Work Text:
The Apartment (2009)
The ring had been in Carol's sock drawer for forty-three days.
Not that she was counting. Not that she checked it every morning while Helen was in the shower, sliding open the drawer and touching the velvet box just to confirm it was still there, still real, still waiting for her to do something about it. That would be pathetic. That would suggest she'd spent $2,400 on a piece of jewelry she was too chickenshit to give away.
$2,400. Almost a month's rent on their apartment. The apartment with the orange flannel blanket Helen had insisted on keeping from their first place together, the one Carol had tried to throw away three times and Helen had rescued from the donation pile with the patient determination of someone who had learned that Carol's aesthetic preferences could not be trusted.
"It's hideous," Carol had said.
"It's ours," Helen had replied.
And that had been the end of that conversation, because Helen had a way of saying things that made Carol's objections evaporate. Helen had a way of making things theirs that Carol had never quite mastered.
Carol closed the sock drawer.
From the bathroom, she could hear Helen singing - off-key, as always, something from the radio that Helen had been humming for a week. Helen sang in the shower the way other people breathed: unconsciously, inevitably, without any apparent awareness that she was doing it. Carol had mentioned this once, early in their relationship, and Helen had been mortified.
"I don't sing in the shower."
"You absolutely sing in the shower. This morning it was 'Dancing Queen.'"
"It was not."
"It was. All four minutes of it. You did the harmonies."
Helen had not spoken to her for an hour after that, which was the closest Helen ever came to genuine anger. Now, eleven years later, Helen sang without shame and Carol pretended not to notice, and they had both silently agreed that this was one of the ways love worked - you stopped performing embarrassment for each other.
The water shut off. Carol moved away from the dresser, toward the kitchen, where she had already laid out the ingredients for dinner. Risotto. Helen's favorite. Carol's hands knew the recipe by heart: arborio rice, chicken stock, white wine, parmesan. She'd been making this dish for eight years, ever since Helen had mentioned, offhandedly, that her mother used to make risotto on special occasions.
Tonight was supposed to be a special occasion.
"What's the occasion?" Helen asked, emerging from the bathroom in sweatpants and a faded UNM t-shirt, toweling her hair. She surveyed the kitchen - the rice, the stock, the wine that Carol had already opened (for cooking purposes, she would say, if asked; she had already drunk half a glass) - and raised an eyebrow. "It's a Tuesday."
"Can't I make risotto on a Tuesday?"
"You can make risotto whenever you want. You just usually don't." Helen crossed to the counter, plucked a piece of parmesan from the cutting board, and ate it. "Special Tuesday?"
"It's just dinner."
"Mm-hm."
Helen's eyes were doing that thing they did when she knew Carol was lying. Soft and patient and faintly amused, like she was waiting for Carol to catch up to something she'd already figured out. Carol hated that look. Carol also loved that look more than almost anything else in the world.
"It's just dinner," Carol repeated. "Normal dinner. Regular Tuesday dinner. Stop looking at me like that."
"Like what?"
"Like you know something."
"I don't know anything." Helen stole another piece of parmesan. "I'm an innocent bystander. I'm simply here for the cheese."
Carol turned back to the stove and began heating oil in the pan. Behind her, she could hear Helen moving through the apartment - the soft pad of bare feet on hardwood, the creak of the floorboard near the window, the particular silence that meant Helen was checking her phone for work emails. Helen worked in publishing - acquisitions editor at a small but respected press - and was constantly fielding emails from agents and authors and marketing people who seemed to believe that 7 PM was an appropriate time to demand immediate responses.
"Anything interesting?" Carol asked.
"Marcus wants to move up the pub date on the Fernandez book. Marketing thinks they can catch the holiday market."
"Can they?"
"Probably not. But they're going to try anyway, and I'm going to spend the next two weeks managing expectations." Helen's voice was closer now; Carol could feel her presence behind her, the warmth of her. "What are you making?"
"I told you. Risotto."
"No, I mean - what are you making?"
Carol's hand stilled on the wooden spoon.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean you've been weird all week. Jumpy. You keep looking at me like you're about to say something and then you don't." Helen's hand found Carol's shoulder, squeezed gently. "Whatever it is, you can just tell me."
Helen. I bought a ring six weeks ago. It's in my sock drawer. I've been carrying it around in my head like a live grenade and every time I think about actually giving it to you I feel like I'm going to throw up.
"I'm not being weird," Carol said.
"You're being extremely weird."
"I'm being normal. This is my normal face."
"Your normal face doesn't involve staring at the rice like it owes you money."
Carol looked down. She had, in fact, been staring at the rice like it owed her money. The oil was starting to smoke.
"Shit." She lowered the heat, added the rice, began stirring with more force than necessary. "I'm fine. I'm just… tired. Long day."
Helen didn't say anything for a long moment. Then: "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay. You're tired. Long day." Helen kissed the back of Carol's neck, brief and warm, and stepped away. "I'm going to answer Marcus's email. Yell when dinner's ready."
She disappeared into the second bedroom they used as an office, and Carol was alone with the rice and the wine and the ring in her sock drawer and the particular crushing weight of her own cowardice.
Tomorrow, she told herself. I'll do it tomorrow.
Dinner was perfect.
The risotto was creamy and rich, the parmesan properly sharp, the wine (a second bottle, because Carol had finished the first one during cooking) exactly right. They ate at their tiny kitchen table, the one they'd bought at a garage sale in 2003 and refinished together over a weekend that had ended with more paint on each other than on the furniture.
Helen talked about work - the Fernandez book, the impossible marketing timeline, the agent who kept calling her "hon" even though Helen had asked her to stop. Carol talked about her writing - the novel she was struggling with, the characters who refused to behave, the nagging sense that she was wasting her time on something no one would ever want to read.
"Someone will want to read it," Helen said.
"You have to say that. You're contractually obligated."
"I'm not contractually obligated to anything. I'm telling you the truth." Helen reached across the table, covered Carol's hand with her own. "You're a good writer, Carol. Better than you think."
"I'm an unpublished writer. Those aren't the same thing."
"They're not mutually exclusive, either."
Carol looked at Helen's hand on hers. The familiar weight of it, the small scar on her index finger from a cooking accident in 2006, the silver ring she wore on her right hand that had belonged to her grandmother. Helen had worn that ring every day for as long as Carol had known her. It was part of her, like her off-key singing, like her patient silences, like the way she always knew when Carol was lying but usually chose not to call her on it.
Now, Carol thought. Do it now.
"Helen."
"Mm?"
"I need to tell you something."
Helen's hand stilled on Carol's. Her expression shifted - not alarmed, not quite, but attentive in a way that made Carol's stomach clench.
"Okay," Helen said. "I'm listening."
I bought a ring. I want to marry you. I know we can't, not legally, not here, but I want - I want -
What did she want?
She wanted Helen to be hers. But Helen was already hers, had been hers for eleven years, had chosen her every day since they'd met at that gallery opening in 1998 when Carol had been pretending to understand abstract art and Helen had caught her rolling her eyes at a canvas covered in what appeared to be ketchup.
"You think it's terrible too," Helen had said.
"It's clearly terrible. It looks like a crime scene."
"It sold for forty thousand dollars."
"That makes it worse."
Helen had laughed, and Carol had felt something shift in her chest - not falling in love, exactly, but the beginning of it, the first crack in the wall she'd spent her whole adult life building.
Eleven years later, the wall was rubble. Helen had dismantled it piece by piece, with patience and precision and a complete refusal to accept Carol's bullshit.
And Carol couldn't even ask her a simple question.
"Carol?" Helen's voice was gentle. "What did you want to tell me?"
I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Please don't leave me.
"The novel," Carol said. "I think I need to scrap it. Start over."
Helen's expression flickered, disappointment, maybe, or something else Carol couldn't quite name. Then it smoothed out, replaced by her usual calm.
"Okay," she said. "If that's what you need to do."
"It's not working. The structure is wrong, the characters are wrong, the whole thing is-"
"Carol." Helen squeezed her hand. "If you need to start over, start over. I believe in you."
And that was worse, somehow, than if Helen had argued. The easy acceptance. The faith Carol hadn't earned.
I almost asked you to marry me, she wanted to say. I've been carrying a ring around for six weeks and I couldn't even get the words out.
Instead, she said: "Thank you."
"For what?"
"For everything. For being here. For putting up with me."
Helen's smile was soft and a little sad, like she knew exactly what Carol wasn't saying.
"Always," she said.
They finished dinner. They washed the dishes together, shoulders bumping, hands brushing in the soapy water. They watched television on the ugly green couch, Helen's head on Carol's shoulder, and Carol thought about the ring in the sock drawer and the question she couldn't ask and the thousand tomorrows she was running out of.
Tomorrow, she told herself again, as they went to bed. Tomorrow will be better.
But tomorrow came and went, and so did the next day, and the next, and the ring stayed in the drawer, and Carol stayed silent, and nothing changed at all.
The Portland Trip (2011)
Carol had now owned the ring for two years, four months, and seventeen days.
She had stopped counting after the first year. Then she had started again. Then she had stopped again, because counting implied that she was keeping track, and keeping track implied that she had a plan, and she very clearly did not have a plan. She had a ring in a sock drawer and a recurring nightmare about Helen finding it and asking what it was and Carol having to explain that she'd been too pathetic to propose for over two years.
The ring had moved three times since 2009: from the sock drawer to a box in the closet (too obvious), to a hollowed-out book on the shelf (too dramatic), back to the sock drawer (at least she knew where it was). Carol had considered returning it approximately forty-seven times. She had driven to the jewelry store once, parked in the lot for twenty minutes, and then driven home without going inside.
The ring cost $2,400. It was currently worth significantly less, because Carol had worn it on her finger exactly once, alone in the bathroom, just to see what it looked like on her hand. It hadn't looked like anything. It had looked like a ring. A very expensive ring that was gathering dust in a sock drawer because Carol Sturka was fundamentally incapable of asking for what she wanted.
"You're brooding," Helen said.
They were in an airport - Albuquerque International Sunport, 6:47 AM, waiting for a flight to Portland. Helen's publishing house was sending her to a conference, and Carol had decided to come along because she had no deadlines, no obligations, and nothing better to do than sit in their apartment and think about the ring.
"I'm not brooding. I'm thinking."
"You're doing that thing with your forehead."
"What thing?"
"The brooding thing. The wrinkles." Helen reached over and smoothed her thumb across Carol's brow. "See? Brooding wrinkles."
"Those are just wrinkles. I'm forty. I'm allowed to have wrinkles."
"You're thirty-nine."
"I'm almost forty."
"You're not almost forty until you're thirty-nine and a half. You have four months."
Carol did the math. Helen was right. Helen was always right about things like this: dates and numbers and the specific details that Carol's brain refused to retain. Helen remembered their anniversary (June 14th, the day of the gallery opening, which Helen insisted on celebrating even though Carol maintained that they hadn't actually gotten together until three weeks later, after the second date, after the first kiss on Helen's doorstep that had lasted approximately forty-five minutes and resulted in Carol missing her bus home). Helen remembered Carol's birthday, her mother's birthday, the dates of every major milestone in their relationship.
Carol remembered the ring. That was about it.
"I'm going to get coffee," she said. "Do you want anything?"
"Tea. Earl Grey if they have it, English Breakfast if they don't."
"What if they only have Lipton?"
"Then I'll suffer in silence, as I always do."
Carol stood, stretched, and made her way toward the coffee kiosk at the end of the terminal. The airport was already crowded, business travelers in suits, families with screaming children, a group of elderly tourists wearing matching t-shirts that said PORTLAND OR BUST. Carol weaved through them, thinking about nothing in particular, and then thinking about the ring, and then actively trying not to think about the ring.
She had brought it with her.
This was either a very good sign or a very bad one, depending on how you looked at it. On the one hand: she had made a decision, taken action, moved the ring from the sock drawer to the interior pocket of her carry-on bag. On the other hand: she had been carrying a ring around in her luggage for the past three hours and had no concrete plan for what to do with it.
I'll propose in Portland, she had told herself that morning, while packing.
Why Portland?
Because it's romantic. Because it's away from home. Because Helen will be relaxed and happy and maybe I'll finally be able to get the words out.
You said the same thing about the risotto dinner.
The risotto dinner was different.
How?
Carol had not been able to answer that question, which was probably a bad sign.
The coffee kiosk was staffed by a young woman with pink hair and a name tag that said DESTINY, which Carol chose to interpret as either ironic or prophetic. She ordered a black coffee for herself and an Earl Grey for Helen - they did have it, miraculously - and stood waiting while Destiny made the drinks with the slow deliberation of someone who was not being paid enough to care about efficiency.
"Here for business or pleasure?" Destiny asked.
"What?"
"The flight. Business or pleasure?"
"Oh." Carol considered. "Pleasure, I suppose. My partner's going to a conference. I'm tagging along."
"Nice. Portland's great. Very... Portland."
"I've heard."
"Lots of good food. Good beer. Good bookstores." Destiny handed her the drinks. "If you're looking for a romantic spot, there's this rose garden in Washington Park. Great for proposals."
Carol almost dropped the coffee.
"I'm not - we're not - I wasn't-"
Destiny grinned. "Just a suggestion. You've got that look."
"What look?"
"The 'I'm about to do something terrifying' look. I see it a lot at this airport." She shrugged. "Good luck, whatever it is."
Carol fled back to Helen with the drinks, her heart pounding, her palms sweating, the weight of the ring in her bag suddenly unbearable.
A coffee kiosk employee named Destiny told me to propose in a rose garden. That's either a sign from the universe or evidence that I am projecting my anxiety onto innocent baristas.
"You're doing the forehead thing again," Helen observed, accepting her tea.
"I'm not."
"You absolutely are. What did the coffee person say to you?"
"Nothing. Small talk. Weather."
"The weather made you look like you're about to pass out?"
"I'm not about to pass out. I'm just - it's early. I didn't sleep well."
Helen's eyes did the thing. The soft, patient, knowing thing.
"Carol."
"What?"
"What's in your bag?"
Carol's blood went cold.
"What?"
"Your bag. The carry-on." Helen nodded toward it. "You've been guarding it like it contains state secrets. You checked the zipper three times before we left the house."
"I didn't-"
"You did. I watched you."
Carol's throat was closing. She could feel the panic rising: not fight-or-flight, exactly, but something worse. The animal terror of being seen. Of being known. Of having nowhere left to hide.
"It's nothing," she managed.
"It's not nothing. You've been weird for weeks. Jumping every time I walk into a room. Staring at me like you're trying to memorize my face." Helen set down her tea, turned to face Carol fully. "Whatever it is, just tell me."
The ring is in my bag. The ring I've had for over two years. The ring I couldn't give you in the apartment, the ring I've almost thrown away a dozen times, the ring that represents every single way I've failed to be brave enough for you.
"It's a receipt," Carol heard herself say.
"A receipt."
"For something I bought. That I might need to return."
Helen's expression flickered. Something crossed her face, not quite suspicion, not quite hurt, something in between.
"What did you buy?"
"It's… a thing. A purchase. You know. Consumer goods."
"Carol."
"It doesn't matter. Forget I said anything. I'll deal with it when we get back."
Silence.
Helen looked at her for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Then she picked up her tea, took a slow sip, and turned to look out the window at the planes taxiing on the runway.
"Okay," she said.
"Okay?"
"Okay. It's a receipt. For a thing. That you might need to return." Her voice was carefully neutral. "I'm sure you'll figure it out."
And Carol knew, with absolute certainty, that Helen knew. Not the specifics, maybe - not the ring, not the two years and four months and seventeen days - but the shape of it. The weight. The thing Carol kept trying and failing to say.
Helen knew, and she was choosing to let Carol keep failing.
It was the kindest thing she could have done. It was also, Carol suspected, the cruelest.
Portland was beautiful.
They walked through the city hand in hand, past food carts and bookstores and the kind of artisanal coffee shops that Carol usually mocked but secretly enjoyed. Helen's conference was in the mornings; the afternoons and evenings were theirs. They ate ramen in a tiny restaurant where they had to remove their shoes. They browsed Powell's for three hours and emerged with more books than they could fit in their luggage. They stood on a bridge at sunset and watched the Willamette River turn gold and pink.
"I love it here," Helen said.
"It's very... Portland."
"Is that a compliment or an insult?"
"It's an observation." Carol squeezed her hand. "I love it here too."
The ring was still in her bag. She had checked it fourteen times since they arrived. She had almost taken it out twice: once in the hotel room while Helen was in the shower, once in the rose garden that Destiny had mentioned, which was in fact very romantic and would have been a perfect place to propose if Carol had been capable of doing anything other than standing there like an idiot, pretending to admire the flowers.
"You're quiet," Helen observed, on their last night in the city.
They were in the hotel room, packing for the early flight home. Carol was folding a sweater and thinking about cowardice.
"I'm thinking."
"About what?"
About how I've wasted another opportunity. About how I had four days to ask you one question and I couldn't do it. About how you deserve someone braver than me.
"About the freezing," Carol said. "The egg freezing."
This was not a lie, exactly. They had talked about it - had been talking about it for months, actually, ever since Helen had mentioned, carefully neutral, that they weren't getting any younger, and Carol had agreed, equally neutral, that it might be worth considering options.
Carol had frozen her eggs three weeks ago. Twelve viable embryos, the doctor had said, stored in a facility in Albuquerque, waiting for a future that Carol wasn't sure how to imagine.
"What about it?" Helen asked.
"I don't know. Just thinking." Carol zipped her suitcase, checking the interior pocket one more time. The ring was still there. Of course it was. "Do you ever think about... what happens next?"
"What do you mean?"
"With the eggs. With us." Carol sat on the edge of the bed. "Where this is all going."
Helen stopped packing. She turned to look at Carol, and her expression was open in a way that made Carol's chest hurt.
"I think about it all the time," she said. "Don't you?"
Yes. Every day. Every night. I think about the ring and the question and the life we could have and I can't make myself reach for it.
"I want-" Carol started.
Helen waited.
"I want us to be okay," Carol finished. Weakly. Inadequately.
"We are okay." Helen crossed the room, sat beside her on the bed. "Carol. We're okay. Whatever's going on with you - whatever's in that bag you keep checking - we're okay. You can talk to me."
I can't. That's the problem. I've never been able to talk about the things that matter most.
Carol thought about the conversion camp. The summer she was sixteen. The way they had tried to teach her that wanting things - wanting women - was a sin, a disease, a defect that could be cured with enough prayer and punishment. She had learned, that summer, to hide her wants. To pretend they didn't exist. To protect herself by never asking for anything that could be taken away.
Twenty-three years later, she was still doing it.
"I know," she said. "I know we can talk. It's just-"
"Hard."
"Yeah."
Helen took her hand. "Whatever it is, whenever you're ready. I'll be here."
And that was the problem, Carol thought. Helen would always be here. Helen would wait forever.
But Carol couldn't keep making her wait.
Tomorrow, she thought, for the hundredth time. When we get home. I'll do it when we get home.
She didn't.
The Bed (2013)
On December 19th, 2013, the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples had the right to marry under the state constitution.
Carol found out at work - or what passed for work, which was sitting in a coffee shop pretending to write while actually refreshing Twitter every thirty seconds. The notification popped up on her phone at 2:47 PM: NEW MEXICO BECOMES 17TH STATE TO LEGALIZE SAME-SEX MARRIAGE.
She stared at it for a long time.
Then she went home and didn't mention it to Helen.
This was, Carol knew, insane behavior. This was the thing they had been waiting for, the barrier she had been hiding behind for four years. We can't get married anyway, not legally, so what's the point of asking? She had said some version of this to herself approximately one thousand times, usually while staring at the ring in its sock drawer (it was back in the sock drawer), usually while convincing herself that tomorrow would be better.
Tomorrow was here. The excuse was gone.
And Carol still couldn't do it.
Three days passed.
Helen mentioned the ruling once, casually, over breakfast: "Did you see the news? About the marriage decision?"
"Mm," Carol said.
"Historic."
"Mm."
Helen looked at her for a long moment. Then she went back to her toast.
They didn't discuss it again.
A week passed.
Carol's mother called, which she did approximately twice a year, usually on holidays and birthdays and occasions when she felt obligated to perform maternal affection. They had a stilted conversation about weather and health and Carol's writing, which her mother still referred to as "your little hobby."
"I saw on the news about the gay marriage thing," her mother said, near the end of the call. "In New Mexico."
Carol's stomach clenched. "Yeah."
"Are you and your... friend going to do that?"
Friend. After fifteen years, her mother still couldn't say girlfriend or partner or any word that acknowledged the reality of Carol's life.
"I don't know," Carol said. "We haven't talked about it."
"Well." A long pause. "It's your life, I suppose."
"It is."
"I just want you to be happy, Carol."
This was a lie, Carol knew. Or not a lie, exactly, her mother probably did want her to be happy, in the abstract way that people want good things for strangers. But Carol's happiness had always been conditional on Carol being a certain kind of person, and Carol had stopped being that person a long time ago.
"Thanks, Mom."
"Call me on Christmas."
"I will."
She hung up and sat in the silence of the apartment, thinking about all the ways her mother had taught her to be afraid.
On December 28th, 2013 - nine days after the ruling, one day before Carol's forty-first birthday - Carol and Helen went to bed early.
This was not unusual. They were both tired. Helen from a brutal week of end-of-year publishing deadlines, Carol from the particular exhaustion of avoiding an important conversation for nine consecutive days. They had eaten dinner (pasta, not risotto; Carol couldn't face risotto right now), watched an hour of television, and retreated to the bedroom with the unspoken agreement that sleep was more appealing than continued consciousness.
What happened next was also not unusual.
Helen's hand found Carol's hip. Carol turned toward her. They kissed - slow at first, then less slow - and then they weren't sleeping, weren't tired, weren't thinking about anything except each other.
It was good. It was always good, after fifteen years, which still surprised Carol sometimes. She had expected, when they first got together, that desire would fade. That they would become roommates who occasionally had sex, then roommates who rarely had sex, then just roommates. That was how it worked, wasn't it? The passion burned out and what was left was habit, routine, the comfortable absence of feeling.
That hadn't happened.
What they had instead was this: familiarity that deepened rather than dulled, knowledge that made everything better, the particular intimacy of knowing exactly what the other person wanted and giving it to them.
Afterward, they lay tangled together in the dark, breathing slowly, the sweat cooling on their skin.
"Hey," Helen said.
"Hey."
"Happy almost-birthday."
Carol smiled. "It's not my birthday until tomorrow."
"It's after midnight. Technically, it's today."
"Technically doesn't count."
"Technically always counts." Helen propped herself up on one elbow, looking down at Carol. In the dim light from the window, her face was soft, unguarded. "Forty-one. How does it feel?"
"Old."
"You're not old."
"I'm older than I was yesterday."
"That's true every day. That's how time works."
Carol laughed, surprising herself. Helen always did this: cut through Carol's gloom with something practical and obvious, something that made the darkness seem smaller.
"What do you want?" Helen asked. "For your birthday. I never know what to get you."
You. Just you. For the rest of my life.
"I don't need anything," Carol said.
"That's not what I asked. I asked what you want."
And there it was - the opening Carol had been running from for four years, four months, and twenty-eight days. The question behind the question. The door she had refused to walk through.
"Helen."
"Mm?"
"I need to tell you something."
Helen went still. Not tense, exactly, more like she was bracing herself, preparing for whatever Carol was about to say.
"Okay," she said. "I'm listening."
Carol sat up. Reached for the bedside table, the drawer, the small velvet box she had moved there three days ago in a fit of either courage or insanity.
The ring.
She held it in her hands, feeling the weight of it - not just the physical weight, but the weight of years. Four years of almost-asking. Four years of excuses and evasions and tomorrow will be better. Four years of carrying this question around like a stone in her chest, too afraid to put it down, too afraid to let it go.
"I've had this ring since 2009," she said.
Helen went very still.
"I bought it six weeks before that risotto dinner. The one in the apartment, with the orange flannel. I had the whole thing planned. I was going to cook your favorite meal, and then I was going to ask you-" Carol's voice caught. "I was going to ask you to marry me."
Silence.
"And then I didn't," Carol continued. "I couldn't. I don't know why. I just… every time I tried to say the words, they got stuck. Like there was something wrong with me, something broken, something that couldn't-"
"Carol."
"I brought it to Portland. In 2011. The whole trip, I kept thinking: today, today I'll do it, today I'll finally ask - and I couldn't. Every day, I couldn't. And you knew, didn't you? You knew something was going on. And you let me not say it, because you're - because you're you, and you're patient, and you never push, and I-"
"Carol."
"I'm sorry." The words came out ragged, torn. "I'm sorry it took me so long. I'm sorry I made you wait. I'm sorry I'm like this, that I can't just say things like a normal person, that everything is so hard-"
"Carol." Helen's hands found her face, cupped her cheeks, forced her to meet Helen's eyes. "Stop apologizing."
"But-"
"Stop." Helen's voice was firm but gentle. "I need to tell you something too."
Carol waited, her heart pounding.
"I've known about the ring for three years."
The world tilted.
"You- what?"
"I found it in 2010. The sock drawer. I was looking for that pair of wool socks, the ones you stole from me, and there it was." Helen's thumb stroked Carol's cheek. "I put it back. I never said anything."
"You knew this whole time?"
"I knew."
"And you didn't… you never…"
"I was waiting." Helen smiled, small and sad and infinitely tender. "For you to be ready."
"Four years." Carol's voice cracked. "You waited four years."
"I would have waited longer." Helen leaned forward, pressed her forehead to Carol's. "I would have waited forever, if that's what it took. You're worth waiting for, Carol. You've always been worth waiting for."
Carol was crying. She hadn't noticed when she'd started, but she was. Tears running down her face, dripping onto the velvet box in her hands, and Helen was wiping them away with her thumbs, murmuring soft things that Carol couldn't quite hear over the roaring in her ears.
"I don't deserve you," Carol managed.
"That's not true."
"It is. I've made you wait four years for something I should have asked in 2009. I've been a coward. I've been-"
"You've been scared." Helen pulled back enough to look at her properly. "You're allowed to be scared, Carol. After everything you've been through - the camp, your family, all of it - you're allowed to take time. You're allowed to need patience. And I have patience. I have so much patience for you."
"Why?"
"Because I love you." Simple. Certain. Like it was obvious, like it had always been obvious. "I've loved you since that gallery opening in 1998. I'll love you until I die. And I don't care if it took you four years to ask me. I care that you're asking."
Carol looked down at the ring in her hands. The ring that had lived in sock drawers and hollowed-out books and luggage compartments, that had traveled to Portland and back, that had waited almost as long as Helen had.
"I had a speech," she said. "I've written like fifteen different speeches over the years. They were all terrible."
"I'm sure they weren't terrible."
"One of them rhymed."
"Okay, that one might have been terrible."
Carol laughed, wet and shaky. "I don't remember any of them. I can't remember a single thing I planned to say."
"Then don't say what you planned. Say what's true."
What was true?
I'm scared. I'm always scared. I've spent my whole life being scared of wanting things, because wanting things means they can be taken away, and I've already had so much taken away. My family. My faith. The person I was supposed to be. I rebuilt myself from nothing, and you were there for all of it, and I can't imagine my life without you, and that terrifies me more than anything.
But I'm more scared of not asking than I am of asking. I'm more scared of losing you to my own cowardice than I am of being vulnerable.
So here I am. Asking.
"Helen." Carol opened the box. The ring caught the light from the window, glinting gold and small and impossibly significant. "I love you. I've loved you for fifteen years. I want to love you for the rest of my life. Will you marry me?"
Helen looked at the ring. Then she looked at Carol.
"Yes," she said.
Just that. Just yes. Like it was simple, like it had always been simple, like the four years of waiting had been nothing more than a pause before an inevitable conclusion.
"Yes?"
"Yes." Helen was crying too now, Carol realized. Both of them crying, both of them laughing, tangled together in the sheets of their bed on the first day of Carol's forty-first year. "Of course yes. It's always been yes. Did you really think I was going to say no?"
"I didn't- I wasn't sure-"
"Carol." Helen kissed her, soft and certain. "It's yes. It's been yes since 1998. It will always be yes."
Carol slid the ring onto Helen's finger. It fit perfectly. She had guessed at the size four years ago, had agonized over it, had ultimately just stolen one of Helen's other rings and taken it to the jeweler for measurement. The ring had been waiting for Helen's hand all this time. Now it was finally where it belonged.
"We can get married," Carol said, the reality of it hitting her all at once. "Actually married. Legally. In New Mexico."
"We can."
"The law just changed. Nine days ago."
"I know."
"You've been waiting for me to bring it up."
Helen's smile was gentle. "I've been waiting for you to be ready. There's a difference."
Carol thought about the risotto dinner in 2009, the words she couldn't say. She thought about Portland in 2011, the ring in her bag, the rose garden where she'd stood paralyzed with fear. She thought about all the tomorrows she had promised herself, all the excuses she had hidden behind, all the ways she had failed to be brave.
And then she thought about now: Helen's hand in hers, the ring where it belonged, the future spreading out before them like an open road.
"I wasted so much time," she said.
"You didn't waste anything." Helen squeezed her hand. "You took the time you needed. And now we're here."
"Here."
"Here. Together. Engaged." Helen's smile widened. "Future wife."
The word hit Carol like a physical thing: wife, the word she had been afraid to even think for so long, now here, now real, now hers.
"Say that again."
"What, wife?"
"Yes. That."
"Wife." Helen kissed her forehead. "Wife." Her cheek. "Wife." Her mouth, soft and lingering. "Get used to it. You're going to be hearing it a lot."
Carol pulled her close, buried her face in Helen's neck, breathed in the familiar scent of her - shampoo and skin and home.
"I love you," she said, muffled against Helen's shoulder.
"I know."
"I'm going to say it all the time now. Constantly. It's going to be annoying."
"I'll manage."
"I might also cry. Frequently. Without warning."
"You're already crying."
"That's what I'm saying. This is my life now. Spontaneous emotional outbursts." Carol pulled back, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "I'm a mess."
"You're my mess." Helen touched the ring on her finger, turning it so it caught the light. "My future wife mess."
"That's the worst sentence you've ever said."
"You love it."
"I love you. The sentence is terrible."
Helen laughed, bright and warm, and Carol laughed too, and they stayed there in the dark of their bedroom, holding each other, wearing matching ridiculous grins.
Outside, the December night was cold and clear. Inside, Carol was warm for the first time in four years.
"So," Helen said eventually. "When do you want to do it? The wedding."
"I don't know. I hadn't thought that far ahead."
"You had four years to think about it."
"I was busy being a coward. Long-term planning wasn't really on the agenda."
Helen snorted. "Well, we should probably pick a date. The county clerk's office is going to be busy, with the new law."
"Tomorrow."
Helen blinked. "Tomorrow?"
"Why not? We've waited long enough." Carol sat up, suddenly energized. "We'll go first thing. We'll get a license. We'll find someone to marry us. We'll-"
"Carol."
"What?"
"It's 1 AM. On your birthday. And you want to get married tomorrow?"
"I want to get married as soon as possible. I've spent four years not being married to you. I don't want to waste another day."
Helen looked at her for a long moment, her expression soft with something that might have been wonder.
"Okay," she said.
"Okay?"
"Okay. Tomorrow. We'll figure it out." She pulled Carol back down beside her. "But right now, we should sleep. If we're getting married tomorrow, I need to not look exhausted in the photos."
"What photos? I thought we were just going to the courthouse."
"We're still taking photos. This is our wedding, Carol. Even if it's just the courthouse."
"Fine. Photos. Whatever you want."
"What I want is for you to close your eyes and sleep."
"I don't know if I can sleep. I'm very emotional right now. Also possibly in shock."
"Try."
Carol closed her eyes. She didn't think she would be able to sleep - her mind was racing, her heart still pounding, the weight of the ring on Helen's finger somehow visible even in the dark. But Helen's hand was in hers, and Helen's breathing was slow and steady, and eventually, gradually, Carol felt herself beginning to drift.
"Hey," she murmured, half-asleep.
"Mm?"
"Thank you. For waiting."
Helen's hand tightened on hers.
"Always," she said.
And Carol slept.
The Courthouse (2013)
They got married on December 29th, 2013, at 10:47 AM, in the Bernalillo County Clerk's Office.
Helen wore an ivory dress that shifted to pale pink in certain light - Carol had noticed this three times already, once in the car, once in the hallway, and once just now, as Helen signed her name on the certificate and the overhead fluorescents caught the fabric at exactly the right angle. It was the kind of detail Carol would remember forever: the way Helen's dress couldn't decide what color it wanted to be, the way it seemed to blush when the light hit it, the way it matched the flush on Helen's cheeks when she looked up and caught Carol staring.
Carol wore a black suit she'd owned for a decade. She had taken off the jacket approximately fourteen minutes into the ceremony because she was sweating through the jacket and the clerk's office was inexplicably warm and she refused to get married with visible pit stains. The vest underneath was also black, which Helen had told her was "very dapper" and Carol had told Helen was "very I'm dying of heat stroke but at least I'll look good at my own funeral."
The officiant was a cheerful woman named Maria who had been performing marriages since 8 AM and showed no signs of slowing down. The witness was a clerk named Jerome - originally from Haiti, Carol learned, when he told them approximately seven times how happy he was to be part of their special day - who had already cried twice during the vows and was currently dabbing at his eyes with a tissue he'd pulled from his desk drawer.
"I now pronounce you wife and wife," Maria said, beaming. "You may kiss the bride."
"Which bride?" Carol asked.
"Both brides. Either bride. Just kiss, honey."
Carol kissed Helen. Helen kissed back. Jerome burst into fresh tears. Maria handed them a certificate that declared them, officially and legally, married.
"Wait, wait!" Jerome was already out of his chair, producing a bottle from somewhere behind the front desk. "We celebrate! I have champagne!"
The champagne was terrible.
Carol knew this the moment the cork came out with a sad, deflated pop instead of the triumphant explosion champagne was supposed to make. The liquid that poured into their plastic cups was the color of weak tea and smelled faintly of feet.
"It's been in the drawer for... some time," Jerome admitted, his accent thickening with emotion. "But today is special! Today is love! We drink!"
They drank.
Helen's face performed a complicated series of microexpressions that Carol interpreted as: This is the worst thing I've ever tasted followed by I'm going to be polite about it followed by Carol, if you say anything, I will divorce you immediately.
"Delicious," Helen said.
"Very... bubbly," Carol managed.
Jerome beamed. "I knew you would love it. Now - photos! We must have photos!"
"Jerome, you really don't have to-"
"I insist! You think I let the most beautiful couple of the day leave without photos? No, no, no." He was already producing his phone, gesturing them toward the middle of the room. "Stand here. Together. Hold your champagne. Yes, like that. Perfect."
Carol stood stiffly, clutching her plastic flute of terrible champagne, acutely aware that she was sweating and jacketless and about to be immortalized in someone's phone gallery looking like a funeral director who had gotten lost on the way to a wake.
"Smile!" Jerome commanded. "You are married! This is happy!"
Carol smiled. Or attempted to smile. The result, she suspected, was closer to a grimace.
"Beautiful! One more! One more!"
The flash went off again. Carol blinked.
"Now a fun one! Do something fun!"
Carol had no idea what "something fun" meant in this context. She turned to ask Helen, and that's when she felt it - Helen's fingers behind her head, making the shape Carol recognized instantly from a thousand childhood photos.
"Helen. Are you giving me bunny ears?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"You're giving me bunny ears. At our wedding."
"It's a V for victory. We won. We're married."
"It's bunny ears and you know it."
The flash went off. Jerome cackled with delight.
"This one!" he said, showing them the screen. "This one is the best!"
Carol looked at the photo. There she was: sweaty, without a jacket, holding a plastic champagne flute of foot-flavored liquid, with her brand-new wife making rabbit ears behind her head. Helen was mid-laugh, her ivory-pink dress catching the fluorescent light, looking like the happiest person who had ever existed in a government building.
Carol looked terrible. Helen looked radiant. It was, somehow, perfect.
"You have to send me that," Carol said.
"I send to both of you! I send right now!" Jerome was already typing. "You give me your emails. I send all the photos. You are my favorite couple today. My favorite couple ever, maybe."
"Jerome, you've known us for twenty minutes."
"Twenty minutes is enough! I see the love. The way you look at her-" He gestured at Carol, then at Helen. "The way she waited for you to take off the jacket because she knew you were hot. The way you kept looking at her dress. You think I don't notice? I notice everything. It's my job."
"Your job is filing marriage certificates."
"My job is witnessing love. The certificates are just paperwork." Jerome pressed his hand to his heart. "You two, you are the real thing. I can tell. Thirty years from now, you will still look at her like that."
Carol didn't know what to say. She looked at Helen - at her wife, her wife - and found Helen already looking back, her expression soft with something that made Carol's chest ache.
"Thank you, Jerome," Helen said. "For everything."
"You come back and visit! Bring photos of the honeymoon! I want to see everything!"
"We have not planned a honeymoon yet. We just decided to get married yesterday."
"Then bring photos of your life! Your house! Your cats!"
"We don't have cats."
"Get cats! Cats are good for marriage!" Jerome hugged them both - Carol stiffly, Helen warmly - and pressed another tissue to his eyes. "Now go. Go start your life. I have more couples to marry, and I need to stop crying before the next one."
They walked out of the courthouse into the December sunlight, blinking and dazed and still holding their plastic flutes of terrible champagne because neither of them had figured out where to put them down.
"Wife," Carol said, testing the word again.
"Wife," Helen agreed.
"We're married."
"We are."
"I proposed last night and we're already married. That has to be some kind of record."
"You proposed after four years of carrying a ring around. I think it balances out."
Carol laughed. She felt light. Lighter than she had in years, maybe ever. The weight she had been carrying for so long was gone, replaced by something that felt like hope.
"What do we do now?" she asked.
"Now?" Helen took her hand, laced their fingers together. The ring glinted in the sunlight. "Now we go home. Now we start the rest of our lives."
"That sounds very dramatic."
"It's supposed to be dramatic. We just got married."
"We got married in a government building with a witness named Jerome who made us drink champagne that tasted like someone's feet."
"And it was perfect." Helen squeezed her hand. "It was absolutely perfect."
Carol thought about the ring in the sock drawer. The risotto dinner. The rose garden in Portland. All the almosts, all the failures, all the tomorrows she had promised herself.
And then she thought about now: married, finally, to the woman she had loved for fifteen years. The woman who had waited for her. The woman who had always, always said yes.
"Yeah," Carol said. "It kind of was."
They walked to the car together, hand in hand, the winter sun warm on their faces. Carol was still holding the plastic cup. So was Helen. Neither of them mentioned it.
Behind them, the courthouse doors opened and another couple emerged - this time two men, both crying, both laughing, clutching their own certificate like it was made of gold.
The world was changing.
And Carol, for once, was ready to change with it.