“ M y gosh! This is gorgeous! Will it ever be open to the public?” Chloe whirls around the middle of the botanical center and research lab.
“Probably not. Good thing you have an in,” I tease.
To me, this place is neat, but it’s hardly gorgeous.
There are walls of growing plants and rows of different pots among computer stations, steel benches, and lab tables.
I walk away from Chloe, belatedly thinking about how her mood could affect dozens of ongoing studies, even though everything is on hold for a week with Spring Break.
But I’ll take her out of the lab area and into the lab proper in a second.
Just need one piece, one stalk that’s long enough and soft enough...
“What are you doing?”
“Just looking at the herbs. A large part of the research is going to be on botanicals for medicinal properties. NYU isn’t just throwing money around to make the place look pretty.
Botanicals are all the rage right now, trying to tie folk remedies to a reason they gained popularity.
Like the properties of oregano oil, for example.
” I pat an oregano plant with one finger and keep walking and talking casually, leading her out of the growing area, “The oregano plant is a powerhouse of flavanols, and quercetin...”
I yammer away, and Chloe listens, catching up and linking her arm through mine.
I talk and walk until we get to the walkway between the new lab and the new greenhouse.
Someone said a fountain is going to go here, but I don’t think it will.
We’re a satellite campus, and frankly, there’s probably some magical jiggery-pokery that got us a grant for this much of an expansion.
I can’t imagine they’re going to put in a fountain.
But there is a bench, one of those new green and brown benches made from fifty thousand recycled plastic grocery bags, or some such astounding number.
It’s a beautiful day. More trees are starting to really bud out.
There’s a dogwood next to us, but it’s bare except for tiny green tips on the lower branches.
“Sit with me?”
“Sure.”
We sit, with her head on my shoulder and my head on her head, and all is right with the world.
Or it will be in a few minutes.
“I smell rosemary?” Chloe sniffs the air and then my jacket.
“You would. Because Alban told me I should use this.” I hold up a sprig of rosemary I snapped off.
“For what, chicken dishes? Soup?”
“To make an offer that is binding and cannot be broken. I asked him to help me with a little idea last night when I ran into him at the Night Market. Actually, it’s a big idea, at least to me.
He told me rosemary is for remembrance, permanence, sincerity, and honesty.
So it’s perfect for this. Chloe O’Neill.
” I show her the flexible young sprig of rosemary, now tied in a circle.
With a soft grunt and a slide, I get to one knee in front of the bench, swallowing the lump in my throat that springs up when she puts both hands over her mouth, and her eyes shine.
“Will you make an unbreakable pact with me? Will you be my wife? I ask you to be my betrothed, and if you accept my offer, I cannot rescind it, nor ever love another, until death do us part.”
I hope those words are spell-y enough... Alban said rosemary is the herb to seal a deal, and he said all I had to say was that my offer was permanent—just like her offer to me.
If she rejects it—I don’t know what happens. Are we still engaged, but it’s sloppily one-sided?
Behind me, there is such a rustle and woosh that I stop looking at my beautiful goddess and whip around to see if a sudden windstorm is about to take us out.
It’s not wind. The rustle is the sound of the dogwood fast forwarding, the sound of hundreds of leaves opening at once, hundreds of white and pink flowers bursting open.
That’s a yes if I’ve ever seen one, but I wait, ring held out, heart in my throat.
“Yes! Yes, I accept your offer and vow. Until death do us part, I am yours, and you are mine!” Chloe cries, sliding her delicate finger through the circle. She cups my face in her hands and kisses me until the salt of her happy tears wets my lips, and I realize maybe we’re both crying.
Because I’m a sap.
But I’m the happiest sap on earth.
“Get off your knees,” Chloe says, tugging me up with a laugh.
“I have a better ring than that. I mean, I’m going to get you one. I thought... I thought maybe one of those rings that has the stones in a flower shape? And I thought... maybe an emerald?”
“Because I’m green?” Chloe laughs.
“Because you love green things—and I love you.”
She nods, looking at her hand. “You know this is real, right? Permanent? You can’t make offers like that and get out of them.”
“That’s exactly why I made it. I want to be ‘stuck’ with you. Bound to you. Betrothed, engaged, partnered with, married! All the synonyms. Want me to go on? I’m pretty sure there’s a thesaurus somewhere on this campus.”
I love her laugh, and I love it more now, because there is a note of happy freedom and incredulity in it that I haven’t heard before.
“No need to go raid the library. But I do believe I was promised a spot on a potting shed table?”
“Bent over it or up on top of it?” I ask in a low voice, more sure than ever that this is the right woman. Who else could I cry with, make the most poetic vows of my life to, laugh with, make stupid jokes with, and also be incredibly deviant and horny with?
My wife. My future bride.
“I think you’re my best friend,” I say when it clicks.
Chloe laces her fingers through mine and nods, excitement in her eyes, lips slightly parted in awe. “Yes! That’s what that feeling is. But not only your best friend.”
“God, no. That’s like, level one. Love of my life is level two.”
“What’s level three?”
“I don’t know,” I muse as we meander towards the potting shed down the path. “Wife and mother of my children?”
“Mmhm. Hey, if we have a daughter, can we name her Rosemary?” Chloe twists the circlet of herbs on her finger.
The little girl in pigtails and purple sneakers. Rosemary. She has a name, and it cements into my heart the second I hear it. My voice is barely audible as I whisper, “I love that.”
Hers is much louder as she squeezes my hand. “I love you .”