Author Note:

So, on my flight to my parent's house for Thanksgiving, the in-flight movie was HSM2. How hilarious! Anyway, I will admit to ignoring it for the option of watching Hairspray on my laptop. But since I promised you all a chapter once I was on break, I typed this one out during Project Runway tonight. Hope you enjoy!

Also, may you be able to take some time today and breathe in the things that you are thankful for. Life and breath and food and shelter are great places to start. To my list this year, I'll also add you all - fabulous readers who take the time to tell me that my words are impacting their lives. Little could honor me - or the real people who inspire Yusef, Dinah, Pascal and the other scores of Africans in this story - more than for all of us in the West to live more simply and more aware so that others can simply live.

Happy Thanksgiving, faithful readers!

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

"What if I kill you and make it look like and accident?"

"You couldn't pull it off," she said lightly and continued to flip through her magazine from her spot next to me on my couch.

Sharpay's last flight – the one from New York to Los Angeles – had been delayed. Overnight. So she negotiated with the airline to take a flight about three days after she was supposed to and she was crashing with Ryan and Emily. I know that family is important and it's good for her to see them and blah, blah, blah.

However, I have two problems with the arrangement. I want to see my girlfriend. Right. Now. And also, Gabi had chosen to use this three-day unexpected interlude to bug me about how to propose.

The ideas had ranged from flying back to Nairobi and proposing on safari (which I think I had almost talked them into paying for before Andrew realized that I wasn't planning on working at all) to something involving a LA Lakers game. I vetoed that one pretty quickly – I do not need to get engaged with the world tuning in on ESPN.

Of course, that's not even talking about how many times I muttered (or screamed) that I'm not proposing any time soon…

"What would be wrong with singing? I mean, it's how we all became friends."

I tore my eyes away from CNN to make a face at her. "Gabriella, you cannot be serious."

"What? I mean, that song we sang when we met and you realized that you could never live without me… what was it called…'Start of Something New'? Come on! It's like the greatest proposal song ever."

"Gabi."

I could see her hide behind the magazine and I realized that she was joking. Thank God. She starting humming the song and couldn't contain it anymore. It wasn't long before we were both laughing hysterically.

I threw a pillow at her, which she deftly caught and threw back at me. "Bolton, grow up."

I turned my attention back to Anderson Cooper for a few minutes before I heard her speak up.

"I know I've been obnoxious… but seriously? Are you ready to marry her?"

I turned off the TV and shifted on the couch to fully face her. "I don't know."

She paused for a moment and I could tell that she was selecting her words carefully, "Are you not sure because you're worried you've rushed into this or because you don't know if you really love her?"

"Neither."

"Okay."

I took a deep breath, "Did I ever tell you about the first night I kissed her?"

"No, but feel free to leave out any semi-pornographic details."

"And here I thought you loved – "

"Stop. Stop right there," she laughed. "That's going nowhere good. Save your pent-up frustrations for when she gets here. Even the verbal ones."

I winked at her, "Fine. Anyway, so the night I kissed her was the night before we flew to Kigali. We were at her apartment and we were cooking, or she was cooking, and … well… anyway, I just couldn't not kiss her."

"Were you a pansy about it?"

"You mean like I was with you?"

"Or like you've been with every other girl you've dated since me," she commented.

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Oh, come on, Troy! You're like the most famous commit-ophobe in my life! You crush on someone for ages, maybe you'll even 'date' them, but whatever the big gesture is in that relationship – whether it's kissing your first girlfriend or sleeping with the one you went with in college or whatever – you just can't seem to do it."

Well, that was certainly not the nicest thing she's ever said to me.

But, oh wait, she wasn't done.

"If you wait for too long on this one… she's going to get away."

"Yeah, see, I don't think she's going anywhere."

"Oh, really."

I sighed, "Gabi, I know that you take your overpowering Latina personality as a big part of who you are and I know that you think that that gives you the right to run my life, and mixing in the fact that we spent high school doing whatever the hell we did doesn't help your feeling of entitlement – "

"Excuse me?! Feeling of entitlement!"

"- towards running my life but this time… this time it's my life."

She set her jaw and I could tell that I was in for it. Instead, a single tear ran down her face.

"You really feel that I'm trying to run your life?"

"Sometimes, yeah."

She nodded and wiped the tear away, "That was never my… wow… I mean, I'm sorry."

God bless pregnancy hormones and how sometimes they make Gabi rational.

I stayed silent for a moment, trying to see if there was anything else she wanted to say, before I leaned over and grabbed her hand. "Gabi, you only do it because you love me. I know that. Maybe we just need to remember sometimes that I'm a 32 year old man and not a 4 year old boy. It might help."

She giggled a little and I continued. "But it's normally pretty fun. It lets me know that you love me. And it's also what's going to make you an excellent mother."

Tears were back. "You really think I'm going to be a good mom?"

"Once you tone down the shista feminista bit, yeah."

She laughed. "For the record, I think you'll make an excellent husband."

"Once I get up off of my ass and propose?"

"That's a key step in the process," Gabi acknowledged. "But that was a detour. Back to you and Sharpay."

"Yeah, anyway, so the night I kissed her," I ran my hand through my hair and scratched my head for a few seconds. "Do you remember when Andrew made us all read that book about vocation?"

"The one that said that vocation was whatever you couldn't not do? Like you should be in whatever job makes you physically sick at the thought of not doing it?"

"Yeah, I mean, it's one of the reasons that I'm still at Footprints. It's something that I can't not do. I have to take pictures and tell stories and I have to ask questions and force people to see outside of their worlds. And that night? I couldn't not kiss Sharpay."

"Way to justify it, there, slugger."

"Shut up."

"I'm just saying."

"Yeah, whatever, anyway, when I did kiss her, which I will admit lasted for a little while," I was briefly interrupted by Gabi's snort here, "everything fell into place. It was like…I don't know…I hadn't realized how wrong my world was until that moment when kissing her made it all finally fit together."

I was expect a snort from Gabi here, but only noticed a sweet look on her face. "What?"

"I'm restraining comment. Continue."

I'm nervous. "Anyway, in the days that followed, as we talked and dreamed and schemed and fought and all, I just realized that she became –"

"Part of how you understood life to be?"

I looked up at her. "Yeah."

"Troy. Marry her."

"What?"

She paused and shifted slightly, putting her hand on her stomach. "Sorry, he's feisty today. Anyway, I have this theory that we spend a lot of time justifying what we feel at the first kiss. I kissed a few boys, Troy, before I kissed Andrew. But none of you made my life make sense the way that Andrew did."

"So you knew the first time you kissed him?"

"I think so. I mean, we were so young that I was scared shitless to admit it, but I think that I just spent those next few years of our relationship trying just to check and double check that I wasn't crazy."

"Any of us could have told you that you weren't crazy."

"Yeah?"

I smiled at her, "Yeah."

"Okay, well, that being said," she smiled, "Unless you have been completely lying to me and she gets here and she's still as buckets of crazy as she was in high school… I don't know, Troy, the way your eyes dance when you talk about her… I think the world would be a better place if you just married her as soon as you can."

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

"So you seriously haven't told him?"

I pulled my load of clothes out of Ryan and Emily's dryer and began to fold them. "I just didn't think that it was something to be done over the phone."

"But you seriously haven't told the boy that you bought an apartment four blocks from his?"

"Once again, not really a phone moment."

"You selfish bitch, you just want to see his face."

I laughed, "Clearly."

Ryan rolled his eyes and began to load the washing machine next to me. Ryan's a little OCD about his laundry routine and my decision to do my laundry before my flight to LA had thrown him off. Heaven forbid.

"Hey," he said quietly.

"Hey," I said equally as quietly.

"How are you holding up?"

I finished folding the last pair of my trousers and looked at him. "How do you mean?"

"Well, day three is usually when you start freaking out."

"You're referring to my last visit home?"

"Yes, I believe that it was day three when you threw a shoe through our television."

I laughed, "Oh my gosh, I had forgotten about that."

He grinned, "Emily and Sarah haven't."

"Oh my gracious," I shook my head. "I'm a treasure."

He laughed. Emily called to us from the kitchen and we both headed in there.

"What's up?" Ryan asked.

"Did I hear you say that you haven't told Troy that you're staying?"

I glared at Ryan, "Yeah, I just didn't feel that it was a phone thing."

"So, when are you planning on telling him?" Emily asked.

"The first night that I'm there."

"You promise?" Ryan contributed.

"Yes, Mother."

We went about the business of cleaning up the kitchen from the breakfast that we had just had. When all of that was over, it was basically time to leave for the airport. I hugged Em goodbye and left Sarah (who was at school) a note and Ryan and I walked to the train station.

Once we had maneuvered the NY Subway system and had gotten on the right train out to JFK, he asked me the question that I knew had been burning on his mind since I had landed.

"So, when he asks, are you going to say yes?"

"Who says he's going to ask?"

Ryan rolled his eyes. "Whatever, he's going to ask."

I made a face and replied, "I mean, I know that we've kind of talked about it, but not really."

"You're avoiding my question."

I was quiet for a moment, "You're asking me about Nigel, really, aren't you?"

He took a deep breath, "I just know that, recently, Troy has brought up some ugly memories for you and I was just wondering how much further you've processed that."

"I don't know," I replied. "I do know that I promised Dinah and Yusef both that I'd go to therapy once I got settled in San Diego."

"Really?"

"Yeah. We just all kind of figured that it would be a good idea."

"I agree," Ryan said. "I think that you've been really good at ignoring most of the baggage of your life and before you do this marriage thing again it might be a good idea to sort through it all."

"So you think that if he proposes and I haven't started therapy, that I should tell him to hold on until I'm fixed?"

"Well," Ryan said cautiously, "I don't think that you can ever assume that you're 'fixed'. I think that going to therapy so that you can become better is… not maybe the best idea."

I paused and looked down at my hands for a minute. "What if I never get better?"

He paused, "Is that what you're most afraid of?"

I nodded, "I just have this fear that … that if I actually start opening these cans of whatever inside of me that all this crazy is just going to keep coming out and I'll be useless."

"Maybe that's true."

"Well that's encouraging, thank you."

"Or, what everyone else says about living with your scars and dealing with your baggage is true. That working through it makes you stronger and after a while the pain and hurt looks less like scars and more like character."

I thought about that for a while and was about to respond when he spoke again. "I think that what you're really afraid of is that Bolton will not be okay with the crazy."

"Yeah, that's possible."

"Okay, well, I'm just going to throw this out there. I really don't think you can ever get more crazy then you were when we were growing up."

"But he ran from that."

"But you know that you'll never go back there. And the ice queen is scarier than anything else you'll ever throw at him."

I chuckled as he continued.

"It's not like I've talked to him about this or anything, but I know you and I knew him once and I'm just saying that if he does pull the ring while you're out there, I would encourage you to jump in and say 'yes'".

I looked at my twin and felt the world shift just ever so slightly. It was one of those really adult conversations. I just may have met the man I was going to marry and I was definitely talking about taking a journey towards emotional health. It was like agreeing to grow up, or something.

Changing the subject, he said, "So you're out there for a week this time, right?"

"Yeah, and then he's coming back here with me for Christmas stuff."

"And then you're going back out there for New Year's?"

I nodded. "He thinks I have to leave for Kenya again on January 4th."

"Have you thought about how you're going to tell him?"

"I've got some ideas."

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&