Seeing how everyone was looking between him and Marcus—their thoughts obviously going to where mine had immediately gone, judging by their expressions—Remy scowled at his best friend. “Fix this now.”
Sighing, Marcus walked over to the kids and shuffled them around until the sign made sense.
Marry Me.
My heart jumped, but I had one thing holding me back. “Is that for him or me?” I gestured with my thumb at Remy, who let out a loud growl.
“Woman—”
Raising an eyebrow, I shot back, “Man!”
Taking a step toward me and drawing my attention away from the asshat next to me, Marcus sighed. “It’s for you. From the moment I saw you and first felt the emotional hit, I knew you were it for me. I don’t regret you standing me up on our first date—”
“I was called away for work.”
“—anymore, because fate works on its own timeline, and it wasn’t our time back then. It is now, though. Will you marry me, Addy?”
It was like someone had deafened me as I thought about how to reply. No one was making a sound, not even the kids, and it was kind of eerie as they waited for my response.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find pretty words to give him or how to say something that’d pack a punch and even hint at how happy and emotional I was at that moment. Hell, even saying ‘yes’ was a problem, and it only got worse when I burst into tears.
“She’s leaking,” Remy bellowed, backing away from me.
“Ah, balls,” Nonna said loudly, and then she was patting me on the back a little bit too hard. “There, there. Now stop being a wimp and answer the poor man.”
“I’m not being a wimp,” I snapped, roughly wiping my cheeks. “I’m emotional here. Can’t I cry when the man I love proposes?”
She didn’t even take a second to reply. “No. Now say yes so we can get out of this heat. Do you know what gravity does to your body the older you get? Think of how your tree looks three weeks after Christmas when you don’t water it anymore.”
Remy had just come back to us now that the tears had stopped, but hearing this, he sidestepped away from her as he shuddered and carefully put his hands over Toby’s ears. In front of me, the Townsends all scowled at Hurst as they looked him over from head to toe.
“Not me,” he huffed. “I moisturize.”
Ignoring all of it, Nonna continued, “Now picture that in this kind of heat and what water does while it’s running through a dry creek. I need air conditioning and something cold to drink ASAP.”
I wasn’t close enough to Marcus to hear what he said, but I swear when I read his lips, he was saying, “How does this just keep getting worse?”
“She’s got a point about the sweat, I’ll give her that,” Hurst sighed as he rubbed his forehead, then grimaced as he shook his hand out. Beside him, Linda rolled her eyes as she fanned herself with one of those cute little foldable fans with a Geisha girl on it.
“Well?” Jackson shouted over the top of his wife’s head, ignoring yet another jab to the sternum with her elbow.
“Will you stop trying to deafen me, you big bastard. Let the woman think. She’s just been told to ram Remy and probably gone through a world of confusion. Now your twin’s proposing to her in front of everyone, and you can clearly see she wasn’t expecting it. Oh, and that doesn’t even begin to include the fact we’re discussing dry creeks, old people’s skin, and sweat,” Sasha snapped, glaring up at him over her shoulder. “I’d be struggling to find a response, too.”
If I said yes, this whole crazy bunch and the horse porn would become my life. If I said no, I’d lose them all because there’s no way I could keep Marcus if I did.
Like I’d ever even consider saying no. I hadn’t been thinking about marriage, but now that the offer was on the table…
“You bet your horse porn ass I’ll marry you!” Eloquent it wasn’t, but it was the best I could do given that I wanted to bawl my heart out and jump for joy at the same time.
The look of happiness on his face would last me a lifetime, though.
When I was ninety, sitting on the porch and eating jello, I hoped his expression at this moment was front and center in my brain, along with all of the other happy memories we’d made together throughout our lives. I also hoped he was sitting beside me, eating custard or ice cream, in between feeding me spoonfuls of it from his bowl while I gave him jello from my own.
Movement over his shoulder got my attention, and I almost started laughing when Mom elbowed Dad as he glared at Marcus’s back, making his expression turn to a fake, almost manic, grin.