Three Months Later

"I 'm just glad it finally sold," Rosie said.

"Me too. This means you're now a permanent resident of my little part of the world," Felicity replied and squeezed Rosie's hand under the table.

"Thank you for coming to this. I know it's just signing the papers, but I appreciate it."

"No problem. We're leaving straight from here to get your stuff from the storage, so it also made sense."

"True, but it's more about me wanting you here with me to close this part of my life. I feel like once those keys are handed over, I can finally just be free."

"Yeah? Free with me?" Felicity smiled over at her.

"Yes, free with you," Rosie said.

"Okay. Let's get started," Rosie's realtor spoke when she walked into the room. "Your hand is about to hurt from having to sign all of these." She held up a pile of papers. "But then, you'll be done, and you can hit the road."

"Yeah, I figured."

The woman who'd bought the house walked in behind the realtor and gave Felicity and Rosie a wide smile.

"Thank you for making this quick close work. I know it's never ideal, but my job started here before I could find a place, so I've been in a short-term rental for over a month, and I'm ready to finally be home."

"It's been on the market on and off for a while now, so it doesn't feel quick to me," Rosie shared. "And I'm glad it's going to someone who really likes it."

"Oh, I love it," the woman replied as she sat down across from Rosie. "I can't wait to move in."

They got to work singing the papers, and when the keys were handed over, Rosie felt both sadness and excitement. She'd bought that house after finishing her Ph.D. and getting her first big job. Her parents had helped with the down payment, but she'd long ago paid them back, and quickly, she'd become a rising star in marine archaeology. Now, she had a first draft of a book with a publisher and a request for another one from a textbook company. They wanted her to write a new book on marine archaeology, and while she didn't want to teach it, writing the book that others could teach with would be fun.

The sadness she was feeling right now, though, wasn't tied to Ami but to the fact that she'd just sold the first house she'd ever bought. On top of that, it was in that house that she'd spent a lot of time with Felicity. So many days after work and even before, when Felicity had only been there to pick her up in the morning, instead of waiting in the car, Felicity would use her key, and they'd talk or have coffee. Rosie would certainly miss the house, but she was happy, too. She was excited to start this new part of her life. She had a woman she loved, and she finally trusted herself that she was on the right path, even without the help of some mystery device.

Rosie hadn't bought a new house yet, so she planned to continue to rent the small place she'd found on the other side of the bridge for the next six months or so. She'd already worked out a longer-term agreement with the owner since she'd be in and out over the course of the summer, spending more time away than at home, anyway, but at least her stuff would have a place to stay while she was in Europe. Her off time would be spent with Felicity whenever they could meet up, and when they both returned, it was likely that they'd just move in together.

She really loved Felicity's house. It was just big enough without being overly large. There was also a bay window off the formal living room that Felicity had set up as a little nook for Rosie to use whenever she wanted to read or work on her book, and it looked out at the water. Sometimes, they spent their evenings out on the deck, holding on to one another, having dinner, and then making love after it got dark and deserted, with only the torches giving off any light. It was almost like a dream to Rosie, but it also wasn't perfect.

Felicity was a bit of a slob, whereas Rosie was a neat freak. She'd known that before but hadn't fully realized just how different they were in that department until she'd started spending every night and a lot of days in the house. Felicity was also more of a night owl than Rosie, who preferred to go to sleep rather early, wake up early, too, and have her morning tea in bed with her girlfriend or in her little nook before starting work for the day. Felicity preferred to stay up late, often making love, and sleep in whenever she could or wake up at the last possible minute before having to leave for work.

None of those things were detrimental, but there had been a couple of arguments anyway, and they'd helped prove to Rosie that this was real and not a dream. She was in love and happy, but that didn't mean that she and Felicity would always get along, always like each other, for that matter, or would never face any difficulties. Rosie was okay with that as long as she could wake up next to her whenever possible.

"Hey, do you maybe want to stay in town for the night instead of trying to drive back?" Felicity asked when they walked out of the room.

"We can, if you want."

"We'll just be bringing your stuff with us, so the drive will be longer, maybe four hours or so, and by the time we get it all loaded up, we won't be leaving until after five or six."

"Hotel here and leave tomorrow morning after traffic dies down?" Rosie asked.

"We can stop for breakfast on the way out of town, too. That place we used to go to before work sometimes, maybe?"

"Are you getting nostalgic on me?" Rosie teased.

"A little. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised at myself. I know I never lived in that house with you – Ami did, twice, technically, and you married her, so it was your home with her – but I feel like I spent so much time with you there that it's like we're saying goodbye to a part of our past, too."

"I feel the same way," Rosie revealed. "And let's get a nice room while we're here. Like a four-star place with room service and just relax in our room all night."

"Relax, huh?" Felicity teased back.

"Yes, relax. And maybe eat dinner on a balcony, if the room has one."

"Oh, I think it must," Felicity joked.

"And tomorrow morning, we'll sleep in and have breakfast at that little diner that serves the best pancakes I've ever had. Then, we'll hit the road, and–"

"Leave your stuff at my house, babe," Felicity interrupted.

They stopped walking down the hall, and Rosie turned to her.

"What?"

"Keep the rental, if you want – we're both about to leave, anyway – but I don't want to wait."

"Wait for what?"

"For you to move in. You're already there every night and most days. You've been working from my place every day for the past month, too. I know I'm still working on my cleaning-up-in-the-bedroom issue, but I haven't left a towel on the floor in well over a week, and the toothpaste has been capped this whole month."

Rosie laughed and pulled Felicity into her by wrapping her arms around Felicity's waist.

"You're asking me to move in?"

"Well, we already lived together on the ship, which was pretty close quarters, and we managed not to kill each other. You've also basically been living with me since you first got there. You can put your stuff in the rental, but we both know that you'll just have to move it again later."

"Oh, we do, do we?" Rosie teased.

"Yes, we do," Felicity replied definitively. "We're here now. We know what we have and how important it is. It's real with us, and I don't want a backup plan for if it doesn't work out. I want to lean into the fact that it will work out. You and me. I love you, and I want you forever. I want your stuff to merge with my stuff. I want the arguments over the stupid towels, the kind of tea I stock in my cabinets, and how I have six kinds of coffee but only two kinds of tea." Felicity laughed a little. "I'll gladly stock every kind of tea in the world if it means we finally get to have this."

"Maybe just my favorite kind. I don't need all of them," Rosie said with a soft smile.

"But will you? Will you just move your stuff to my place, and we can call it our place?"

"I'd love that," she replied. "And maybe when we get back, we can unpack and really move everything in together. I know you wanted to paint the living room. Maybe we could do that together, and–"

Felicity cut her off with a kiss and then said, "Yes. That. I want that with you."

"You just want to paint the living room with me?" Rosie laughed a little.

"I want it to be our house, Rosie. I bought it for me, but it's also so you, somehow. It's like you walked in, and I knew it was meant to be your house, too."

"I do love it," she replied. "Not as much as I love you, though."

Felicity smiled at her and wrapped her arms around Rosie's neck.

"I feel like you 're my home, Felicity," she continued. "I love the house, obviously, but I loved my now- old house, too, until… Well, un til I let someone else in when I shouldn't have. I didn't understand it back then, but I do now. I loved it more when you were there than when Ami was, and I think there's stuff I still need to unpack there. Not physical baggage, but the emotional kind. I can't believe I let you go."

"I didn't exactly tell you how I felt, either," Felicity said.

"Maybe not. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that we're here now. There's just… Sometimes, I wish I could go back and change things."

"Yeah? What would you do?"

Rosie smiled and said, "I would've asked you out that day in my kitchen when Ami showed up. I would've told her to go. I would've cupped your cheek like this." She cupped Felicity's cheek. "And I would've told you how much I wanted to kiss you, but we would've waited until after our date."

"We would have, huh?"

"Yes. And it would've been amazing, just like our real first kiss."

"How are you so sure all of that would've happened?"

Rosie looked around the hallway. There were a few people milling about, but no one was paying attention to them. She swallowed hard and decided that Felicity deserved to know.

"I'll tell you tonight. But I have to warn you: you might not want me to move in anymore after I do. You might think I'm crazy, or you might just be really mad at me."

"What are you talking about?" Felicity asked, pulling back a little.

"Let's get out of here. I'll tell you the whole story. You deserve to know and either yell at me or admit me to the nearest institution."

"Rosie, you're scaring me."

"Nothing to be scared about." She pressed her forehead to Felicity's. "I promised I wouldn't break your heart, and I plan to keep that promise."

"Then, what are you talking about?"

"Let's go. I'll tell you."

Rosie wasn't sure why she'd decided that today, of all days, she would confess to Felicity – their relationship was still so new, and even though Felicity wanted Rosie to move in with her, that didn't mean that something like this wouldn't have Felicity taking back that ask – but she had to have faith that they were strong enough to handle anything together. Felicity deserved to know what had caused Rosie to pull away from her all those years ago, what had caused her fear, and what had driven her back into the familiar and comfortable. Rosie wanted to be completely honest with the love of her life. She wanted to start this new phase with Felicity with all the cards on the table, and the best way to do that was to tell Felicity about that day in the kitchen.

So, when they got to the hotel they booked at the last minute, she sat down next to Felicity on the king bed and shared the whole story. She told her of the case they'd found at the wreck site. She confessed to keeping it, even though it should've been part of the wreck's inventory. She revealed how she'd opened it and had accidentally pressed a button, how a possible path had been placed before her, and she told Felicity how she'd chosen Ami over her.

"You…" Felicity began and paused. "You saw us talking about a date?"

"Yes."

"And you were looking at yourself?"

"Yes."

Felicity turned to look out the window and asked, "I asked you out?"

"I think, technically, I did that, but you told me how you felt first."

"You said no?"

"No, I said yes. Well, you said yes because I asked you."

Felicity nodded and said, "But then you were back, and you went out with Ami."

"Yes," she admitted softly.

"Why again?"

Rosie shifted a little and said, "I think because I wasn't ready to admit or even understand how I felt for you, but mainly because this device made something happen that should've been impossible, so I thought I'd imagined it or that it wasn't real. I thought that if I brought it up to you in the car on the way to the office, you might have told me you didn't want me like that, and things would've been awkward between us, or maybe worse."

"But you went out with Ami."

"Ami wasn't scary to me."

"I was scary to you?" Felicity smiled at her, making Rosie feel a little bit better.

"You were the unknown, and you were so important to me. God, you'd become so important to me, and I hadn't even realized it until that moment. I remember being on the ship, thinking about how I wanted to be home, and for the most part, that wasn't like me. I loved being out there on the water, doing my work. I didn't have anything to come home to at that time, or so I thought, but it was you. I'd missed you. I'd been missing you on the ship, and I wanted to come home because I knew I'd get to see you. You were so important to me that I worried that if it didn't work out because you were further along than me or for some other reason, it would ruin everything. Ami wasn't scary to me. She was just Ami. I believed her when she said that she was okay with my career, and I shouldn't have, but it was easier to believe her and give in, than it was to evaluate my actual feelings or try to understand this device that kept staring at me from the closet."

"You still have it?"

"You believe me?" Rosie tossed back.

"Why would you lie about this?" Felicity asked. "You don't even like to read fiction, really, let alone make things up. You're a scientist. You like facts and evidence."

"That's true."

"And you've never lied to me; that I know of, at least."

"I haven't. Unless you count the lie of omission about this thing in the first place."

"Rosie, I…" Felicity began, and Rosie worried that she was about to say something that would terrify her.

"Yeah?" Rosie asked, needing to know if Felicity was about to tell her that they shouldn't be together anymore.

"You saw me telling you how I felt, and you felt the same way?"

"In the vision or whatever it was, yes. But in reality, I didn't know how I felt about you then. It's confusing to me, too," she revealed. "It was like that vision showed me how I felt about you, but that scientific brain of mine couldn't process that it had even happened, let alone that I could feel that way about you when I hadn't known it at all. I couldn't understand how I could just hear you tell me that you were in love with me and ask you out right after when I'd never thought about you that way before."

"Okay. Ouch," Felicity said with a little chuckle.

"I think you would've understood if you were in my shoes. Then… Ami was there, and I knew how I'd felt about her before. I knew that I'd loved her once. Or, at least, part of me had loved her before. I don't think that all of me ever did."

"No? "

"I feel like a fool. I married a woman I wasn't even in love with because the thought of actually being in love with you and not realizing it for that long had been too much for me to handle." She looked into Felicity's eyes. "But you believe that it happened? I'm not crazy? You really believe me?"

"I don't think you're crazy, Rosie. Although, it doesn't really make sense to me completely. I guess I'd need to see it for myself to understand what you mean entirely."

"It didn't make sense to me that day, either."

"I won't lie to you: it hurts, knowing that you chose her over me. I remember that day very well. It's seared into my brain; me being there, us talking, and then Ami just walking into the room like she still lived in that house. I remembered seeing her at the grocery store and me being on the phone, so I knew it before you did, I think, that she wanted you back and was probably there to make that happen. It hurt, knowing that it had worked, but before this, I kind of thought you just chose her. That was hard enough because I'd finally been about to tell you how I felt and was willing to risk it all. But now, I know that you knew how I felt. You–"

"No, I didn't. That's the thing, Felicity." Rosie took her hand and moved it with hers into her own lap. "Do you remember the car ride that morning? I was asking you questions."

"A little. I was in a bit of a daze from what had just happened."

"I tried to figure out what had just happened to me. I asked if you had plans that night because, in the vision, we'd planned a date. I didn't press too hard because I didn't know what was going on, but I tried to find out if what I'd just seen had been reality; if you maybe did feel something for me."

"But I knew that Ami had just been in your house and that she'd probably told you how she felt. I froze up." Felicity nodded.

"I guess so," Rosie said.

"In my mind, you were with her, so I had to give up. I left not long after that, and we never talked about my feelings for you until long after you were married."

"How is that? We weren't married all that long," she joked.

Felicity smiled a little and said, "But I understand it."

"Does it help that I'm here now? I was wrong, and I know what I want now."

Felicity seemed to consider for a moment, but then she smiled a little .

"What's that? Remind me." She wiggled her eyebrows at Rosie.

"You," she replied. "Just you and me and that house, and maybe a ring on your finger one day."

"Maybe?"

"If you want that," Rosie said. "And if you get me one, I promise I won't lose it over the side of a ship."

"Oh, I'll get you one, but it's not coming off your finger once I put it there. You'll put some tape over it to keep it in place or wear a damn glove when you work, but it's not coming off."

Rosie moved until she had Felicity beneath her and stared down at her.

"I love you."

"I love you, too. And it's okay; it's okay that it took us a minute to get here." Felicity wrapped her arms around her neck. "But do you still have that thing? I wouldn't mind taking it for a test drive. Maybe I'll see what you saw, and it'll make more sense to me."

Rosie smiled down at her and replied, "No. I buried it beneath the pool I had built in the backyard of the house I just sold."

"You buried it? Why?"

"Because I have this unverifiable belief that its purpose was to bring me to you, and I didn't follow it once and paid the price."

"Then, how do you know–"

"Because I pressed the button again, and let's just say that it left me wanting in the end."

"What?" Felicity laughed.

"I think it showed me what I needed to see to let it go. Does that make sense?"

"What? No," Felicity said, laughing again.

"It showed me that I didn't need it to help me see my present or future because my present and future was sitting right in front of me." She kissed Felicity's forehead.

"Oh, my love." Felicity wrapped her arms around Rosie and held her tight.