Blake thought about it with his fingers to his lips, staring out over the expansive lawn. "Then I think I have an idea."
Aiyana held her phone in her hand and stared down at it, waiting for the screen to flash on and the tune to play to let her know she had a message. It was eight at night. The insects were starting to send out their calls to the surrounding area, the heat was beginning to give way to the cool of the night. It was still pretty warm compared to New York, but the sticky feeling in the air was familiar to her. She supposed it always would be.
"Why don't you just send him a text so you can join in on the conversation?" Sasha asked in a sing-song voice. She took a sip of her Long Island Iced Tea and set it down, albeit a little sloppily, on the glass tabletop in front of her.
"I was just checking my makeup," she lied as she removed a smudge from beneath her eye. It had been hours since he would have arrived at his mother's home, and his radio silence frightened her. Did the woman turn him against her? Were they currently talking about how he'd be disinherited, not that it really mattered, if he married her?
Aiyana bit her bottom lip and shoved her phone in her pocket. She didn't want to worry about those things when she was spending time with her mother on one of the most important days of the year. "So how did the service go?" she smiled as she settled in for a long discussion about how some of the other ladies brought cookies or cake and appetizers.
She was half listening when she heard the sound of a car pulling up. It didn't strike her as odd and she assumed it was one of the neighbors getting back from taking their mother out. Not my mother, she thought wryly as she sipped her mixed drink. We sit on the back porch and get a wrist slap if we ever buy our mother a gift. "You're my only gift I need," she'd say whenever they tried to bring her something.
A door slammed, a second door followed close behind, and then came the sound of the front door opening. She could hear two deep voices murmuring, one of them being her father's. Had Jackson finally decided to show his face? They worried about him, disappearing for long periods at a time. He'd gotten in trouble as a teenager, but he'd appeared to straighten up when he was an adult. Now that he began disappearing again, she hoped he wasn't back with the crowd that had almost landed him in juvenile detention.
"They're out here," her father said as he opened the screen door. He held out his hand and a gloved, pretty hand took it. Aiyana felt her stomach clench when she realized whose hand it was her father was holding gently.
"Mrs. Hanley," she said as she stood. Her hands nervously ran down her shirt to rid of it any wrinkles, and she hoped she didn't look as sloppy as she felt. She'd changed into a pair of old jeans and a t-shirt to play Frisbee with her brother, Row.
"Aiyana," Mrs. Hanley said as she smiled. There was a guarded look in her gaze and she appeared nervous, but Aiyana couldn't tell if it was because she was surrounded by African-American people or if she was nervous because she was meeting a lot of new people. "It's so good to see you again." At least that sounded genuine.
"Aiyana," the deep voice sent a shiver down her spine and she realized just how much she'd missed him in just a few hours. He scooped her up and their lips met in a hurried but tender kiss. When his soft lips pulled away, she breathed a sigh of longing and smiled into his gray eyes.
"What are you doing here?" she asked him, not unkindly. "I thought you two were going to see a movie," she whispered as she watched her father introduce Mrs. Hanley to her mother, her two brothers, and her sister.
"She wanted to meet her future family," Blake explained. He pulled her off to the side and she could see the nervousness in his eyes. Shocked and a little embarrassed, she watched him get down on one knee in his designer suit, oblivious to the dirt he was smudging on it. She could hear the sound of the insects as if they were right by her ears, and the world seemed to tilt as he pulled the ring box from his pocket.
He was doing this here?
"Family is important to you, and I hadn't realized just how important it was to me until I met you. I want us to be a family, Aiyana. Every day I wake in the morning and see your face, I know I'm alive and that everything is well. Every night when I watch you sleep, I know I'm home, no matter where we are. I know we're not perfect, but together, we're as close as it can get.
I promise that if you marry me, I'll make your coffee every morning. I promise I'll stop leaving my tie on the nightstand. I promise I'll never put any of your shoes back so they're not in the wrong place when you go looking for them." He paused as she giggled and waited for her calm a bit. "I promise that when we have kids, I'll go to every ballet recital, every baseball game, every band performance, every parent teacher's meeting with normal clothes on. I promise that when our kids are gone and we're sitting at home with gray hair and false teeth, I'll still look at you and see the most beautiful woman in the world. I promise that the love I feel for you now, in this moment, will never fade. Will you make me the luckiest, happiest man alive? Will you marry me?"
Blake expected her to turn around. He expected her to look for approval on the faces of her family, but at that moment, there was only her and him. They were like two people floating on an island of solidarity, and he wanted to know if she trusted him enough to take the leap with him into a world of family.
"Yes," she whispered. "Yes, yes," she said a little louder when he didn't move. Blake pulled the ring from the box and slipped it over her finger. It rested nicely and felt right. He stood and pulled her into an embrace as he kissed her, oblivious to the shouts and cat calls from her family. Their tongues intermingled and she moaned against him, snapping him back to where they currently were and letting him know it was time to pull away.
When he looked over her shoulder at his mother, he saw her smiling with her hands clasped in front of her as if she wanted to start clapping. There were hugs and lots of pounding on his back, and even Allen was grinning when he shook Blake's hand. They were far from being best buddies, but Blake knew Allen would come around eventually.
And when he looked down at the woman beside him and saw all the appreciation, the love and the joy in her eyes, he knew he was finally home.