favorite outfit. I've already made a reservation at one of our favorite bougie restaurants, so I don't know why she wants to go somewhere else to eat beforehand. But I do as my girlfriend says and show up to the little coffee shop in a brown patterned blazer, the softest white T-shirt I own, jeans, and booties.

Maeve's smiling as I approach, two iced drinks in her hands. "All designer, or are you not fully disconnected from the hoi polloi yet?"

I roll my eyes. She says stuff like that, but Maeve's actually slotted into my world remarkably well. Besides moving her out of her backhouse to come live with me, she's been happy to come visit me on set when I'm filming in LA, laughed at the free products people send me, tagged me in photos on social media despite the influx of my fans to her page. Plus, she knows as well as I do that she requested a Burberry winter coat on her past birthday. "I will not be seen in my previous workplace in a hoodie."

She kisses my cheek as she hands me my coffee. "I'm glad." Our fingers brush as I take the drink. "Exactly as you like it."

As in, a splash of oat milk and decaf because it's 4:00 p.m. I take a sip, relishing in my favorite on-campus coffee spot. Ty, Maeve, and I came a bunch last fall, and I've really fallen in love with the place.

"Thank you."

"So," she says, tugging at her earlobe, "this isn't going to be as nice as what we're doing tonight."

Despite my bougiefication of Maeve's life, she's remained as grounded as ever. In fact, thank god none of the celebrity has bled into her work. She's now teaching two 400-level seminars she designed on top of the intro courses she has, and she's been using her grant money to take trips to Europe to do research for her upcoming book. The paparazzi don't bother her, although the fact that I no longer teach here and only occasionally visit her on campus might play a part in that.

"I wasn't rich less than ten years ago," I say. "I'm sure whatever you have planned is perfect."

"Then let's walk."

We walk the couple of hundred yards from the edge of USC's campus and head over to Exposition Park. It's the same stroll we took when we first had our truce dinner, but, unsurprisingly given the hour, now the park is much more crowded. We wait in a sea of people—students in their USC apparel, professors and administrators in their business casual, families with screaming little kids headed over to the museums. A year and a half ago, I wouldn't have been able to stare straight ahead without disassociating or feeling faint. A year into taking medication, though, I remain stable, neutrally aware of my surroundings. The smell of the asphalt, the hum of dozens of voices speaking at once, the rumble of the metro as it leaves the station, I feel a part of it. I don't really want to be here—I'm holding my breath hoping there's a break in the crowd—but I'm okay.

I take Maeve's hand, jumping back into society like a kid riding a bike. The familiar ridges of her knuckles fit perfectly under my thumb. Sometimes I can't believe these hands have been mine for over a year.

I have no idea where Maeve is taking me. We've thoroughly explored LA in the year we've been together, everything from its best beaches to shopping spots, hikes, and museums. In fact, we've been inside each of the museums in Exposition Park already, and at this point the area feels nearly as familiar as USC's campus. Plus, it's not like now is a particularly practical time to be dragging each other out of our scheduled days—between Maeve's increased course load, paper and book writing, and conference attendance, and my acting and directing commitments, we rarely drag each other to the other's side of town, finding it more convenient to meet somewhere in the middle. The only explanation I can think of is that we're closer to the airport. Maybe we're going to pick up Maeve's parents? I knew they were getting in today for a conference, but I thought Maeve had decided to let them Uber.

"Did you decide to pick your parents up from the airport?" I ask. "I thought you were religiously opposed to LAX pickup."

Maeve laughs. "I am." She studies me. "Are you trying to figure out what we're doing?"

I hug her from behind, rocking her in my arms. My shoes have a little lift, and I'm relishing being tall enough to rest my chin on her head. "You're never this cryptic."

The light changes, and Maeve leads me across the street by the hand. She's moving even slower as we head toward the rose garden near the Natural History Museum. The crowds disperse around us.

"I decided this is one of my favorite spots in LA," she says as we stop in front of the fountain where the bench we sat after our first outing is. We've ended up back here a few times since then, sober enough to really appreciate it. "Nothing compares to color in cities built to be devoid of it."

I get it. Maeve's facing one of the grass walkways, and bursts of yellow, pink, and red roses surround us like low-hanging clouds. The air's tinged with the scent of the flowers.

"You know you never told me what Charlie did to piss off Gwyn," Maeve says.

I laugh. Far more than I need to. "Charlie took Gwyn's seat during a party drinking game on the Fourth of July because G went to the bathroom. Dave was drunk and didn't realize, so he turns to kiss his wife and it's actually Charlie. Charlie thought it was so funny that he kissed him back just as Gwyn returned from the bathroom. She's been annoyed ever since."

There's a pause.

Then Maeve starts laughing. That perfect, eye-crinkling, dimple-showing laugh that I've loved since day one. The butterflies flap inside me. The urges come in a quick succession. I want to hold her hand, I want to skip down the street with her, dip her and kiss her, never let her go.

"Dave is weak," Maeve says as she wipes tears from her eyes. "Jesus, bless your niece and nephew."

"I like to think they're stronger than him, but watch, they're gonna be doctors too."

Maeve shrugs. "It's a respectable position."

"I figure they'll be vets. Just to shake it up a little. Although I really want them to become, like, mob vets."

Maeve's lips turn up. "What?"

"You know, the ones who treat all the illegal lions in California."

"Val, that's not a mob vet. That's just a vet who can go to jail for treating animals for idiots."

I point to Maeve. "A good profession."

She shakes her head. "God, I love you so much."

I relish the flush as it climbs up my neck. "A thousand times back at you."

We stop by a particularly full bushel of light pink roses. We're now pretty far off the path. Maeve takes my hand. "Hey, so, can we add an extra dinner with my parents this weekend?"

I met Maeve's parents last summer, about a couple of months into us getting back together. I still don't know if asking me to go to Ohio for Fourth of July weekend was meant to be trial by fire, but it'd set her parents and me up pretty well. They had strong East Coast accents, talked fast, used lots of Yiddishisms I had to stealth google in real time, and went right from "good to meet you" to telling me about Socrates and string theory. I had their blessing by the end of the first night when I was the last one on the back porch with them, talking.

In fact, it was only the second day of knowing them that I learned that they had no idea why I was famous. That they haven't watched a new movie since 1995. That Maeve had sent them a photo of us and the interview where I answered K through 12 homework questions on BuzzFeed.

"Is this a trick question?"

Maeve chuckles. "No. Do you have time?"

I motion to the roses sprawled around us, Downtown LA beyond that. Besides our anniversary tonight, I'm free. We could have every dinner with her parents for all I care. I pull her into my arms. "Your time is my time."

She traces a line on my forearm. "They want to meet your parents too."

My heart picks up, as if sensing something before I can. "Why would they want to meet my parents?"

Maeve tries to bite back a smile. "Well, they want to meet family."

I open my mouth to voice my question, but Maeve's too quick.

She answers by getting down on one knee.

Maeve pulls a velvet box out of her jacket pocket and opens up the case to reveal a diamond ring.

My maternal grandma's ring.

This can't be real.

"Val, will you marry me?" Maeve asks, tears brimming in her eyes.

I'm thrust back to a conversation I had with Luna. We were driving to an advanced movie screening I'd gotten us tickets to sometime after filming Oakley in Flames. She'd asked me when I first fully understood I was gay and whether I associated that moment with a positive or negative feeling. The first thing I'd come up with was when I was eighteen, a few months from graduating and heading off to Oxford. I'd brushed every romantic and sexual feeling for my Huntington coworker to the side, yet there I was, sitting in AP Government as my teacher explained something painfully obvious about the judicial branch, and Riley Cooper leaned over to me and asked for a piece of paper. She smelled like strawberry shampoo, and I remember sitting there with my chest tight thinking it would be so nice to fall asleep being able to smell that shampoo every night.

It'd been a bad feeling back then, that soul-squeezing fear of being fundamentally different. I remember telling Luna that and watching her expression fall. She grew red when I asked her what her answer would be, only to remember another memory.

One of the first sleepovers I went to was one of those invite-all-your-classmates in first grade. I was six or seven, the friend in question, Jane, had a new little brother that she'd write about in the projects we had to do. She'd draw family portraits with two parents, one with short hair and pants and one with long hair and a dress. I'd been trying to find a bathroom to remove a Fanta stain from my white shirt and had accidentally witnessed Jane's mom breastfeeding her infant brother. Her other mom.

I'd brought up the encounter to my mom on the way home, and she'd fumbled through an explanation. She said some women married and had kids with men and some did the same with other women. I remember smiling and thinking to myself that if everyone in the world got to choose, I wanted to marry Jane. I corrected my answer for Luna, said that my first queer memory actually had been happy.

All these years later, tears brim in my eyes thinking about what I would tell that little girl in the back of Mom's car who wanted to marry Jane.

"Yes," I say. Maeve slips the ring on my finger.

I pull her up to her feet, hold her in an embrace as I kiss her. We kiss long and hard, pressed so close to each other that I can feel her heartbeat slam in her chest. There's noise around us, a swell of it. I'm vaguely aware that the sound is positive. But I can't move from this woman, from the feeling of her leather jacket against me, her weight pulling me down as she clutches the sides of my blazer. I've memorized the feeling of her lips on mine, yet nothing gets my heart to flutter faster than the thought of being able to taste them over and over again for the rest of our lives.

Then I hear the click. I hear the click and my heart sinks and I turn around and—

And it's Charlie. Charlie with a professional camera, grinning his bigmouthed face off.

"I got it!" Charlie cheers from across the pathway. "Fucking syn-chro-nized!"

"What are you doing here?"

"Documenting the greatest moment of your life so far."

I whip around to Maeve, who has the easy smile of someone who's in on a joke. "Uh, what's going on?"

Maeve nods toward Charlie. "Your best friend and I were kind of busy over the last few days."

What Maeve did for me—it really starts to hit. Like bricks coming together, building a beautiful tower that I thought I'd spent so long knocking down. I let the tears flow down my cheeks. "I can't believe you gay-proposed to me in the park you confessed you were obsessed with women in." I pull her into an embrace, burying my face into her soft hair. "I love you so much."

"I love you too," Maeve says through a squeak of a laugh.

"I love you also!" Charlie yells from across the way.

I smile. "Charlie, get over here!"

The moment Charlie comes bounding up, I pull him into our hug.

I'd never thought about what I would have wanted from a proposal before, but somehow my best friend being here has made it perfect.

In fact, everything is perfect. I have a future with Maeve. I have a future making movies that change lives, a future where the people around me are thriving. A future full of hope.