400. Chapter 400

She’s not sure, at first, how Alex feels about PDA.

Hell, she’s not sure how she feels about PDA.

She’s been out for over a decade, and she’s unapologetic about who she is. She’s not afraid of people’s reactions.

Anymore.

But people’s reactions used to get her bruised lips and black eyes and other people’s spit on her clothes.

People’s reactions cost her her father. Her family. Her home. Her childhood.

But she’s better with it, now. She thinks.

She’s just not sure where Alex is at.

Because Alex is just coming out, and Alex is just getting comfortable, and Alex is just starting to love her new normal.

And sure, Alex grabbed her by the forearm and made out with her in the bar, damn who could see, but that was impulse, that was instinct, that was passion.

Day-to-day life is different. And Maggie isn’t sure what Alex will want.

And, if she’s honest, she doesn’t want to make Alex feel pressured by asking. Doesn’t want Alex starting to think that she has to be the perfect girlfriend, and to be the perfect girlfriend, she needs to love PDA.

She doesn’t want to give Alex that kind of pressure, even if unintentionally.

So she doesn’t try to hold Alex’s hand in public, and she doesn’t try to kiss her in public.

But god, does she want to touch her.

So sometimes, when they’re walking, and Alex can’t help herself from being a massive nerd, Maggie nudges her.

Never with her elbows into her ribs, like the kids did in high school. That always looked like it hurt, and anyway, she and Alex both have enough bruises on their torsos from training, from the field, that Maggie would never want to nudge her that way.

Always with her shoulder. Softly. Playfully, into Alex’s arm.

It starts when they’re walking out of a movie theater and Alex is catching her breath after a five minute rant on the inaccuracies of the film’s science. Maggie is giggling, and she nudges her shoulder into Alex’s arm.

“Nerd,” she smiles, all dimples, and her heart leaps when Alex nudges her right back.

It happens again when she’s cooking Alex dinner for the first time.

She’s nervous and she’s almost embarrassed, but Alex is stealing pieces of sliced peppers from the cutting board and she’s calling it helping, and Maggie nudges her, laughing.

“Thief,” she grins, and Alex doesn’t deny it, but she nudges her back and swipes another few slices before Maggie can slide them into a pan.

It becomes a habit and it becomes a home.

It becomes a check-in and it becomes a language.

An unspoken way to say, “you make me smile more than anyone ever has.”

A nonverbal way to say, “I’ve never laughed like this before.”

A silent way to say, “I’m falling in love with you, you massive nerd.”

It’s losing bets about vegan ice cream and sleepovers and it’s how they’re That Couple with their yoga mats and flirtatious banter.

It’s the stable unsteadiness of falling irreparably, irretrievably. Joyfully.

Until all the things that pass between their eyes when they look at each other, when they laugh together, no longer go unspoken.

Until their nudge is still their way of letting love, letting affection, letting playfulness and letting joy – that neither of them used to get nearly enough of – pass between them, but it can accompany, now, the spoken words of love, the verbally declared desire for a lifetime of firsts, the whispered and the shouted proclamations of this is the woman I want to spend my life with.

And when James asks them if they’ll be each other’s anchors in sickness and in health, in laughter and in sorrow, in winning at pool and losing at darts, they hold hands with tears in their eyes and they laugh and they nudge each other.

Maggie first, then Alex right back.

They nudge each other, and they’ve never smiled this big, and James blinks away tears, and James declares them wife and wife.