He saw Deepa come out the door, and she waved and winked at him. Despite Nora’s many stories about Deepa’s inability to keep a secret, she’d been an absolute vault about this one. Still, he figured he was about two minutes away from Nora coming outside with a tray of stuffed mushrooms and—once she caught sight of her best friend, and Will’s, to boot—a real good sense of what was about to go down.

“Will,” Gerald said, in that permanent stick-up-his-ass voice that Will had come to love. “I’ll remind you. You have spent two years getting to know Nora, and all the people and things that are important to her, and she’s done the same for you. You’ve planned all this for her because you know the right way to love each other. And you know the right way to ask her this question. Don’t forget that.”

Will nodded, swallowed down a press of emotion. “Thanks, man,” he said.

Gerald looked straight ahead, lowering his brow. “Now, now,” he cautioned. “You certainly know I don’t approve of that kind of nickname.”

And then, as was his habit, he walked away.

Exactly as he’d expected, Nora really did know, as soon as she caught sight of Dee. With her flower crown listing to the side and her arms full of way too many stuffed mushrooms for this small crowd, she gasped and nearly tripped over the long hem of her dress, her eyes bright with moisture already.

“Dee?” she said, but almost immediately her eyes went to Will, beaming a smile that he thought could’ve lit up the whole night sky.

He stepped forward and took the tray from her before she dropped it, and immediately Nora ran to Dee, hugging and exclaiming in joy, and as Will set down the tray, he figured that alone was worth the price of admission, even if she ended up hating the rest of this whole thing.

She greeted Gerald and Sally, too, her hand against her heart. “I’m so—so this is a small poetry night, I guess!”

He walked over to her, set a hand on her back. “I hope you won’t mind. I’ve been around long enough now that I, too, can use poetry night for my own purposes.”

She smiled and flushed, her hands coming up to press against her cheeks, and he caught Gerald’s eye.

Not a mistake, he thought, and Gerald gave him a nod.

“Why don’t we go ahead and sit?”

She nodded and sat beside him in the front row of chairs, clutching his hand tight, and then the evening he’d been planning for got started.