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one
The coffee cart just off One Hogan Place is never not busy, but on a beautiful summer day like this, Amanda can’t bring herself to mind.
“Hey, how you doing?” she says, stepping up to the window and peering inside. “Can I get a couple of coffees? One regular, the other with two sugars. Thanks.”
As she moves off to the side to wait, the cop in her can’t help but do a visual sweep of her surroundings. Her eyes fall on a petite woman reaching up to grab her order from the vendor, the thick accordion file folder tucked underneath her arm slowly slipping on the silky fabric of her blouse.
She darts forward and catches the folder before it hits the ground.
The woman whirls around, her braids brushing across her shoulders. “Hey, nice reflexes. Thank you,” she says, accepting the folder with a smile.
“No worries,” Amanda says, the corners of her lips quirking upwards. She feels her phone vibrate in her pants pocket and whips her blazer back to fish it out, missing the woman eyeing the flash of badge on her hip as she turns away to pick up. “Rollins. Hey, Liv. …Bellevue? Yeah, tell Fin I’ll meet him there. Just gotta drop something off first. Okay, bye.”
She’s forking over some cash and taking the two cups when she hears, “So you’re Rollins.”
She turns around warily to face the woman from earlier. “Sorry, have we met before?”
“No,” the woman says, shifting her folder from one arm to the other, “but I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Amanda stares at her, confused.
It doesn’t click until she says, “I hope he’s happy now.” The with you hovers silently between them, and Amanda swallows, understanding.
She thinks of how his eyes light up whenever he sees her, even when they’ve only been apart an hour; how he wakes up every morning reaching for her if she’s not already in his arms, like he wants to be sure he isn’t dreaming; how the deeply etched lines on his face smoothen as he cuddles up with Jesse and Billie to read them a bedtime story, silly voices and all; how, when he kisses her, they wordlessly share in the knowledge that the past month can easily turn into forever.
“He is,” she promises softly to the woman he may not have seen eye to eye on about marriage or kids, but she’s sure loved him just the same.
The woman nods curtly, goes to hail a cab. Coffee in hand, Amanda goes to see Sonny.
two
Sonny wishes they hadn’t parted the way they did, hurt simmering in the air in the aftermath of their ugly exchange of words, but the 10-minute recess had been up, and he only had the short walk back to the courtroom to figure out how to salvage their case.
He spends the rest of the day trying to reach her. His Can we talk? texts go unanswered, and when he squeezes in a visit to the 16th, Kat tells him he just missed her, that she and Fin may have found someone else to testify for him tomorrow.
Turns out they do, and this woman who’s come forward might even be a better witness than the one who’d lied on the stand that morning. So he works later than he’d like, prepping her with Liv, and leaves his phone on silent, the screen blinking to life inside his briefcase every time he misses Amanda’s call.
By the time he slips quietly into her apartment, it’s way past the girls’ bedtimes, and there’s a good chance she’s turned in for the night, too.
Instead, he finds her on the couch, clad in a pair of sleep shorts and his ratty old college tee. “Hey,” she offers, biting her lip.
“Hi.” He loosens his tie as he crosses the room, heartened by how she scoots to make room for him, then cants her body towards his. “Didn’t think you’d still be up.”
She lifts her shoulders into a shrug, reaching out hesitantly with one hand to wrap her fingers around his wrist. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“Listen, Amanda, about today—” he begins.
“I’m sorry,” they both blurt out, voices overlapping. They laugh shakily, relief coursing through their bodies as he wraps his arms around her.
“I was afraid you weren’t going to come by,” she admits, pulling away slightly to look at his face, and his heart breaks knowing just how much she means it.
He plants a playful smooch on her nose before reminding her of the promise he’d made to her the night of Fin’s non-wedding, when he’d tried to be cool about her invitation to come over. “I told ya, you’re not getting rid of me that easily—not then, not today, not ever.” He squints. “Was that our first official fight?”
“I don’t know, you were pretty upset last week at how I was ‘manhandling’ your cast-iron skillet,” she teases, dodging the finger he means to poke into her side.
She catches his eye, sees how his expression has suddenly sobered. “Hey, are we good?” he asks.
She leans in, gives him a long, slow kiss, and flicks a look up at him through her lashes, hands still cupped on his cheeks. “You tell me.”
“Y’know, Rollins,” he says, a dopey grin still on his face, “I could’ve sworn my speech said that partners fight and make up, not make out.”
“That’s enough out of you, Counselor,” she murmurs before sealing her lips to his once more.
three
Soon as the cab pulls to a stop, Sonny thrusts a wad of bills at the driver and tells him to keep the change as he climbs out.
He’s not late, exactly, but he’d planned on being here a lot earlier. And he would’ve, had it not been for Ms. Hadid doling out a brand new case to him last minute.
He hurries up the steps and heads inside the museum, keeping his eyes peeled for Jesse in the sea of first graders.
He spots her anxious face a split second before she sees him, and watches guiltily as her expression turns into one of relief. He makes a beeline for her, lowering himself to the marbled floor so he can give her a hug.
“You made it!” Her voice is muffled from her face being pressed into his suit jacket.
“Promised you I would,” he says, pressing a kiss onto the crown of her head before straightening up. “Did I miss anything? Did you see the T-Rex without me?”
She giggles and shakes her head, sending her blond pigtails flying.
“You’re just in time,” Jesse’s teacher confirms, coming down the line to hand him a pair of tickets with a smile.
Jesse takes his hand as they follow the rest of the class into the exhibition in the next hall. He loves seeing her like this, brown eyes bright as she listens with rapt attention to Clara, their guide for the day. Meanwhile, he tries to ignore the way his heart swells every time she tugs at his hand to point out something on display, or looks over with her mouth agape to check if he’d caught Clara’s latest crazy animal fact.
The field trip is pretty much perfect, until a little boy comes up to Jesse just to say, “Thought you didn’t have a dad.”
Caught off-guard, Sonny physically takes a step back just as a man with a stricken face hurries over and hisses, “Connor.”
Jesse, though, is unfazed. “This is my Uncle Sonny. Actually, he’s my godfather,” she says, emphasizing the first syllable, “so he’s like a father, but even better, like God.”
Sonny swallows his laughter, makes a mental note to tell Amanda that the children’s catechism classes they’d gone back and forth about might actually be doing Jesse some good.
“Oh,” Connor mutters, abashed, “I want one of those.”
Sonny shoots an apologetic look at Connor’s father as Jesse pulls him away to see the dinosaurs before he can correct what she said.
And if his impression of a dino roar comes out a little strangled as they gaze up at the T-Rex fossil, well—who can blame him?
four
Taking care of a sick Sonny Carisi, she finds, is no different from taking care of Jesse or Billie when they’ve come down with something.
And by that, she means he’s being a complete baby.
At first, he doesn’t even want to admit he’s sick. “Just allergies,” he says nasally, his nose stuffy after five straight sneezes that make Billie jump every time.
He waves away her suggestion to order in instead of going through the trouble of whipping something up for dinner, even though the way he creakily makes his way around the kitchen looks to her like a preview of what life will be like for them when they’re old and—well, grayer.
And when he can’t bring himself to eat any of the chicken parm he finally manages to make, his watery eyes are so pitiful, she can’t bring herself to tell him a smug I told you so.
The girls aren’t used to seeing Uncle Sonny so un-Uncle Sonny-like. She assures their worried little faces that he’ll be just fine, tells them she’ll be right back, and helps him off to bed.
“‘Manda,” he slurs, his eyes already shut soon as his head hits the pillow, “m’sorry.”
She shushes him gently. “Just rest, Dominick.”
He’s out cold until she rouses him later that night to take some medicine.
“Do I have to?” he whines, and she rolls her eyes.
“It’s cherry-flavored,” she says helpfully, bringing the spoon closer to his mouth.
He grumbles, but opens up anyway. When the syrup hits his tongue, his face contorts, and this time, she has a pretty good idea of what he was like as a boy.
She can't resist egging him on. “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” she drawls sweetly, screwing the cap back on the bottle.
His eyes slit open to shoot her a feeble glare.
Amanda cackles inwardly, and moves to scoot off the bed.
“Where you going?” he asks pathetically, reaching for her wrist. “Don’t leave me.”
She sighs, recognizing he’s even clingier when he’s sick. “Okay, okay, I got you. In sickness and in health, right?” She freezes the second the words come out of her mouth, and side-eyes Sonny, noticing he’s become very still, too.
“We’re not married, Rollins,” he croaks, and clears his throat. “At least, I don’t think we are. How much of that stuff did you slip me?”
“Not married,” she confirms, her heart suddenly beginning to pound, “yet.”
“Was that a proposal?” he jokes, eyes glazed with both sickness and wariness as he tries not to get his hopes up.
She licks her lips, considers it. “Y-yeah,” she says finally, breaking into a smile, “I guess it was. Marry me, Dominick?”
He huffs out a laugh, and she can hear the wheeze in his breathing—or maybe it’s his breath hitching, like hers. “Yeah. Yeah, ‘Manda, I’ll marry you.”
She curls up next to him. As she runs a soothing hand over his sweaty forehead, she thinks about how six months ago, he’d gifted her with his words.
Soon, she’ll get to give him hers.
five
In the spring, they stand before their family and friends, promise to love and cherish one another, and seal their vows with a kiss.
“Thought it’d feel different,” she muses after the ceremony as they sway together on the dance floor. “Y’know, getting together, then getting hitched.”
“Not different, necessarily,” he agrees, “just—better, all ‘round.”