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The nostalgic scent of apple pie wafts through Caleb's Skyhaven home.
Wetting a towel, you wipe the flour from your face and shrug your powdery apron into the laundry basket. In your clean clothes, you rest on a seat in his spacious kitchen, letting the soft evening sunlight fall across your face.
Making good birthday memories had never been Caleb’s priority, always too busy with work or training or other people to pay any attention to himself. You’d lost count of the times Gran had sent you to bed before he finally came home for the night, trudging inside to find a candlelit cake sitting alone on the dining table. It was only after the explosion that you’d started celebrating his birthday the way you should have all along: he’d come home early, put his phone on silent, and wouldn’t lift a finger.
With your enthusiasm and scarily strict instructions, slowly but surely, the good memories were replacing the bad.
And with any luck, today would be the best of them all.
He had never refused a gift you’d given him. Even if he hated it, he’d pretend the opposite, just like he did the first time you bought his present with your own money. The girls at your elementary school had been raving about a new dollhouse, so you’d scrambled together all the coins in your piggy bank to buy one for Caleb. And when he’d pulled the sparkly purple mansion out of the gift bag, he’d only faltered for a second before grinning and wrapping you in a hug.
Back then, he’d indulged your naive anticipation, accepting even the most questionable of gifts with gratitude.
But today, your gift is something else—something more. Something he couldn't pretend to like and accept with a selfless smile.
You thought you'd be nervous—thought you’d chicken out, thought you wouldn't have the guts to risk the day you’d reclaimed for him by doing something so bold. To wager a love you’d fought so hard to cultivate.
But it was easy to be with him.
You’d danced around each other when you'd reunited three years ago. But unsure stares had turned to shy embraces, and those had turned to carefree kisses.
You love him. More than you ever thought you could.
And if his answer isn’t the one you want to hear, you’ll love him all the same.
Beep! Beep!
The shrill ding of the oven shatters the kaleidoscope of flashbacks in your head. Pausing your absentminded spins on the bar stool, you gingerly take the pie out and set it on the cooling rack. Sliding your oven mitts off, you carefully unwrap your helpers for tonight: the silly little apple mascots Caleb had drawn of you both when you were little—a way to get you to eat more fruit. With a soft smile, you set them aside for later and hop back onto the stool, fiddling with the small navy box on the island.
5:32, reads the sleek wall clock. He’ll be home early tonight, per your nonnegotiable demand. And until his warm voice calls out his arrival, you’ll endure his absence with thoughts of him.
June 13th was a historically bad day.
Prying eyes, summer jobs, and air emergencies…so many distractions that Caleb could hardly call them that anymore. Not outliers, not accidents, just…normal. It was normal for his birthday to never truly be his.
And sometime, somehow, he’d become okay with that. Until the last few years, there hadn’t been much in his life for him to celebrate, after all. What should he have toasted to? The time the whole neighborhood had thrown a party at Gran’s house, and he’d barely seen you the whole night? The time he’d had to cover a slacker’s shift and couldn’t make it home until after the candles you’d lit for him had already fizzled out? The time he’d been legally dead and unable to even give you a call?
Yes. June 13th was a historically bad day.
As his aircraft rises from the Fleet’s hangar and into the sky, Caleb breathes a heavy sigh he’d been holding in since noon. At the request of his superiors, or maybe some kiss-up recruits—all he knows is that he didn’t ask for it—the administrative assistants had planned a lackluster birthday party for him that afternoon. His subordinates had been all but forced to attend, and their empty smiles and hollow well-wishes had only made him want to get back to you sooner.
Tonight would be better, he was sure of it. Because tonight was one of the rare nights when you were all his.
He’d only been apart from you for 10 hours, but that was 10 hours too long. He never woke you up before he left for the day—you deserved to sleep in—so the only bit of you he’d had today was the half-page letter you must’ve snuck into his uniform in the middle of the night. Don’t worry about today, you’d written. Enjoy it. You’ll be home before you know it, and then, I’ve got you.
He can’t wait to hold you in his arms. To have your scent envelop him as you thread your fingers through his hair. To taste the tart apple pie you’d baked for him the last two years—every birthday since the explosion.
He remembers the first time like it was yesterday: coming home weary from a long day at work to find you in his kitchen, covered in flour and nose-deep in a hastily printed recipe. You’d shooed him away until the pie was ready and cooled, then presented it to him bashfully, ordering him not to judge.
The crust was burnt, but he'd finished it all in just a couple days. Yes, because it was good underneath the charred edges, but mostly because you made it. For him.
The extra miles he’d had to run all week were worth it.
When the familiar landing pad comes into view, Caleb’s hopes are as high as his plane in the sky. He touches down like he always does, quickly running through his mental checklist, and hurries down the ramp.
A breeze rustles through the air. It’d rained earlier—a brief, capricious storm—but the gray clouds had made way for a hazy pink sunset.
Reaching the patio, he scans his thumbprint on the buzzer, waiting impatiently for the system’s recognition. It comes after a few seconds, the access panel lighting up bright green, and Caleb steps through the doorway, eager to see you on the other side.
“Baby? I’m ho—”
Before Caleb can finish his greeting, you barrel into him, wrapping your arms around his torso in excitement. His happy laugh sounds more like a giggle as he twirls you around the foyer.
“Looks like someone’s happy to see me. What’s the occasion, I wonder?”
“I was testing your reflexes,” you mumble into his uniform. “Nice to see your age hasn’t caught up with you yet.”
“With you keepin’ me on my toes all the time, I’d say I got a few good years left in me,” he teases, gently ruffling your hair. “Have you been in here all day?”
“Mhm. I made the pie and I’ve been working on…other things,” you answer vaguely.
“Oh, the pie. I almost couldn’t tell you made it without you all covered in flour.”
Pulling back from his hold, you glare up at him in exaggerated annoyance. “You just redeemed your birthday freebie. Anything else you say today is fair game,” you warn.
“Okay, okay, I’ll be quiet,” he relents, and you nod your approval.
Circling around him, you stand on your tiptoes to tap his back twice. Caleb understands immediately, used to carrying you back to his car after your longer dates. As soon as he squats down, you climb onto his back, and he rises to full height effortlessly.
“I’ve never heard of anyone being used for transportation on their own birthday,” he jokes, placing his hands under your knees for stability.
“Nuh-uh. This is so you don’t see anything you shouldn’t.” Meticulously, you cover his eyes with your fingers. “The kitchen is a no-fly zone until I say otherwise. I’m just here to make sure you don’t trespass. Now, three steps forward,” you order, squeezing his sides with your legs like a horseback rider.
Caleb chuckles and follows your instructions, but before you can keep steering him, he finds his way to the living room sofa all by himself.
“I made sure there weren’t gaps between my fingers—you couldn’t see anything! How did you…ugh, never mind. Of course you did,” you grumble as he gently deposits you on the sofa.
When he sits by your side, his purple eyes are open and twinkling at you. “You forget they did blindfolded cockpit tests at the Academy. This was child’s play compared to that.”
“What can’t you do,” you say flatly, failing to hide your fondness. “The pie is cooling. But in the meantime,” you add, reaching sneakily behind an apple cushion, “I wanted to give you this.”
The mid-size box is imperfectly encased in space-themed wrapping paper. Between the two of you, Caleb had always been the better gift wrapper; he could always get the creases right, but you figured you couldn’t ask him to wrap his own birthday present.
Taking the gift from your hands, he smiles at the tape plastered all over the box but tactfully refrains from commenting. “You know you didn’t have to, pip-squeak. A night with you to myself is enough for me.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” you tease, knowing he’ll try to protest the second the words leave your mouth. And when he does, you cut him off. “Open it, baby. I think you’ll like it.”
He frowns at you, still not appreciating your joke, but does as you say. Messy as it is, the wrapping tears off in one piece, and Caleb lifts the box lid to reveal a dusky orange binder. Immediately, he recognizes it as your old scrapbook—the one that’d practically been your prized possession growing up.
Carefully, he flips through it. The first few pages are just as he remembers: Caleb, age 12, concentrating on a model airplane you’d given him. A stacked clipboard in his hand while Caleb, age 14, helps you practice for the school spelling bee. You licking the spoon while Caleb, age 17, makes brownies to celebrate your stellar report card.
Warmth blooms in his chest at the familiar photos. But it’s the new ones that make his heartbeat quicken.
The seventh and eighth pages are filled with moments from the past three years. Moments that he, for all his vigilance, hadn’t even known you’d captured. In the first, he’s lounging on this very couch, watching his necklace glint in the lamplight. In the next, he’s fixing his crooked Fleet hat in the mirror.
His eyes flit to the largest picture, filling up the bottom half of the seventh page. Taken last year, according to the date scrawled on the film. You’re both in bed, entwined bodies outlined by the dim night-light. And wrapped securely around your waist is Caleb’s arm—his metal arm. He’d done maintenance on it that day, he recalls. It’d been a particularly rough session, and despite his reluctance, you’d walked him back to his room and laid him down on the bed. He’d stopped his protests when you’d crawled in beside him.
Of course, he remembers that day. But he never expected you to. For you to want to. But as his gaze lands on the caption, spelled out in swooping letters under the photo, he knows he’d been wrong.
My Caleb.
Inhaling sharply, he turns his searching gaze to you.
“You always snuck into my room and pulled it out to tease me. Even when you came home on your breaks, until I got mad at you for it. And then the last few times you visited, you never brought it out again,” you start, fiddling with the sleeve of his uniform.
He runs his thumb across your handwriting.
“That day…it was tucked away in my nightstand, all the way at the back of the house. So, the firefighters were able to save it. And for a while, this and your necklace…your trophies and a few of your clothes…they were all I had of you. But then you came back, and you didn’t know, and I’ve been adding more.”
“You kept it all this time?” he asks, but the awed question is more like a statement.
You give him a bittersweet shrug.
“Are you sure you want me to have it?”
“It’s yours,” you whisper, willing a smile to your face. “You can take it to your office. Flip through it to break up the bad days.”
He smirks wryly. “So every day, you mean.”
“Maybe. But yes, it’s yours. I don’t need it as much now that I have you beside me. With me. In the way I want.” Looking down in a mixture of shyness and anticipation, you spread his fingers apart and squeeze them shut again, bashfully waiting for his reaction.
Setting the binder aside, he pulls you into his lap. “Thank you,” he murmurs, voice hoarse and earnest. “For keeping our memories. And for trusting me with them.”
When you bury your face in his neck, strong arms encircle your waist, his hands rubbing up and down in soothing strokes. For several minutes, you stay just like this, breathing each other in until the rises and falls of your chests sync.
And then, the upbeat melody of your phone timer slices through the perfect silence.
Your head pops up like a meerkat’s. “Oh, yay! It’s ready,” you cheer, starting to climb off of him.
But Caleb’s hands grip your hips, holding you in place. “Can’t we stay here for a while?” he rasps, throat bobbing with longing. “I know the birthday boy. He won’t be mad if the party starts a little late.”
You scoff at his attempt and wriggle out of his grasp. “It may be your birthday, but we’re still following my schedule.”
“Of course,” he sighs, trying to suppress the curl of his lips. “Shouldn’t have dared to think anything different.”
“That’s right. Now stay in here while I put the toppers on! No peeking,” you yell, strolling into the kitchen.
He cocks his head playfully. “No peeking, huh? Alright. I’ll give you…ten seconds.”
“Ten seconds? What do you mean ten sec—”
“One,” he calls, the smirk evident in his tone.
Ten seconds to arrange a proposal. Nine, now.
Your stroll becomes a scurry.
“Two, three.”
Fumbling with the apple toppers, you center them on the pie, sinking the bigger one’s foot a bit too far into the goop between the braided crust. Whoops.
“Six, seven,” he counts with tantalizing slowness.
Okay. Okay. The last touch: the ring. With a shaky breath, you retrieve the box from the drawer you’d hidden it in and pull the ring out, carefully settling it around the red apple’s tiny arm.
“Ten! Officially breaching the no-fly zone. Hold your fire, please!”
When Caleb finally enters the kitchen—he’d walked slower than normal to give you more time, you noticed—a golden pie greets him on the island. Perched atop it are figures of the two apple mascots he’d created—one red and one green, one big and one small. His face lights up in flattered recognition.
“Thanks, pip-squeak. It looks great and smells even better,” he smiles, reaching up to grab two plates from the cabinet.
“Thank you, but…I worked so hard on the design! I think you should really take a closer look!” you prod, stomach flipping with sudden nerves. But even through the waves of nausea, you’ve never felt so sure.
Entertaining your enthusiasm, he sets your plates down and leans over the pie, giving it an overexaggerated inspection.
“Yep, this latticework is professional quality. You might have a career in—”
Caleb stops.
Freezes.
He freezes because he sees, draped loosely over the arm of the bigger apple, a shimmering platinum ring.
A ring that looks like it’d fit the thick curve of his finger.
His eyes don’t leave the silvery band. Not even when he starts trembling.
But after several tense moments of you holding your breath, he turns back to you wearing a mix of emotions: confusion, surprise, hope, love, fear, disbelief. You count them all. You welcome them all. Giving him time before you take a step toward him.
But Caleb takes a step back.
It’s a stumble, really, the way his knees almost buckle in shock. Eyes blown wide and darting all of your body, pleading for some kind of explanation.
You falter at his retreat. But before the blight of rejection can spread through your chest, he takes two rushed steps forward, as if compensating for his mistake. Guilt joins the myriad of expressions on his face.
You clear your throat. “…So? What do you think?”
“…Huh?” he splutters.
From the corner of your eye, you spot his hands twitching at his sides, and you regain the strength to tease him as they clench and unfurl. This is Caleb. “Well if you don't want to accept, I’ll just—”
“No!” he rushes, snapping out of his daze and pulling you into him. “No. It’s just…I…is this what I think it is?” The question is soft, barely more than a whisper, and his voice breaks at the end. He swallows.
Cupping his cheek in your hand, you nod. Slowly. Deliberately.
A darling red blooms under his faint freckles, and you have to fight to contain your giggle. He looks like a strawberry.
A small, confused noise, almost like a lamb’s bleat, escapes him as he gulps again. Tenderly, you raise your other palm to his face and wiggle it lightly, just like when you were kids. “Don’t be nervous. What do you have to be nervous about? It’s just me.”
Between your steady hands, his lips move in a pout. “Just…do you mean it?” he asks, head drooping toward the floor as if he’s afraid to hear the answer.
“I do.”
At the implication behind your words, Caleb draws a sharp inhale. Trembling hands enclose your wrists, and shining violet eyes search yours frantically.
“You want me to be your…” He trails off abruptly, as if choking on the word. Your heart is beating too fast to be healthy, but you’ll be calm for him. He needs this. He needs you.
“My husband,” you finish for him. “My big, strong, beautiful husband who thinks way too little of himself if he can't see what a catch he is,” you smile. “I love you for a lot of reasons. More than I can count. But the first is that you make me feel safe—safe enough to do this. So, if you’ll have me,” you drawl playfully, trying to balance out his flurry of emotions, “I’d like to marry you, Caleb. And if you won't…” you lean in, whispering conspiratorially, “I guess I’ll just end up alone, then. Because there’s no one else for me.”
There’s no one else for me. He’ll like that. He’ll like it so much, it felt almost cruel to lure him with the line. But you meant every word.
Until now, you’ve been purposely delicate. Not moving too much or too fast, letting him process and think and feel. And when he collapses in your embrace and buries his head into your shoulder, you know you made the right call. Someone so strong, so, so fragile.
You can’t imagine how self-conscious he feels. He’d gotten better about it after it brought you to tears last year—he’d kicked himself out to sleep on the couch—but he still tried to hide his vulnerability from you.
And now, he’s here: the man who wouldn’t even let you see him when he had a cold, sniffling in your arms because you want to marry him. But he fell into you because he needed your comfort, and you’d never withhold it from him.
“What’s wrong?” you coo, threading your fingers in his soft brown strands. “Did I upset you? Should I not have asked?”
He tries to speak, but salty tears scald his throat. With a deep breath, he tries again, and the first word is firm despite his shuddering shoulders. “No. It’s not that. I…I’m just frustrated. I should've done it first—I’m so sorry I didn't do it first. Please let me do it—I’ll make it up to you,” he whines.
You kiss his hair. “You have nothing to make up for. I’m just glad I got to catch you off guard for once—you're always ruining my surprises.”
Gently, you guide him to the nearest bar stool and slightly lift his head. He blinks quickly, but the movement only sends a tear streaking out of his glistening eyes—like morning dew on a field of lilacs. He curses when he feels you wipe the wetness off his cheek, more clumsy apologies falling from his lips, and his frustrated rambling starts before you can shush him.
“I always wanted this…when I imagined it…I wanted it to be happy. It should be happy, I should be happy, I-I’m so damn happy, pip-squeak,” he breathes, a shaky, self-deprecating laugh escaping. “I love you. More than I ever thought I’d be able to tell you. And I only ever hoped that—that you’d give me the chance to show you how much. I never expected….”
You return your hands to his damp cheeks. He looks down, inhales, and looks up again. “People don’t usually do these things. Not for me. And now I’m ruining it and being selfish, ‘cause after all those years of watching you, of wanting you…I just can’t believe that you’d—God, I’m sorry, pips.”
“Hey, hey. Look at me. I wanted to do this for you, Caleb. And you know what’s weird?” He shakes his head in your hands. “I wasn't nearly as nervous as I should’ve been. Even if you say no”—he blanches—“I’ll still be glad I asked. Because you deserve it. To have someone care for you, to have someone trust you, to be able to react how you want to and feel how you want to and say no to them if you want to. The ring is yours if you want it. But so is the choice,” you murmur, your own voice wobbling as you smile down at him. “I wanted to do this. Dreamed about it. For you. So you have nothing to be sorry for.”
The uncertainty that flickers in his eyes is quickly drowned by admiration. He nods slowly, your hands moving with the rise and fall of his chin.
“Although…” you continue, side-eyeing the drooping pie toppers. “An answer wouldn’t hurt. The pie filling is like quicksand. I need to rescue the ring before Sunny Apple sinks.”
Your words win a chuckle from him, and he tenderly presses your foreheads together—a good luck gesture from your childhood, used when one of you was about to do something nerve-wracking. After a moment, he pulls away to cup your face, surveying, admiring, committing every detail to memory.
Caleb looks into your eyes with his still teary ones. “Yes,” he murmurs. “Forever with you isn’t something I could refuse. But nothing will change about the way I love you—it’s always been to the fullest. This just shows you think I’ve earned you.”
Whole body sagging with relief, you collapse onto his seated frame, hugging him as tightly as you did when he came home tonight. This close together, your pulses touch, and their matching thuds echo in your ears as tears of your own slip onto his skin.
You pull away first, mumbling through tear-sealed lips. “Um, the ring. I should put it on, right?”
“Right,” he whispers, gaze refusing to leave your face.
Nodding, you wipe your eyes and face Sunny Apple, who, despite being buried to the waist in pie filling, still holds the ring valiantly in the air.
Willing steadiness into your fingers, you lift the ring off the topper’s thin brown arm and turn back to Caleb, who’d been watching the exchange fondly.
Smiling, you take his left hand in yours, running your thumb over the back of it in a small, lazy circle. And with a final look into his violet eyes, now alight with mirth and intrigue, you slide the platinum band down to the base of his ring finger.
“Happy birthday, Caleb.”
“Are you sure you don’t wanna wear mine?” Caleb asks, coming up to stand behind you in the mirror.
In the 30 days since his birthday, you’d heard the question about as many times. He hadn’t hesitated to order you a ring of your own, custom-made from the finest jeweler in Skyhaven. But the process wasn’t quick, and the sight of your barren hand irked him—especially when his was so beautifully adorned.
“Yes, I’m sure. And stop calling them from your Fleet line to ask if they’re finished yet! They’re scared of you,” you giggle, falling back into him.
Staring at your left hand in the glass, he frowns deeply, and you swear you see his eye twitch. “But it’s empty. We’ve been engaged for a month now, and you don’t have anything to show for it.”
“I have you to show for it,” you flirt, leaning up to kiss his cheek. “Now, let’s take a picture before we go to dinner! I’ll add it to your album when we get back.”
When you move to leave his arms, Caleb tightens his hold, keeping you in his firm embrace. Instead, you hear the bedside drawer open and shut, and a familiar device floats over to you before you know it.
“What a convenient fiancé I have,” you quip, plucking your camera from the air.
“You can go ahead and start sayin’ ‘husband,’ you know. Practice for the real thing.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Now smile!”
When the photo develops, two objects on Caleb’s body glint in the evening sunlight.
A necklace and a ring.