Sitting on a bench looking out over the harbor Jane let her thoughts rush around in her head. For the last couple of days she'd been preoccupied with some pretty big feelings about her life and where it was going. Maura had noticed that Jane seemed to be lost in her head lately and asked if everything was alright, Jane reassured her that it was but she knew she couldn't keep Maura out of the loop for long. This involved her too, it would only be fair to tell her, but Jane needed to work things out a little more. At the sound of someone coming towards her Jane tore her gaze from the passing boats and smiled as she watched Tommy walk towards her with a paper tray of coffees and a white bakery box.
"Coffee and cannoli?" Jane asked as Tommy sat beside her. "Don't tell Frankie but you're totally my favorite brother."
Tommy laughed as he set the box between them and then accepted the sandwich Jane had brought for him. "I already knew that and so does he."
Of course she loved both of her brothers, Jane didn't play favorites, but it was easier to talk to Tommy about certain things. She and Tommy had lived through some pretty hard knocks in their lives that Frankie just hasn't. Though she knew that the longer her little brother was a cop the more he would understand what she and Tommy already understood and that made Jane sad. She really wished that at least one of them could go through life without battle scars, but it just wasn't meant to be.
"So what's on your mind?" Tommy asked when they'd both finished about half their sandwiches.
"What makes you think there's something on my mind?" Jane asked. "Can't I just want to have lunch with my baby brother?"
Tommy gave his sister a look that said he wasn't buying it.
"Ok fine." Jane said with a huff as she gave up the rest of her sandwich for a cannoli. "I've had something on my mind, something I want to do, something I know I will do, but I just need to gear myself up for it."
"What do you want to do?" Tommy asked before stuffing his mouth with creamy sweet ricotta and crunchy pastry.
Jane didn't hesitate. "Marry Maura."
Tommy choked on his dessert.
Jane patted her brother's back as he coughed up the bits of fried pastry that went down wrong. "Bad idea?"
The youngest Rizzoli soothed his throat with some coffee before answering, "No, Janie, no, it's the best idea you've ever had!"
"So great it shocked you into a slapstick take?" Jane asked with eyes full of uncertainty.
"Jane, it's not like that." Tommy said gently as he looked into his sister's dark eyes. "It's just that you've always said you didn't want to get married. Since you were like fourteen you've sworn you would never get married."
Jane sighed and gave her shoulders a little shrug. "That was before." She admitted. "That was back when I thought marriage meant settling for a man who would either expect me to give up being a cop or grow to resent it. Either way any marriage I could picture ended in divorce."
"But now you don't see it that way?" Tommy asked. He knew his sister needed him to steer her towards what she already knew, that she wanted a life with Maura.
"Maura gets me, she understands me in and out of the job, and she knows what my job means to me." Jane said. "It's really freaking annoying sometimes but it's comforting too. She makes me feel…"
Tommy gave her a moment to find the word but when it didn't come he said, "She makes you feel home, like you fit, like everything finally makes sense."
Jane looked at her brother, a little startled by his insight, and then nodded. "Yeah."
"So why haven't you asked her yet?" Tommy asked before going back to eating.
"I don't know." Jane said with another shrug of her shoulders. She used the time it took to take a bite of cannoli and a swig of coffee to think. "I guess I'm just worried, maybe even a little scared."
"About what?" Tommy asked.
"Eww! Tommy!" Jane said as she smacked him in the shoulder. "Man that's nasty! Don't talk with your mouth full like that! Don't be a pig!" She rolled her eyes at the sheepish yet innocent little boy look he gave her. Then she sighed and said, "I don't know. What if Maura says no? And what will Ma think?"
"Maura loves you Janie." Tommy said. "She won't say no. And Ma? Ma will be thrilled. Are you kidding? She'll be on cloud nine when she finds out she gets to marry you off."
"To another woman?" Jane pointed out.
"To the person you love." Tommy said seriously. "And to a person who loves you as much if not more then Ma does."
"Pop won't like it." Jane said softly.
Tommy nodded. "Yeah, well, fuck Pop."
"Tommy!" Jane scolded.
Tommy shook his head to stop her. "You get to be happy, Janie, and no one gets to keep you from it. His issues are his issues; don't let them hold you back. Ask your woman to marry you, everyone else but the two of you be damned, and then go and make lots of super smart little babies so Ma will get off my back."
Jane sat there and looked at her baby brother for a really long minute before finally smiling at him. "Thanks Tommy."
Tommy blushed at the way his sister was looking at him. "Next time you can buy the cannolis."
Jane thought about what Tommy said for a day or so before deciding that there was one more thing she needed to do before she committed to the idea. She needed just one more little bit of reassurance before she took one of the biggest risks of her life. Sitting beside her mother on the sofa in the guesthouse Jane was only half paying attention to whatever movie Angela had put on for them to watch. Maura was at some smarty-pants book club thing so Jane decided tonight was a good night to talk to her Ma, but she didn't want to risk Maura walking in on them so movie night was in the guesthouse. Maura always knocked before coming into what she conceded Angela's home, even though she owned it.
"Ma?" Jane said suddenly as both Rizzoli women looked up at the screen.
"Hmm?" Angela replied.
"Are you really ok with this thing between me and Maura?" Jane asked softly.
Angela was startled by the question. Picking up the remote she turned off the television and then turned to look at her daughter. "What? Why are you asking me this again? Jane you know I'm ok with you and Maura. I've never seen either of you as happy as you've been since you've been together. What's going on?"
Jane bite her lip for a moment before looking at her mother and saying, "I want to ask Maura to marry me, and being ok with me dating Maura, or living with her, or doing anything of that life stuff together, and being ok with me marrying her are two different things."
"Oh Jane." Angela sighed as her eyes began to get watery. "Oh Jane you're getting married!"
"Um, well, I kinda have to ask Maura first." Jane said, a little freaked out by the tears welling in her Ma's eyes.
"You haven't asked her yet?" Angela asked.
Jane shook her head. "I need to know you'd be ok with it. I mean, marriage is kind of a big deal, ya know, being a sacrament and everything."
Angela got up from the couch and disappeared down the hall leading to her bedroom. Several minutes later she came back with a small box, an antique ring box, in her hand. She sat down beside her daughter again and then held out the box to Jane.
Jane looked between her mother and the box with huge eyes. She knew that box; it was an old box, wooden with a little button on it that you pressed to release the latch. She knew what was in the box and it was making her eyes burn with tears. "Ma." She looked up to meet Angela's eyes. "Ma, that's Nonna's ring."
"She left it to you Janie." Angela said softly as she pressed the button and popped open the box. Nestled inside was her mother's engagement ring. It was a simple ring, an oval diamond in a white gold filigree crown with two side diamonds. When her mother had had it appraised for insurance reasons the man had said it was an Edwardian antique circa 1910, all Angela knew was that her father had worked hard to save up to buy the ring from a pawn shop. The ring never left her mother's finger, from the moment her father slipped it on her finger until the day she died, when she took it off, handed it to Angela and said, "Give this to my Janie when she is older so she will know the happiness I have had."
"I was just waiting for the right time." Angela said softly as Jane continued to stare at the ring, tears rolled down her cheeks. Angela lifted her free hand to wipe them away. "You can do what you want with it, keep it in a jewelry box, or wear it, or, ya know, it would look really pretty on Maura's finger."
"Ma." Jane whispered, her voice cracking softly.
Angela closed the ring box and put it in Jane's hands before pulling her daughter into a hug. "Marriage is special Janie, and so is what you and Maura have together. If it's my blessing you need to go ahead and ask her, then you have it baby."
Jane let the tears continue to roll down her cheeks as she whispered, "Thanks Ma."
Ok so there were two more things she needed before she could ask Maura to marry her. Hearing her mother say she had her blessing made Jane think she needed to ask some else for theirs as well. So she waited until Maura was in the shower to video call Constance, who was just as thrilled as Angela when Jane asked if it would be all right with her and Professor Isles if she asked Maura to marry her. Now she had everyone's resounding yes but Maura's. So Jane began planning. She wanted this to be perfect, and romantic, and everything a woman like Maura would have dreamed about.
What was that old saying? The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray? Apparently that holds true for girl cops too. A romantic dinner at one of Boston's most upscale Mediterranean restaurants was cut short when they got the call about a dead kid in a garage truck. Then there was the tasting tour of a local winery, nothing happened there because Jane was to busy trying not to hit the guy who'd dated Maura once, about five years ago, who kept asking if she was available despite the fact that Maura and Jane both repeatedly told him they were a couple, and therefore together, thereby making Maura not single. Jane thought for sure a weekend getaway to the Isles house in Martha's Vineyard would be the place. She had it all worked out, a nice little walk on the beach at sunset, she'd suddenly stop and drop to her knee. Of course they'd only been walking for about five minutes when their cell phones started blowing up with texts and calls from Frankie and Tommy. Apparently Angela was having a break down over hearing the news that Frank Sr. had knocked up his bimbo.
"Argh!" Jane groaned as she fell onto the sofa between her brothers. "Why is this so hard?"
"Because you're trying to hard, Janie." Frankie said. "Everything about you and Maura has been natural. Stop trying to force it. When the moment is meant to happen it'll happen."
Jane mumbled and groaned and pouted. What Frankie said made sense but she didn't want it to. She didn't want to wait; she wanted to make things happen. "I should just send her a text."
"Do you want to spend your honeymoon on the couch?" Tommy teased. "Let it happen natural but don't be cavalier about it. You still need to woo her."
Dark eyebrows rose as Jane glared at her baby brother. "Cavalier? Woo? Are you actually using that word a day calendar Maura got you?"
"Shut up." Tommy replied as he shoved her, sending her bouncing into Frankie, who shoved her back the other way. This lead to Jane pushing both of them at the same time and before long they were in the middle of a shoving war.
"Hey!" Angela scolded when she walked into the room. "You three knock that off! Jane, leave your brothers alone!"
"They started it!" Jane protested.
Frankie had been right about how things between her and Maura had always been natural. Their friendship, the progression of their relationship, it all happened with an instinctive kind of flow. So Jane stopped pushing, she stopping trying to force things, to plan them to this perfect kind of point that was impossible to reach. She was going to let it just happen when it's meant to.
Sitting in their booth at the Dirty Robber Maura couldn't stop giggling. She'd seen a lot in her line of work, including terminal erections, most often in hanging victims, but this was the first time she'd had a still living, fully erect man on her table. He didn't have anything to do with the case they'd been working, he'd been believed to have had a stroke, but thinking about standing there with Jane when this dead man suddenly came alive kept making her giggle. Jane had been making crude jokes about the 'pup tent' he was making in the sheet over his body when he groaned. Both of them yelped and jumped back, away from the table, knocking into the real dead body on the other table, causing it to fall to the floor.
"You weren't laughing while you were bitching about hating to work on living people." Jane teased.
"It's funny after the fact." Maura said. "Now that the tension has passed."
"And you've stopped freaking out about using all those mad M.D skills you spent a butt load of years getting on something who was still breathing." Jane teased just as their food arrived, which meant Maura wouldn't snap back a tease of her own because it would have been rude in front of an outsider.
The two of them talked, laughed and relaxed while eating their burgers, Maura stealing Jane's fries because she'd ordered onion rings, and sharing sips of their milkshakes since one had gotten chocolate and the other strawberry. Maura had been a big help on the case they just closed and that always left her feeling really good. There was always this look of pride in Jane's eyes when she helped crack a tough case that for Maura was sweeter than the best Swiss chocolates and the sweetest of French wines. It was there now in those big brown eyes and Maura couldn't help but smile. For the last couple of weeks Maura had known something was weighting on Jane's mind but somehow she knew it wasn't something bad so she hadn't pushed, and now Jane seemed much more relaxed and the easiness between them was back. Whatever it had been Jane must have worked it out because sitting there face to face in their booth in their place everything just felt right with the world.
"Maura." Jane said softly as she pulled something from her pocket.
"Yes Jane?" Maura replied as she set her wine glass down on the now empty table. The remnants of their finished meals had been clearly away, their milkshakes replaced by more adult beverages, leaving nothing between them but the table, an amber bottle and stemmed glass.
Until Jane set the antique wooden ring box she'd been carrying around for weeks on the table between them. "Marry me, Maura."
Bright hazel eyes widened as Maura's hand flew up to cover her gasping mouth as Jane opened the little box that her gaze had locked onto just moments ago. Had she heard what she'd just thought she'd head? Was she seeing what she thought she was seeing? Was this really happening or was she dreaming? Everything around them stopped; in this moment only she and Jane existed. Her heart raced and her mind worked overtime to make sense of it all. She had never doubted that she and Jane would be together in some fashion for the rest of their lives, as best friends, and then as lovers, and then as partners, but never once had it crossed Maura's mind that Jane would want to marry her. Jane had always sworn she'd never marry, and Maura had never had reason to question that conviction. Which made this moment, this realization even sweeter. Jane, who never wanted to take the kind of risks marriage came with, wanted to marry her.
"Maura." Jane said nervously, panic rising inside her with each ticking second Maura just sat there staring at her and the ring. Had she called it wrong? Had she taken a risk and lost? "Maura, say something."
"Yes." Maura squeaked out.
"What?" Jane said, her own eyes going a little wide, her heart pounding so loudly in her chest she was sure people outside the bar could hear it.
"Yes." Maura repeated. "Yes, Jane. I will marry you."
Jane jumped to her feet, slamming her hip into the table so hard it would bruise later, but she didn't care. She pulled Maura from the booth and kissed her hard right there in the Dirty Robber. When the kiss came to an end because they needed air and because the sound of cheering and cat calls and wolf whistles from the other patrons finally sunk in, Jane looked into Maura's eyes. "You said yes right? You said you'd marry me? I didn't just daydream that?"
Maura laughed. "Yes Jane. I really said I would marry you."
"Good." Jane replied as she snatched up the little box, pulled out the ring, and slipped it onto Maura's finger. "We'll need to get that sized. Nonna had cubby fingers."
That night while they lay naked and entangled in bed Maura looked at the ring on her finger with tears in her eyes. She'd be so use to being alone. How many times had she said that to Jane, to Angela, to Tommy whenever they tired to get just a little closer to her? "I'm use to being alone. I'll be alright." And now here she was wearing Jane's grandmother's ring, Angela's mother. She wasn't alone anymore; she was a part of this loud, busy, snoopy, wonderful family that had somehow managed to even suck in her own parents. Maura wasn't sure she could ever handle being alone ever again after this.
"Gramps worked three jobs to save up the money to buy that." Jane said softly, her deep gravely voice brushing away the silence that had filled their room. "Everyone knew they would get married, they'd been in love for ages, but he wouldn't ask her until he could do it right. He found that in a pawn shop and he just knew it was meant for her. He asked the owner to hold it for him and the old man did, for almost two years, because even with three jobs he was still helping out his family. They'd gone for a walk on Easter Sunday between mass and Easter dinner, and settled in on the steps of the church to eat the Easter cookies he'd swiped from his mother's kitchen. After the cookies were gone he asked her to marry him right there on the steps of the church. They were married six months later in the same church and were together the rest of their lives. Nonna died two days before the first anniversary of his death."
"Oh Jane." Maura said softly, her voice laced with the tears that were flowing freely over her cheeks. "Are you sure you want me to have this? It's your grandmother's ring. She'd meant for you to wear it."
"When she gave the ring to Ma to give to me that's what she wanted me to have." Jane said, her voice cracking a little. "Not the ring so much as the happiness that's tied to it, the happiness and love she had with Gramps. You're where that happiness for me is, Maura, so the ring belongs on your finger."
Maura had seen rings worth ten times what this one was worth, even worn a few, but this ring, this ring was the most beautiful, the most priceless ring in all the world. "I'll treasure it, Jane, always. It's safe with me I promise."
"I know." Jane said with a smile.
"I love you Jane." Maura said before leaning close to kiss her fiancée.
Jane smiled against Maura's lips at the end of the kiss and whispered, "I love you too."