She cries silently all the way home and all he can do is look over at her and then turn his eyes back to the road. She’s trying to pretend like she isn’t crying, but he can tell by the way she won’t look away from the window. He can tell by the way she’s holding her shoulders. He can tell by the way she hasn’t said a word to him since the almost proposal.
At the second to last stop light before the turn that makes the difference between his place and hers, it starts to rain hard and she says without looking at him, “I’m tired. Just drop me at my place.”
He grips the steering wheel and shakes his head, “Yeah, I can’t do that.”
“I’m tired, Jim,” she says and her voice is watery but forceful. “Please.”
He doesn’t respond, just keeps driving until they’re outside his building. She pushes the door open angrily and gets out, not even bothering to care about the pouring rain that’s coming down now. She’s standing by the door to his building, just letting herself become completely soaked while he gets his bag from the backseat and jogs across the parking lot to her.
He’s trying to think of something to say, something to make this better, to make her understand that he only has this one shot to do this and he doesn’t want it to be anything less than perfect. That he’s thought about Roy’s proposal and how it was probably out of nowhere in the front seat of a pick up and she deserves more than that. She deserves flowers and fireworks and romance. She deserves effort and not just impulse.
The elevator ride is six floors of silence. He watches her hair spring out in frizzy curls from getting wet. Any other time and he’d tease her about it, pull on one, kiss her with his fingers tangled in her messy wet curls until the door dinged. Now he just watches her, slumped against the wall opposite him, her eyes on the illuminated numbers.
Inside his apartment, she drops her purse on the table by the door with a tired thud. He moves to the kitchen, to grab a couple beers from the fridge, but she’s draping her jacket over the chair and toeing her shoes off in the middle of the living as she crosses to the bedroom without saying a word. The door shuts behind her.
He drinks both bottles down himself before he makes his way to the bedroom door.
She isn’t asleep. She’s just sitting on the edge of the bed still dressed. Her wet but drying hair hangs limp around her face as she stares at the wall. She doesn’t acknowledge his presence in the room, doesn’t move at all.
She’s turned on the bedside lamp on her side, but otherwise the room is dark.
He sighs and crosses the room, loosening his tie and undoing the first few buttons on his dress shirt. He hangs his tie on the closet doorknob and pulls his shirt from his pants. He glances over at her and she’s still just sitting there. But the fingers that are gripping the edge of the mattress fidget a little and she’s chewing her bottom lip.
As he turns to the closet to hang up his jacket, she says, “I’m not mad at you.”
He turns back around slowly, afraid that anything he does or says might cause her to close up again. For a second, she’s still staring at that beige wall, but then she turns her head and she’s looking at him for the first time in hours.
“I’m just- This is what Roy used to do. Promise me that things were going to happen and then I would keep thinking, ‘Oh, he’s going to do it now! It’s really going to happen this time!’ And then he wouldn’t. That sort of disappointment is so-”
He takes a few cautious steps towards the bed and only when he sees her shoulders relax a little does he sit down next to her. The bed sags under the added weight and it makes her fall into him a little. It’s unintentional, but it’s still warm and it’s still her and he feels reassured, like they really can get through anything.
She finally looks at him, her eyes moving over his face before settling back on his eyes. “And tonight I felt that sort of disappointment for the first time since I left Roy.”
He opens his mouth to protest, but she reaches her hand out to his arm to stop him. “And I know you’re not him. I know that. And I’m mad at myself for even comparing you two, because you’re so different. Roy would never even think about letting me move to New York for three months, but you, you’re- I don’t know. I just really thought tonight was it and when it didn’t happen-”
He kisses her before she can say anything else, pushing her hair out of her face. When her mouth opens under his, she tastes like rainwater and she’s shaking just a little and all of it makes his heart ache, because tonight really was supposed to be it.
They break apart, but she rests her forehead against his, keeping him close. Her hands are on his shoulders and she closes her eyes. “Don’t keep me waiting,” she says finally, quietly.
He nods and pulls his head back from hers, “I won’t.” He pulls the ring from his pocket, opening the box and setting it on the bed between them. He hears her suck in a breath as the diamond gleams dimly in the lamplight. He looks at her with the question in his eyes, because he’s pretty sure he doesn’t need to say it at this point.
She lets out a sudden burst of relieved laughter as she holds out her shaky left hand. He slides the ring onto her finger and thinks that the drip-drop of rain against the window is just as good as the pop of fireworks.
Author's Chapter Notes:
A/N: The good majority of this was written before I'd read any other post finale fics so any similarities to other fics are purely coincidental.
unfold is the author of 102 other stories.
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