Turns it around.
Yes!!!!!!
I grin, the mouthpiece falling out.
She removes hers and does an underwater cheer.
Swims over, wraps her arms around me, then kisses me on the lips.
Mine.
She’s mine.
And we should probably go to the surface.
I still have to give her the ring.
We kick up and burst up through the water. The sky is now dark, the moon and stars are out, and the water is starting to sparkle with bioluminescence.
“Are you serious?” she asks me, grabbing my arm.
“Of course I am,” I tell her, bringing her closer to me and kissing her again. “Will you marry me, Gingersnap?”
I reach into a pouch and bring out a ring. It’s attached to a chain, so I don’t lose it.
She gasps as she sees it. “Tai. This is gorgeous.”
“It’s the koru,” I tell her, the spiral in the middle of the rose gold ring, with the sparkling diamond in the center. “The curl of a new fern. Symbol of new beginnings.”
“And it’s rose gold.”
“Like that damn luggage you loved so much.”
She snorts. “Yes.”
“Is that a yes about the luggage, or that you’ll marry me?”
“Yes,” she cries. “Yes, yes, yes I’ll marry you!”
“So agreeable,” I muse.
She laughs. “I guess so. Fuck. My god. I can’t believe I’m going to get married!”
“I’ll be there, too.”
She giggles. “I’m serious. I just…I’m so happy. So happy.” She looks around her. “Though as beautiful as this all is, I don’t think I feel like being underwater anymore. I can’t concentrate.”
“I didn’t think so,” I tell her. “Come on, let’s go back to shore.”
Once on the boat, we go straight back to the campus dock and we quickly get changed out of our wetsuits and gear. Then I take Daisy by the hand and lead her down the beach and around the corner.
There, just as I’d hoped, is a picnic laid out on the sand, a blanket covered in different appetizers and lots of wine, all framed by flickering candles.
“You did this?” Daisy yelps, hand to her chest.
“Well, your classmates helped me,” I tell her, eyeing the people running away in the shadows.
“Congratulations Daisy!” one of them yells, while the rest hoot and holler.
“Oh my god, Tai,” she says, smiling with tears in her eyes. “I never knew you were so romantic.”
“Well, I have to keep you on your toes, don’t I?”
Then I drop to my knees and propose all over again, relishing the feel as I slip that ring on her finger.
I take a moment to admire it on her dainty hand, then I yank her down to my level, so she’s sitting on the blanket.
“Now, we feast,” I tell her.
I picked out quite the spread, and diving usually makes Daisy ravenous anyways. But this time, she barely eats. She’s too busy planning the wedding already.
“We’ll have to invite Fred and Owen,” Daisy says. Then she frowns. “Though I don’t think New Zealand would let Wilson in.”
I laugh. As it happened, Fred and Owen, the research scientists of Plumeria Atoll, fell in love. They lived on the atoll for a good year before Fred decided to make an honest woman out of Owen, then they packed up and moved to Fiji. They now live on the beach.
With Wilson.
We have yet to visit, but it’s definitely part of our plans. Or at least, it’s one of the options for the future. Maybe we’ll sail there.
“Don’t even think about it,” Daisy says to me, recognizing the twinkle in my eye. I’ve suggested a few times that we should get on the boat (we now have a fifty-foot catamaran) and go on another ocean passage, but heading up to Fiji again would be pushing it.
“You don’t think it would be a fun honeymoon?”
“Tai,” she warns. “Don’t make me tickle you.”
Of course she does.
We fall back into the sand, laughing.
We stay up until sunrise.
THE END