CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Jeremey
Emmet was up to something.
I didn’t know what, but he was planning something, no question, and I was fairly sure it didn’t have anything to do with The Roosevelt Project for a change. We were still doing events on the weekends, but not as many as we had been—it was June now and the legislative session had been extended because they hadn’t voted on several key pieces of legislation, including the bill deciding mental health funding. We’d decided to keep up our lobbying efforts but tone them down ever so slightly so as to save our energy before the big vote, when we’d make another push. “Stay relevant but don’t drown the issue,” was what Kaya kept saying.
So what Emmet was so busy rushing around for, being secretive and flustered about, I had no idea, but he roped other people into it too plenty of times, and I’ll be honest, I was jealous. He whispered with Darren or David and even Sally and Tammy, and I didn’t know why or what for. When I asked him what was going on, he gave me the hand sign meaning he didn’t want to talk about it, but that upset me since he was talking to every other person in our lives about it, just not me.
Everyone else ran off on secret missions with Emmet, and I ended up sitting in the lounge or out on the playground equipment, where I ran into Stuart a number of times. I didn’t mind Stuart, not the way I know Emmet did. Stuart was younger than we were, but not by much. He had autism too, and he was even more nonverbal than Darren, more severely locked inside himself and unable to communicate. When we’d first moved into The Roosevelt, he’d mostly screamed in order to speak, but now he got right up into people’s faces, breathing heavy and staring into space beside their heads.
Stuart was intense, yes, and Mai often had to remind him to give me personal space, but it didn’t bother me to be with him. I have a soft spot for autistic people now, having made friends with so many, having fallen in love with someone with autism, though Emmet’s autism is so different. The thing is, Emmet is different, and he isn’t. Sometimes when I sit with Stuart, I feel as if I can see Emmet in him. I can’t help wondering if Emmet and Stuart aren’t more alike than they are different. I don’t know why I think that, but I do.
I half-waited for Emmet to comment on how much time I was spending with Stuart, but whatever he was working on had him too distracted to notice. I almost asked Emmet directly what he was up to. But then one day when I woke up from my nap, I saw a message from Emmet beside my bed, printed in the special font he uses for the notes he leaves for me.
Meet me on the roof, and bring Mai.
I frowned at the piece of paper. The roof? Of the building? Of The Roosevelt? I didn’t know we could go up there. How did I do that? But when I got out of bed, before I could think of who I would ask to figure this out, or before I could find my phone to text him, I saw another note, this one on top of a towel on my dresser.
Take a shower.
I smiled and picked up the towel, and then…well, I took a shower. This was an old game, Emmet telling me what to do, and I played it, because I knew if I kept following his commands, there would be new instructions, and eventually one of them would lead me to the roof. Indeed, when I got out of the shower, on the back of the door was a suit—not my Blues Brothers suit but another nice one, this one a soft gray with a pink tie. It wasn’t something I would have picked out for myself, but I appreciated it.
Wear this, the note said. So I did.
I followed notes all through the house, guiding me into shoes and cufflinks and putting a leash on Mai to bring her along as we went down the hall and to a door I had thought led to storage but it turned out opened to a set of stairs taking me to the roof. The stairs were creaky and dimly lit, making me uneasy, but as I neared the top I heard music playing, and when I opened the door, I saw little white lights, the type you put on Christmas trees, except these were all white even on the strands, and they were wrapped in tulle. They covered the archway by the door, some posts in the center, and as I came around the corner, I saw another arch, this one something someone had clearly put up, something that couldn’t possibly be on the roof on a regular basis. It had more white lights and tulle and a sort of sheet over the top, and fake ivy, and behind it the sun was setting, making the world appear as if it were set in a movie or a fairy tale.
Underneath the arch, wearing a suit matching mine, calm and handsome and more beautiful than anything I had ever seen in the whole world, was my Emmet.
He smiled as he saw me, a very Emmet smile, slightly crooked and too wide, his gaze fixed just above my head. “Hello, Jeremey.”
My heart soared. “Hello, Emmet. This is beautiful. But why are we on the roof, and why is it decorated like this? Are we having some kind of party?”
“I’ll explain it to you, but you need to come closer. I have something I need to tell you, and something I need to ask you.”
He led me to the edge of the building to gaze out over the neighborhood. My heart fluttered as my mind raced, trying to figure out what might be going on.
“Do you see the street down there, the intersection and stretch of road by the yellow house and the clump of trees by the green truck? That’s where we met at the block party.” Emmet pointed to the space, then to another section of the neighborhood. “And there’s your parents’ house, and my family’s house. Oh, and look, there’s the moon, over that tree.”
I blinked, certain he had to be wrong, but no, there it was, a pale half shape, hovering over a treetop, blue white and against the sky. “Wow. I didn’t notice it was there.”
“The moon wanted to come say hello, because this is a big day. All of our important places and things are close by to us up here. Bob has talked about making a rooftop greenhouse for The Roosevelt, and if he does, we could always come up here and see our important places. Except I want to make this roof another important place for us right now. I want it to be the place where I told you how much I love you and how much I always want you in my life, for all of my life.”
My insides went gooey, and I squeezed Emmet’s hand. “I always want you in my life too. I don’t ever want to be without you. I love you so much, Emmet Washington.”
Emmet kissed my cheek, a soft brush that made me want to swoon. Then he let go of my hand, went back to where he’d been standing when I came onto the roof, and pulled a small white bag from his pocket. “Mai.”
Mai’s ears perked up. She was trained to listen to Emmet’s commands too.
“Mai, take it.”
Mai checked with me, and once I set her free from her leash, she went, collecting the bag from Emmet.
“Go give it to Jeremey.”
She brought the bag carefully to me in her mouth, releasing it to me when I asked her to drop it. I opened it with shaking hands as Emmet closed the distance between us once more. The bag was tied with gold string, and when I undid the knot, I tipped the bag upside down and emptied the contents into my palm.
A pair of rings fell out.
Emmet took one of them and held it over the tip of the fourth finger of my left hand, though he didn’t slip it on. “Jeremey Andrew Samson, will you marry me?”
The world, already subdued, grew gentler still, so tender and fragile and perfect I wasn’t sure I could breathe. I stared at the ring hovering over my finger, felt the weight of its companion in my palm. Realized what Emmet had asked me, what was happening to me, that it was real, and my emotions were such an overwhelming sea I thought I might drown in them.
As always, Emmet was my anchor. He reached for me before Mai could sense the riot inside me, touching my arm with his free hand. “Did I do it wrong? I’m sorry. I tried to make it a proposal you would like.”
The idea that he thought I didn’t like this stirred me out of my frozen state. I shook my head, drawing a low, deep breath to calm myself before I attempted to speak. “I love it. It’s perfect. So perfect it overwhelmed me for a moment.” I squeezed my hand around the ring in my palm—Emmet’s ring, the one he had given to me—and drew another breath as I lifted my gaze to his, or rather I looked into his eyes, which were still focused above me. “Yes, Emmet. I would love very much to marry you. Thank you for asking me in such a wonderful way.”
He slipped the ring onto my finger, past the knuckle until it was snug in its place at the end, glinting in the twilight. “I measured your handprint to make sure the size would fit.”
I recalled the activity Sally had suggested a few weeks ago one Saturday, a handprint collage on the lounge wall, how they’d gently bullied me into making a handprint too, and I smiled to myself. “You had a lot of help, getting this set up.”
“Yes. I told you. I wanted to give you a proposal you enjoyed.”
Because Emmet wouldn’t have needed any of this. He would have been content to ask me at the dinner table, so long as we weren’t actively consuming food at the time. He truly had done this for my sake, down to asking Mai to bring me the ring. I was moved all over again, and had to pause to wipe tears from my eyes. “Here. Let me put your ring on you too.”
The rings weren’t gold. They were a kind of silvery color, and they had a wavy blue line across the middle filled with sapphires, like an ocean.
“There are bands that fit on them,” Emmet explained as I slid the ring on his finger. “For when we get married. But I wanted us to wear rings now, so we could think about being engaged each time we looked at our hands. I thought you would appreciate that part. And I would enjoy it too.”
He was correct. I did like it. I loved all of it, everything he was giving me. I love you, Emmet. “The rings are beautiful. Did you pick them out yourself?”
“Yes. At Ames Silversmithing. They said if you didn’t care for them, we can get different ones. But I thought I could guess which ones you would prefer and you would enjoy the surprise better than making the decision.”
“You thought right.” My heart swelled, so full I thought it would burst. “I love you so much.”
“I love you too.”
“May I kiss you, Emmet?”
He kissed me instead, leaning in to press his lips to mine, sweetly at first, then teasing his tongue against mine to kiss me more deeply. We had gotten quite good at kissing since we first started, knew how to do the dance with each other, and yet no kiss had ever been quite like this one: a kiss on a rooftop to seal our engagement.
Married. I was going to get married.
To Emmet.
The distant blare of a train horn cut through the moment, then sounded once more as the train came closer, and I lifted my head toward the source of the disturbance. Emmet turned as well, a look of pleasure on his face, and I laughed.
“You knew this train was coming, didn’t you? You timed the proposal to happen when it would come by.”
His smile widened, and he kept his gaze on the tracks, where the engine had appeared around the gap in the trees. “Not all of the proposal was for you.”
I put my arm around his waist, leaned on his shoulder, easing against him with careful pressure, letting my heart float into the clouds as my dog arranged herself on top of my feet and the train rolled slowly past. “I’m glad,” I replied, and settled in to watch.