✅ My Cousin's Keeper [NaNoWriMo 2021]

114. My Evolving Plan

I couldn't think of what to say. I'd told Kernigan roughly what I had in mind; but he had guessed all the details too. It surprised me that he had figured out the thing about the post it note. But it completely floored me that he had managed to come up with the exact words I'd been thinking of. Maybe I wasn't as creative as I thought; or perhaps he knew his own designs well enough to have guessed at the kind of ideas they might inspire in people.

"Yeah," I said, slightly embarrassed. "I wanted to propose, and I know so many people now say that it should be a personal thing, like something that's discussed between the two of you. But I wanted to show her that I really care. That she's still number one in my life, even when we have our disagreements. And that I'm sorry I resisted getting into the hobbies she tried to introduce me to for so long. I would have been coming here for a couple of years now, if I hadn't been so reluctant to meet people outside my normal social groups."

"I think that's kind of my fault," Isaac said quietly, and I was surprised. "I was flirting a bit too much, perhaps, and I never thought about how it would make you feel. I'm sorry."

"Thank you. And I'm sorry I couldn't see past it. Maybe I should–"

"Wait, flirting?" Kernigan seemed confused, and I couldn't blame him "I thought you and... Frank, was it?"

"It's a bit of a joke. We've had the game group for a while, you know? And when we do roleplaying games, it always seemed that the DM would be making slightly creepy advances to someone at the table. And I figured I should keep up the tradition when it was my turn. But to avoid unduly worrying my husband, I only flirt with lesbians. That way, he can be absolutely sure that neither of us are really interested."

"Ffrances told me that," I explained. "I just... My brief foray into dating guys was a disaster. I kind of learned never to trust them, and that's something that's hard to get over. I think if I'd gotten to know you more before seeing that side of you, I might have got it better."

I didn't know what I was saying, but the words came so naturally. And once I had time to think about them, I had to wonder if perhaps they were right. There was a chance that I'd been spectacularly unlucky to meet all the worst kinds of men as I was growing up, and there were still some who were capable of basic human decency. It still seemed unlikely, but I had to allow the possibility. And, of course, these two were helping me so much with my plans to propose to the love of my life. So they couldn't be all bad.

"Anyway, I'll do what I can to help you," Kernigan said. "But I wonder if I might suggest something she could appreciate a little more. At least based on what I estimate of her personality, from all of her comments on the mailing lists. I've never really spoken to her. In fact, until today I had guessed that the face behind that name was a young man, maybe college age or just finishing high school, and hailing from somewhere in Eastern Europe. But if I can incorporate your message into something that will make her wonder how you ever managed it..."

"You haven't actually approved the final artwork for Golden Ring yet, have you?" Isaac guessed.

"No. I haven't. There's one spread in particular where Mnemonic Harry is doing his usual schtick, reading thousands of other people's emails all at once. And I always leave it to the last minute, giving the guys at the publisher a nervous breakdown, so that I can ensure some of the non-plot messages we see are topical close to the day of release."

"You could include Gabby's message as one of the emails on the page?" He was laughing out loud now, and I couldn't say a word. I was overwhelmed to think just how much Ffrances would love to see her name on the page. I'd seen a couple of similar pages before; the technomancer standing in front of a video wall showing a million emails, of which a dozen or so would be clear enough to be legible. References to current affairs, in a tangential way that made me smile when I recognised them, were mixed in with context-free statements that Ffrances had told me often came from the message boards where Kernigan's fans congregated; as well as cryptic and obscure messages to or from characters who weren't actually in this story. She'd told me that several times she had scoured a page of such notes, desperate to find one that gave a hint about one of the upcoming books.