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It takes Bernie forever to buy her a ring.
They already have rings of course, just like they have a venue—at least until it reschedules twice more and finally cancels altogether. And though the rings don’t get canceled, don’t move from their spot, two small velvet boxes enclosing simple gold bands in the back of Serena’s sock drawer, Bernie has clearly decided that Serena needs an engagement ring too.
Bernie has this thing she does when she finds a new project. She devotes herself to it entirely, turns all of her incredible focus and intellect towards that one thing, delves in and becomes entirely determined to do it as perfectly as possible. Serena’s seen it before, most notably when they first got together and Bernie took on learning how to have excellent lesbian sex with singular zeal. A project from which Serena benefited immensely. Since the rooftop proposal, romantic gestures have apparently become the focus du jour and from what Serena’s seen the learning curve is much steeper on this one.
This project is much more reminiscent of the time in Spain when Bernie decided that they absolutely needed garden boxes and that she had to be the one to build them. Cue weeks of research, so many tools and supplies bought that Serena’s fairly certain they could have bought the boxes already made for a third of the price, and, eventually, Serena sewing up a nail gun puncture wound. Months later they had probably the most over-engineered garden boxes in the country.
This feels eerily similar even if Bernie isn’t sharing the play by play of research and investment with her. Rather Serena has been regularly walking into rooms as Bernie hastily tries to minimize or swipe away from open browser windows filled with diamonds and has had the grace to pretend her eyes simply don’t work in those moments. Serena does find it adorable how furtive Bernie has been about it even as she worries that she’s going to spend far too much money on something far too flashy. She never expected Bernie to go all in on this of all things. She had gotten used to the calm and unexpressed stasis of the past months—a wedding, yes, but without the fuss. The language of pensions and legal arrangements the tip of an iceberg of unexpressed feelings. Unexpressed not out of fear or uncertainty but because they didn’t need to put it into words for it to be real. Because they knew what they were to each other without it. Or so Serena thought.
But now it’s rooftop proposals and clandestine ring searches and Bernie showing her listings for houses by asking if this is the kind of place where Serena can see them building their life together instead of wondering if the foundation is solid or if it has enough bedrooms. Not bad but different. And because Bernie hasn’t actually told her about any part of this new focus, this new project, she doesn’t feel like she can comment on it.
She does her best to ignore it instead, throws her energy into caring for Jason and Guinevere and arranging for the rest of their belongings (and more than a few cases of wine) to be sent to them from Spain. She stays busy, does everything in her power to ignore the little nugget of unease in the base of her stomach because her mind’s default response is to worry on it constantly and that simply won’t do. She has nothing to worry about, she and Bernie are happy, settled, comfortable. She tells herself to focus on that instead.
Serena is late to the first showing which puts them behind schedule for all of them. A schedule she made, mind, though Bernie is nice enough not to point that out. She’s spent the morning with Jason, helping him with rehab and between the effort of that and a series of nights where she just hasn’t been able to sleep well she’s exhausted. She lets Bernie lead the way through the houses, carry the bulk of the conversation with the realtor, feels guilt at that because she’s usually the gregarious one, the one making the plans and executing them and coordinating with everyone.
She isn’t her most generous with the houses they see either. Maybe it’s because she’s tired, maybe it’s something else, but as she and Bernie murmur back and forth about what they think she finds herself endlessly critical—from ugly kitchen backsplashes to leaky bathroom faucets to single-pane windows, she sees issues everywhere and comments on all of them. By the time they get to the last house she’s aware that she’s in some sort of snit, one of those moods where you don’t know where it came from or why but you just can’t pull yourself out of it.
She tries to think of something nice to say but somehow “those crown mouldings look nice” comes out dry and sarcastic, may as well have been those crown mouldings look dingy . Which they do. On the drive back to the flat they’ve been renting, Bernie is quieter than usual, withdrawn, and if Serena were thinking clearly she would have realised by now that she’d fucked up.
“I take it you didn’t see anything you liked?” Bernie asks once they’re hanging their coats on the hooks by the front door. Serena sighs, follows her through to the tiny living room, wonders when this little flat got just so cramped and small.
“The one on Melrose wasn’t bad,” she manages. Tries to sound generous. Ends up sounding anything but.
“I thought it was quite nice.”
“Oh come on! That dump?”
“I wouldn’t go that far…” Bernie’s words die away, swallowed up by Serena’s vocal list of just what was wrong with the house on Melrose—from the pale yellow siding to the creaky shutters on the second floor.
Bernie doesn’t respond and for some godforsaken reason Serena doesn’t stop. She goes through each place in turn, eviscerates the decor, the structure, the neighbourhoods, the streets. They’ve done this many times, lambasted the worst of the houses they’ve seen over full glasses of wine, sharing gales of laughter. But that was always the duds, and rationally these houses were anything but, and it was together and shared and this isn’t, yet Serena can’t seem to stop. She doesn’t notice—ignores, maybe—how quiet Bernie has gotten, how her usually expressive face has stilled and she can’t stop until—
“Serena,” it’s too quiet, choked out almost. “Serena,” again louder and finally that stops her in her tracks, makes her turn around, look Bernie in the face and realize just how badly she’s fucked up.
“I,” she can’t say she’s sorry. She just can’t.
Bernie takes a deep breath, seems about to speak and then takes another. “My therapist,” she begins and Serena is shocked. She of course knows that Bernie goes to therapy, knows she has a therapist here in Holby, knows she did video appointments while in Spain, but they never talk about it. Bernie never even calls it what it is, has always chosen to tell Serena she has an appointment and disappear for an hour or more. But here she is, pushing through, “My therapist and I have talked about that, when, um, when I’m in conflict, when I get pushed too far, I withdraw.” She pauses and manages to let out a single shaky honking laugh, “who could have guessed that I run away when things get bad.”
“Perish the thought,” Serena manages, hopes it comes across as supportive, kind, rather than scathing.
“Well, I, I can feel myself withdrawing, right now. And I need to take a break, and,” she swallows hard, “I was hoping we could go for a walk, together, but not talk about this. Maybe not talk at all?” She looks scared now, face tensed in a way that Serena has learned in the worst possible way is the first indication of a Bernie about to bolt.
She can feel the worst part of her, the part that’s been monologuing for so long, wanting to say no but she bats that thought away. “Of course.” She could never say no to Bernie, especially not to this Bernie: brave and terrified and trying oh so hard.
They put their shoes and coats on in silence, head out the door and both naturally turn left towards their favourite park, the one where they push Guinevere on the swings and Bernie keeps track of the daffodils tentatively beginning to bloom. The walk was a good idea, Serena can feel herself calming down, is beginning to really come to terms with what a bitch she’s been all day. She immediately wants to say something, to apologize, or explain, even though she can’t really begin to understand why she was acting the way she was. But she remembers Bernie’s ask that they walk in silence, remembers the tremble in her voice and the look on her face, and knows she needs to swallow the words for now.
They walk past the park, up the road with the good view, and then they turn back towards the flat, somehow so in sync they don’t even need to talk to say “turn here” or “let's head back now”. And then Serena feels Bernie’s chilly fingers grab hers, turns her palm and lets Bernie hold it firm. She glances up toward Bernie, sees the almost smile tugging at the corner of her mouth and knows they’ll be okay. She smiles back and lets her head fall to the side, gently nudging Bernie’s shoulder. She feels Bernie squeeze her hand and squeezes back. The silence between them, as chilly as the brisk February air at first, is suddenly warm; comforting.
When they get back to the flat, Serena goes into the kitchen and starts the kettle. They talk very little, more murmurs than speech as Bernie finds some biscuits and Serena makes tea.
It’s only once they’re both seated at the little kitchen table that Serena is finally willing to break the silence.
“I’m sorry.”
“I forgive you,” Bernie says. “Thank you for agreeing to the walk.”
“Of course.” Serena wants to say something more but she doesn’t really know how to contextualize any of her feelings from the past day so she doesn’t. And since when was Bernie the level-headed reasonable one in a fight? When did Serena become the one who couldn’t say the right thing at the right time? She doesn’t want to force Bernie to bear more of the load here, so she tries. “It wasn’t really about the houses.”
Bernie looks at her, squints, “no shit, Sherlock.”
That’s enough to make Serena laugh and Bernie joins her and any remaining tension between them dissipates so quickly it feels like the room itself let out a massive sigh. Serena wonders how she could have fallen in love with someone who has such an atrocious laugh and then as always immediately wonders how she could not have.
And then across the tiny table is too far from Bernie for her liking so she’s standing up and walking over and kissing Bernie slowly and gently, letting Bernie tug her into her lap, running her fingers through Bernie’s hair.
They stay like that for a long while, consumed by each other, leaning into the deep comfort of being together and close and oh so loving.
Finally Bernie pulls back, kisses Serena gently on the cheek. “When you figure out what it was about, I’ll be here.”
“Thank you.” At once all she can say and not at all enough.
The next day Bernie goes to her weekly therapy appointment and Serena ends up arm deep in a box of books, searching for the journal that she seems to never need until she’s lost it. She finally digs it out, thick parchment-like pages bound in maroon leather, because if she’s going to own a diary of sorts it may as well be the most beautiful one she could find. She runs her hand down the cover and then opens to the first page, slowly flipping through the past entries.
It’s a ritual, almost, to start by looking at where she once was. She writes in it so rarely that it’s lasted ages, since right after she finished med school. She soon finds the more recent bits. There’s an entry from soon after Bernie started working at the hospital, the incipient crush so clear in hindsight. One right before Bernie left for Kiev, her eyes catch on a line could I be… gay? A couple from after Bernie came back. Then a few from after Elinor’s death, another a year or so later about Bernie. Her breath catches in her throat when she realizes the most recent entry is from when she was told Bernie was dead. She can remember writing the entry, can see the places her tears blurred the ink, and can also remember the peace it brought her, the connection she had still felt. She smiles at that, she had been right. And now she has Bernie back, has a whole lifetime with Bernie ahead of her. She likes that she can trace Bernie through this journal, can see the marks she’s made on Serena’s life since the start, through the pain, the joy, the revelations.
She starts writing slowly, working through everything that’s happened recently. She can feel the wisps of each event coming together. Jason being hurt, their hurried return to Holby, the wedding being moved and then canceled. She’s always thought of journaling as a sort of weaving; separate threads coming together over and over again until she can step back and look at a completed tapestry, the whole story laid bare—finally knowable.
“Can we talk about yesterday?”
Bernie looks up from the other end of the sofa, from the murder mystery she’s been buried in for the better part of the hour. “Yes, of course.” She pushes her glasses up onto her forehead, looks at Serena and smiles, leans forward a little and offers a hand for Serena to hold, somehow so able to know what Serena needs.
“I think, since the proposal on the roof, I’ve felt…” Serena breaks off, pauses, notices how Bernie just does that reassuring squinty thing with her eyes and squeezes her hand. “Well, I’ve noticed your, um, recent online shopping,”
“Oh?” Bernie looks a bit embarrassed by that and Serena decides to forge ahead.
“And, it’s not that it’s bad or anything, but I sort of liked how it was, it felt comfortable, you know? Just sort of saying that the wedding and everything was practical, it was easy. And now, the proposal, and an engagement ring, it just feels… I feel as though you’re trying to do things over again, like start from new and, well, I kind of liked the old.”
“Is this you telling me you don’t want an engagement ring?” Bernie asks, not accusing, not blaming, simply asking. Open and honest.
“No!” And Serena didn’t know until that exact moment how much she actually wanted a ring. “No, I would love a ring. Though I do demand that it isn’t ugly.”
Bernie laughs, “veto power. Roger.”
“Yes, but, I, I think I’ve been frustrated because it felt like you were trying to erase the old, like starting new and doing over meant that the old way wasn’t good enough. And I don’t want to forget the past. I mean, all of it, as bad and messy as it was sometimes. I didn’t want the new to eclipse it.”
“Darling I don’t want to forget it either. I don’t think moving forward means we have to forget the past. I want to… honour the past. I just, well, I know I haven’t always been the best at, um, saying things, how I feel. And I want to do that more. Hence,” she blushes a little, “rooftop proposals and diamond rings.”
“New with the old.”
“That’s right.”
“But not trying to do things over or better.”
“Oh Serena,” Bernie shifts forward, kneels beside Serena and leans in to kiss her gently. “It doesn’t get better than this.”
The ring is beautiful, at the end of the day. A simple gold band with an elegantly placed diamond and Bernie’s promise that she absolutely did not spend three months salary on it.
“You realize that now we’re unemployed, three times zero is zero.”
“Oh shut up, you know what I mean.”
They end up buying a house on Melrose, though not that house on Melrose. Two blocks down, no yellow siding, no creaky shutters. They dissolve into giggles every time they walk past the other one.
After three months of a running joke of “shall we?” every time they pass the courthouse and half-heartedly looking for new venues, Serena declares that she wants to elope. They get married in Bridport, on the edge of a tall cliff, accompanied only by the sound of the waves crashing below. When it’s over they run along the beach, shoes in their hands, not caring a whit as the water soaks their clothes. They hold hands and drink champagne from the bottle, a toast to everything that brought them here and everything that is yet to come. And when Bernie sweeps Serena’s legs out from underneath her, immediately submerging her in the icy water, all Serena can think is that Bernie was right. It absolutely doesn’t get better than this.