by Cara Malone
Max didn’t wait for the elevator in the lobby – instead, she bolted up the stairs, taking them two at a time. The library was almost completely deserted, just a few librarians scanning books at the circulation desk at this early hour, and the second floor was just as empty.
Max was almost beside herself looking up and down the rows of books, but Ruby was nowhere to be found. It wasn’t until she walked into the center of the room, where there was a little sitting area with a few tables and a couple of stuffed armchairs, that something happened.
A voice floated through the air, echoing off the circular configuration of the bookshelves. It was barely above a whisper, but she could hear it with crystal clarity and it sent a shiver of pleasant goosebumps through her. The voice said, “I came here with no expectations,” and it sounded oddly familiar, although it did not belong to Ruby.
It continued, “-only to profess that my heart is and always will be yours,” and it wasn’t until the voice faded out that Max recognized it as another movie clip, one from Sense and Sensibility.
Next came It’s a Wonderful Life, with, “You want the moon? Just say the word and I’ll throw a lasso around it and pull it down,” and then, “There is no life without you,” from Mr. Nobody.
And then, finally, Max heard Ruby’s voice.
“I love you, babe,” she said, and Max smiled, looking around again as she kept peering down the aisles trying to find her. There was a knot in the back of her throat and again she wondered if she might pass out from the amount of adrenaline running through her veins.
“And I can’t live without you.”
The voice came closer, transitioning from echo to whisper, and then Ruby was walking out of one of the aisles. She held a single red rose in her hand, a nod to the roses Max had presented to Ruby when she asked her out for the first time. Max felt tears running hot down her cheeks by the time Ruby met her in the center of the room. She let them fall, cascading down her cheeks and dripping from her chin, and she didn’t care.
Ruby handed her the rose, then took her free hand and said, “Before I met you, I didn’t really know what love was. I didn’t know what it was like to love someone so much that I’d be not only willing but eager to do anything for them. We may not have had the smoothest couple of months recently, and I wish I’d had a smaller learning curve when it came to being an ally for you, but if you’ll let me, I want nothing more than to spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”
She began to sink down to one knee, taking a small velvet box out of her back pocket that looked almost identical to the one Max presented Ruby with in Chicago. She opened it to reveal a beautiful bezel set diamond ring on a smooth, white gold band.
Then she asked, “Max Saddler, will you marry me?”
Max took a deep breath, wanting nothing more than to throw her arms around Ruby and shower her with a thousand kisses. Instead, she pulled Ruby back to her feet and said, “Wait.”
“What’s wrong?”
“This is the second time I’ve come to a proposal without a ring,” Max said, and Ruby laughed. “I loved your proposal, and I’m dying to say yes, but first I have something to say.”
“Okay,” Ruby said, looking a little anxious.
“This is what I should have said to you in Chicago, if I wasn’t so busy worrying about things that I had no idea weren’t worth worrying about,” Max said, then took a deep breath. She’d run through this speech a few dozen times in her head over the summer, the words usually coming to her in moments of desire, of longing, and in the quiet moments when her mind was otherwise unoccupied. She couldn’t just accept Ruby’s proposal without saying them first. “Until last year, I never imagined that I would fall in love. I didn’t think an emotion like that would ever make sense to me, or that anyone would be worth the hassle it required. I was wrong, and I realized that the moment I met you - I knew I wanted that hassle. Ruby, you make me want to try things that I never wanted to bother with before. I’m never going to be a social butterfly, but I will dedicate my life to learning how to make you happy.”
Ruby had tears in her eyes by the time Max finished, and she felt emotion rising in her own chest as well.
“I don’t want you to be anyone you’re not,” Ruby said.
“I’m not.”
“I never wanted to force you to be someone else,” Ruby added.
“You haven’t,” Max said, then leaned in and kissed her and added, “My answer is yes. I want nothing more in the world than to marry you.”
Ruby slid the ring onto Max’s finger, and then Max scooped her up in a bear hug, letting out a whoop of joy that echoed off the bookshelves. When they finally broke their embrace, Ruby was grinning like a fool, the tears still wetting her cheeks, and Max couldn’t stop looking at the ring on her finger. It was sparkling and mesmerizing.
“When did you have time to do all this?” Max asked, meaning the library, the audio clips, the movie reel, and of course the ring.
“I decided right after I got back to Chicago that the next proposal should be mine,” Ruby said. “I’ve been putting it all together ever since and just waiting for the right moment.”
“I love you so fucking much,” Max said, throwing her arms around Ruby again.
“I love you, too,” Ruby said, and then after a moment with a grin, she asked, “Can I please see the ring now?”
“Yeah,” Max said, laughing. “We’ll have to drop by my parents’ house. I’m sure they’ll love to hear our news.”
“After that, we’ll call my parents,” Ruby said, linking her arm in Max’s and leading her toward the elevator. “Oh babe, I’m so happy right now.”
“I’ve never been happier,” Max agreed, stopping Ruby in her tracks and pulling her into a long kiss.
THE END
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A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Thanks for reading The Rules of Engagement – I hope you enjoyed it!
If you did, please consider leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads – they make a big difference in the success of a new book, and reviews help more readers find new LGBT authors like me.
Thanks again for reading, and I hope to hear from you soon!
With love,
Cara
MORE BOOKS BY CARA MALONE
Find all of my books on my website, http://www.caramalonebooks.com/
SNEAK PEEK: The Origins of Heartbreak
The Origins of Heartbreak (October 2017), is the first novel in my new medical romance series. Readers will get a glimpse inside the head of a familiar character as Megan begins her medical school adventure and falls – literally – for a paramedic student with a dark history. They both have broken hearts to nurse and plenty of reasons to stay single, but life keeps drawing them together. Read the first chapter:
***
Megan Callahan stood nervously on the side of a small stage at the front of an ornately decorated church, waiting for her name to be called. She was standing in line with a hundred and fifty other people, all waiting to receive their white coats on the first day of medical school.
She had spent the morning going through all of the technical details of attending a new school – orientation, photo IDs, class scheduling – and it had all seemed pretty anti-climactic. She’d been working toward medical school for as long as she could remember, and getting yet another stack of textbooks in the college store felt like nothing more than a new semester at the same school she’d been attending for the past four years.
Now, though, with a set of spotlights beating down on the stage and making her brow moist, it felt real.
She was two people away from the front of the line now, and very soon she would be walking across the stage. One of the faculty members from the School of Medicine that she’d met earlier in the day would be p
utting a white coat on her shoulders, and she’d be an official medical student. Megan was doing her best to pretend she wasn’t having a small panic attack about that realization, particularly because the girl standing directly behind her had already proven herself to be a bit of an alpha dog and Megan didn’t want to get bit.
They had met in line at the bookstore this morning, and Megan made the mistake of trying to talk to her once she noticed that they were buying a lot of the same books.
“Are you a first-year med student, too?” Megan had asked.
“No, I’m just a real dumb third year,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “Looks like someone’s going to have trouble with evidence-based practice.”
Megan had opened her mouth to rebut, meaning to throw something out about her biology degree and how Northwestern had given her a rather solid understanding of the scientific method, thank you very much, but then a cash register opened up and the girl marched away with her books. Megan had hoped that in a class of a hundred and fifty, their paths wouldn’t have to intersect again, but of course the universe couldn’t be that easy to navigate.
“Megan Callahan, Northwestern University.”
Hearing her name called into a microphone made Megan’s heart give a little jump in her chest, and she ascended the stairs onto the stage. There was a friendly-looking professor holding out a white coat to her, and as Megan turned around to put her arms through the sleeves, she scanned the audience, looking for her parents. They were out there, along with her younger brother, but the bright lights obscured them.
The twirling process of putting on the coat was a little awkward and a little disorienting, and then the professor was guiding her on her way across the stage to shake hands with the dean.
“Ivy Chan, Wellesley College.”
Evil hath a name, Megan thought, sparing a glance back as Ivy slipped gracefully into her coat. And it went to a damn good school.
Megan exited on the other side of the stage and went back to her place in the pews to wait for the rest of the class to finish getting their coats. Her nerves had dissipated the moment she felt the coat settling on her shoulders, and she couldn’t wait to go back to her apartment and check it out in the mirror, complete with a stethoscope looped around her neck. It was worth every bit of the last four years of work, staying up late and studying after everyone else went to sleep, burning the midnight oil to keep up on social events and still get her work done. There was still a lot of hard work left to do, but a little bit of recognition and a crisp white coat was nice, too.
After the ceremony finally drew to a close with a recitation of the Declaration of Geneva (I solemnly pledge to consecrate my life to the service of humanity…) by the entire incoming class, they were all released to greet their parents and take them over to the student union for a reception. Megan found her family lingering outside of the doors of the church, and her folks immediately made a huge deal out of the coat, hugging her and inspecting the material and straightening her collar while she blushed and tried to lead them across the courtyard.
“You look like such a grown woman,” her mother said, her eyes glossy from the ceremony.
“You look like a marshmallow,” Megan’s teenaged brother, Finn, said. He was looking longingly toward the student union, where a lot of people were headed and he asked, “There’s supposed to be food at this thing, right?”
“A marshmallow that has the power to save – or end – your life,” Megan said. She watched Ivy come out of the church alone and march across the courtyard with the same pompous posture she’d used to walk across the stage. She wondered if Ivy had anyone in the audience watching her, but it was impossible to feel too sorry for her when she wore that scowl on her face that said she had the world’s most uncomfortable stick up her butt. Megan stopped watching her and said to her family, “Finn’s right though – I’m starving.”
The four of them headed over to the reception, where there were hors d’oeuvres galore, from finger sandwiches to mini quiches to a chocolate fountain surrounded by fresh fruit. Finn split off from the rest of the family instantly, making a bee line for the dessert table, and Megan picked up three champagne glasses for herself and her parents.
Before she’d even gotten to take a sip, though, her roommate, Chloe, came bounding over, practically skipping across the room and throwing her arm around Megan’s shoulder.
“Hi Mr. and Mrs. Callahan,” she exclaimed, then turned to Megan and did a little impromptu fashion show with her white jacket, twirling around and then bumping her shoulder against Megan’s. “Aren’t you just so excited? I don’t think I’m ever going to take mine off.”
“I’ll probably take mine off to like, go to the grocery store and stuff like that,” Megan said with a small laugh. She’d been living with Chloe for just one week, and already she was the most enthusiastic, bubbly person Megan had ever met. Half the time, she felt compelled to put her hands on Chloe’s shoulders just to keep her from floating away, and the other half of the time she wanted to install a zipper on her mouth.
“Oh, I wouldn’t,” Chloe said with a half-serious grin. “I want everyone to know I’m a doctor.”
Then she threw her arms around Megan, giving her a tight squeeze, and dashed off again to mingle with more people. Megan wondered if Chloe had had the honor of meeting Ivy yet, and in a morbid sort of curiosity, she wanted to be there when it happened. The only possible reaction that could happen between those two personalities would have to be violent and entertaining.
My colleagues will be my sisters and brothers, Megan thought, another line from the Declaration of Geneva. Welcome to medical school.
***
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