Epilogue - Part One

One year later...

Penny stood in front of the stove stirring a saucepan slowly, with a dreamy smile on her face. She had her cell phone balanced on the counter beside her with the recipe displayed, but she was already past the tricky part - the part where the main ingredients had to be combined with exactly the right timing. Too fast and the sauce would curdle. Too slow and it would never come together. But get the timing perfect, and the combination turned into something truly delicious. Her smile deepened with satisfaction as the smell of home-cooked gravy filled the room.

She wouldn't bother telling anyone that she'd messed up the recipe twice before the current batch that brewed on the stovetop before her. She got it right in the end. The gravy still needed to thicken a bit more, but she could tell she was on the right track. From here on, it was just a matter of slow simmering.

Penny glanced at the clock out of the corner of her eye. Almost time. David should be home from work any minute now. Then they would have an hour to themselves to get things ready before their guests arrived.

Tonight was Penny's first time co-hosting a big dinner party with David - the grown-up kind that involved multiple courses, and eating off fine china instead of paper plates. She couldn't help but feel a quick fluttering in the pit of her stomach. Not that she was really nervous. She could do this, and David would help. It was more a sense of anticipation at this point. She couldn't wait until they all sat down at the table and she took her place of honor at David's side.

She still wasn't quite sure about the guest list. It would certainly be an eclectic mix. She'd met all of David's hoity-toity friends by now, but she couldn't say she knew many of them well. Except for Leo, of course. She usually found it easy to talk to Leo, but even that might prove more complicated tonight. Leo had invited along a date, the woman he'd been seeing for the past few months. Some hotshot female prosecutor from the U.S. attorney's office. David's whole face had frozen with panic when he first heard her name. He'd started babbling incoherently about some unwritten guy code. "You don't date women who splashed cranberry juice your best friend's shirt. Come on, that's rule number one!"

Penny still hadn't stopped teasing him about it. Even now, she had to bite her lip to suppress a giggle as she slowly stirred the sauce. "Well David, that's happens when you've dated every unattached female on the entire island of Manhattan. . . ."

Things might get a little awkward there, but that wasn't even the part that worried Penny the most. How would David's thirty-something friends get along with her younger crew? Would they all ignore each other? What would they even talk about? Yachting? The respective merits of parking your yacht in Hoboken versus Brooklyn?

She'd been up late last night worrying about it, but David had reassured her from his side of the bed. "They'll talk about you," he'd said. "They're all coming tomorrow to celebrate you."

He'd traced his finger along her cheek as he said it. Penny felt a flush of warmth, and she knew it wasn't just the heat coming from the stove. It was the way he looked at her as he drew her closer to him in the bed. More than desire . . . or even love. It was admiration, she realized. He was proud of her, proud to be associated with her in a way he hadn't been before. He'd been looking at her that way for a while now - ever since the med school acceptance letters started rolling in.

She'd worried that the two years off would make her look like a less-than-promising candidate, but her new MCAT scores had helped. She'd ended up scoring two points higher than the first time she took the test. Yale had still declined to re-admit her, but Johns Hopkins had said yes. Probably the best med school in the country after Harvard, and Penny hadn't missed the way David's eyebrows rose when she told him she got in.

She'd spent a solid two weeks afterward trying to wrap her head around the idea: moving to Baltimore for med school. She knew it was too good an opportunity to turn down, even if it meant that she would have to leave New York. But there were trains. Airplanes. Even helicopters. Surely, somehow, she and David would make the distance work. . . .

And then the big fat acceptance letter package had shown up in the mail from the school she secretly coveted most of all:

Cornell.

"Ithaca?" David asked her skeptically when she told him the news. "Do they even have paved roads that far upstate?"

"I don't know," she'd teased him, playing along. "You might have to take up cross-country skiing. Or dog-sledding. Would you come visit me in Ithaca by dog sled?"

He'd squinted at her. "Maybe they can airlift me in. Paratrooper style."

"What's that, like skydiving? You won't go scuba diving with me, but you'll go skydiving?"

He'd wrinkled his nose at her in response. She still hadn't let him live it down, the way he'd been too chicken to go with her for scuba lessons on their recent trip to Hawaii. He'd accompanied her on the boat, but he'd balked when it came time to strap on the oxygen tank. "No gizmos," he'd said, his face turning a shade paler at the sight of the long breathing hose and mouthpiece. "I don't do gizmos."  Penny had known from the look on his face not to press the issue. She ended skipping the lesson as well. They'd spent the afternoon lounging together on the deck of the chartered yacht, sipping Mai Tais and leafing through the pages of the book she'd bought herself at the scuba shop:

The Indigenous Fishes of the Hawaiian Islands, 2nd Edition

Penny could only imagine how he'd react if someone tried to strap a parachute to his back, but she played along. "Pretty sure there are some gizmos involved in skydiving, David."

"Not breathing gizmos."

"The whole airplane is a breathing gizmo! You know that, right? Pressurized cabins?"

"Are you trying to make me give up air travel?"

"No," she'd protested, poking him in the chest. "I'm trying to get you to give up making rules."

"Never." He'd grinned at her playfully and stamped a kiss on her lip. "But I won't make a rule against visiting you in Ithaca. Or Alaska. Or Antarctica, if you really have your heart set on it. Do they have med schools there?"

She'd kissed him back, and her lips had lingered. It meant a lot to her that he would even consider a long-distance relationship. This from the man who once refused to date anyone living on the far side of the Brooklyn Bridge. David might joke around, but he'd proven to her time and again over the past year that he was willing to bend his rules to make room for her in his life.

Of course, she knew better than to push him too far out of his comfort zone. That was the reason she wanted Cornell over Johns Hopkins in the first place. Penny laughed to herself now, remembering the look on his face when she'd finally stopped kissing him and told him the best part of her news.

"David, you do know the Cornell med school campus isn't in Ithaca, right?"

"It's not?" he'd muttered vaguely, nuzzling her neck.

"You're thinking of the undergrad campus."

"Where's the med school?"

"Sixty-eighth and York."

That had gotten his attention. He'd pulled away from her neck and looked her full in the face, his eyes widening with surprise. "You mean here in the city?"

"Six stops up from Wall Street. I won't even have to transfer trains."

Penny felt another giddy smile curve her lips at the thought of it. She could stay right here in this apartment and commute to school by subway. Not Johns Hopkins, but still a great school. Ivy league.  She'd turned in her acceptance package two weeks ago without a moment's hesitation.

David took her out to dinner afterward to celebrate. Lutece, table for two. He'd ordered up a bottle of Dom Perignon and proposed a toast - but not until the end of the meal.

After dessert.

After he'd taken her hand from the other side of the dinner table, and noisily cleared his throat.

After his face had grown all stern and serious, and he'd started making that speech. That long, rambling monologue, waxing eloquent with much waving of the hands.

After he'd told her how much she meant to him. How much it said to him that she'd chosen Cornell. How the thought had secretly terrified him that she might choose a school far away. Because he knew, deep down, without a shadow of a doubt, that he never wanted to spend another night without her by his side.

After he let go of her hand and slipped the little velvet box out of his pocket, and her breath had caught in her chest as she realized what it was.

After she watched him go down on one knee, right there in the middle of the restaurant. . . .