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Chloe is halfway through a perfectly tranquil afternoon nap when her dream of flying Ponyta is crudely interrupted by loud, unforgiving ringing. The hand that had been just gently playing with her hair stops at the noise, and Chloe groans confusedly at the bright space of her living room as her eyes wearily open.
“What’s that?” she mumbles, tone coming out as a complain.
Above her, Gary hums, barely looking up from his paperback. “It’s your phone, sweetheart.” As the words leave his mouth, a second ringing pierces through the apartment, and this time both Umbreon and Espeon—whose naps hand’t been interrupted till now—do stir at the noise, almost as irked as Chloe to be so rudely awakened. “Ah,” Gary says, slowly, almost bored, “it’s the idiot.”
Chloe has sat-up and found her phone as well, Goh flashes on the screen. Incoming call from Goh.
That’s enough to wake her for good. “Do you think…?” Chloe begins, letting the question linger in the air.
Gary catches it with no effort. “Must’ve,” he shrugs. He closes his book and moves to get out of the couch, brushing a kiss to Chloe’s eyebrow as he goes. “Good luck with that,” he says, half-teasingly, as he makes his way out into Chloe’s small balcony. She makes up the words, this better be good, and, idiot as Gary picks up his own call, the slide door closing behind him.
Chloe breaths out, expectant, and answers before the call bounces. “Hello?” she says, “Goh, hi!”
Then Goh says, Ash proposed, out of the blue and without as much as a greeting in reply, and Chloe feels waves of relief and happiness and finally wash over her like April showers. Fast, forceful, chilling in a good way.
“Oh, Goh,” she breaths out, choked with emotion. “That’s incredible! Congratulations! I’m so—I’m so happy for you both,”
Goh says thank you, and, I can’t wait to show you the ring. He chose so well, it’s perfect.
“I know it is,” says Chloe, sincerely and inconspicuous. “I can’t wait to see it on you.”
Goh tells her a little bit about the proposal, Ash had this whole speech, and I maybe thought he’d say something while we were at the meteor shower—I was a little—just a little! disappointed when he didn’t … but then we we got home… oh, it was perfect. He was very thoughtful.
Chloe smiles at his words as she looks ahead to her balcony. It’s a tiny thing, barely fits two people and it’s so filled with plants it hardly fits the one right now. Gary towers in it almost comically, and Chloe’s heart clenches at the way he distractedly runs a finger through one of the leaves of her devil’s ivy as he speaks. Delicate, careful. Thoughtful.
“I’m sure he was,” Chloe says, sighing and unsure of whether she’s in love with her friends being in love, or something else altogether. “He loves you a lot.”
Goh hums, “I know he does.”
They’re having dinner tonight at some fancy place Goh favors in the harbor, but they thought they might throw a little party with their families some-time soon, maybe in Pallet, Goh suggested, inviting her of course as well. Chloe hasn’t been back to Pallet in months. But she hasn’t needed to. Everything she wants from Pallet keeps showing up at her door.
“I’ll be there,” Chloe says, nodding even though Goh can’t see her. “And let’s catch up you and I some-time this week, yeah? I wanna hear more about your proposal!”
Goh agrees, and he jokes about doing good on her promise, and telling her before everyone else—well, they’d told their parents, but that was it. Chloe was up on the list. Ash is calling Gary to let him know too, Goh confesses, as if Chloe didn’t have a front-row seat to Gary’s many snide expressions, and the odd, yet very sincere occasional smile. I told him you’d probably let him know anyways, but—is he with you, today?
Chloe’s kept enough secrets from Goh over the past year. She’s hated it. But she also knew it was in the benefit of something greater. Of something good.
But, today, she’s merely being selfish. “No,” she lies, “I haven’t seen him in a while.” They’ve spent the whole weekend together. “But I’m sure he’ll be happy to hear the news!” she adds cheerily.
Gary is smiling a mega-watt smile now, he’s even laughing. That soft, sweet laugh of his that he’s got carefully reserved for his friends. Chloe counts herself lucky, for she knows she hears it more often than most.
Yeah, Goh says, and, let’s have lunch this week, maybe Tuesday?, in reply to her previous idea. She says she’ll text him to confirm but that yes, let’s do that, and they say goodbye with some more congratulations on her part, tell Ash congratulations as well! I’ll text him later, too.
When they hang-up, Chloe immediately thinks of all the people she’s gotta tell the news to. Lillie for sure, at the top of her list, then Serena, maybe, and Iris as well and—oh, do they maybe want to be the ones telling people? Ash and Goh are hardly the type to make public announcements, but, since this is so personal and all … she’ll ask Goh, just in case. But to Lillie she’ll definitely tell right away, they’d promised as much way back when, and Chloe knows her friends won’t be upset by this either way.
A few minutes later, Gary slides back into the room. His nose has turned pink from the chill, and he visibly sighs in comfort as the heated air of her apartment hits his face.
“That dumbass sure likes to run his mouth,” Gary grumbles. Chloe translates in her head: Ash had a lot to say, he was happy. “But it seems like it went well. Did Goh say anything interesting?” which means: Goh is far more articulate. Did you hear anything that I didn’t?
Chloe hums, pets Umbreon and Espeon as they make their way to her, heads perching on her lap for attention. “Pretty much the same. It went well. Goh is happy. He really loves his ring.”
Gary snorts, “he’d better. I drove that idiot to the edges of town to get it.”
“Wait—what? You knew about the ring?”
Gary must realize he’d confessed to that by accident, because he goes very, very still for a moment. But then he thinks, to hell with it, what does it matter any-more, if the ring’s no longer a secret.
Besides, this is Chloe. His Chloe. So, suave as ever, Gary shrugs and nods. “Yeah, I went with him to get it. Ages ago, though.”
“Oh,” Chloe says, processing this information and matching it with anything else she knew about the ring. Ash never did say much to her about it. It was beautiful, but she’d never though about where he’d gotten it, not really. She’d just assumed he’d seen the perfect ring, and gotten it. In all the time she kept it, she admired its turns and ridges many a times, but not the once wondered where had Ash gotten it?—she always did know, though, that it was something special. Something unique. And now, with Gary being involved, that made perfect sense. “Oh, I—Ash gave it to me… the ring, I mean. He gave it to me to safe-keep, this past year.”
Her confessionary tone sounds silly, because Gary wasn’t questioning her, but she’d felt urged to reply with honesty of her own. She kept her eyes cast-down, even as she heard Gary’s footsteps getting closer. It wasn’t until he physically tilted her chin up with his hand that she looked at him again, her green eyes searching for some reproach at the secrecy.
They didn’t owe that to each other, but—
“That explains how he didn’t lose it,” Gary says, and then laughs. Sweet, full of himself yet humble. That’s who Gary is. “You’re a good friend,” he compliments, and then he offers a hand to her, to help her stand, and as an invitation to dance. “Wanna practice?” he says, playful.
“Practice?” Chloe asks as she stands. Both Umbreon and Espeon have jumped on the couch, and decided to resume their precious nap there, ignoring their trainers in the benefit of the warm cushions in the warm apartment, shielded from the cold Vermillion Autumn winds.
Gary puts one hand to her waist in a well-practiced motion, the other one holds her hand. He leads and, unconsciously, Chloe follows. It’s always easy for them to fall into step, if it’s with each other.
“Dancing,” Gary replies, as if they weren’t waltzing already. The tune plays only in his head, but Chloe knows it, too. They do this often enough. Gary looks at Chloe as if she were something special. As if they were something more than friends—really good friends—who share a bed on occasion. “Do you have a date for the wedding yet?” he asks.
Chloe knows it’s a joke. But she also knows Gary well enough to know he’d never just assume her company. He wouldn’t take her for granted like that. Chloe almost wishes he would, though. Because then, that would mean they are something sure, something safe and certain and then, that would mean she could let her heart run free with all the love that’s been bubbling in her for the past who-knows-how-many-months. That means she wouldn’t have to conceal how she feels, or pretend she hasn’t fallen as hard as she has.
She meets Gary’s eyes, same viridian that had caught her attention that night in Hoenn. They’re as honest as ever. And Chloe knows she could reach out and Gary would meet her halfway. He’d kiss her, tell her it’s all right, that he loves he—but she’s not there yet. She can’t say it yet. And Gary deserves more than a declaration founded in the fear of cowardly loss.
So she meets Gary’s eyes, same viridian she’s seen a thousand times by now, and smiles that bright, cheery smile people love her for, and Gary more so than most. She twirls in his arms as the dance goes on, imagining herself doing the same at Ash and Goh’s wedding.
There’s only one answer to Gary’s question, and she utters so as they take another spin around the room: “I do.”