“Like in romance novels,” Noelle squeals as they fly past us, her hand in Dash’s hands.
“I don’t do grand gestures,” I remind her.
“You do them all the time.” She laughs.
“No, I do what I want, and sometimes I just want to see those green eyes light up, so I do a little more,” fuck it, I think as I stop and she crashes into me. I lift her up before she can scold me. “You don’t have to skate to make me happy.”
She smiles down at me, “You totally told me I needed to learn.”
“That was before,” I say as I turn in a circle.
“Before what?”
“Before I knew, I didn’t just want you on your knees,” I set her down and drop to mine. “Before I knew that I was the one who should be.”
“What are you,” she covers her mouth and gasps as I pull out a tiny blue box.
“Is this really happening!” Noelle squeals as they pass us again.
“I’m not a romantic man, but I am a man who will fulfill a promise, and I promise to love you always,Tsaritsa moya. To cherish you forever. To protect you and all you love by whatevermeans necessary, if you say yes when I ask you to be my wife.” I open the box and hold my breath as she looks at the ring.
“Oh-my-god-oh-my-god. Oh. My. God. Yes!”
I stand and take the ring from the box.
“No, I have mittens on, and if… when I fall, I don’t want to damage it.”
“Now who’s the romance killer?” I joke as I place it back in the box, then in my pocket, and hold out my hands. “Do you trust me,Tsaritsa moya?”
“With my life.” She says as she takes my hands.
And we skate.
As we pass Noelle and Dash, she is holding her phone out, and on the screen are Nalani and Claudia, both crying and laughing, just like my bride-to-be.
The New Year’s Eve party is now also an engagement party.
I didn’t plan it that way. I planned the ring. I planned the question and the answer I already knew she’d give me. I did not have a date set; I was just going to do it when it felt like the right time. I also did not plan how her friends would descend like a coordinated unit the second the word“engaged“ left her mouth.
I stand there with Savannah, watching them surround Sofie as if she’s the center of gravity, all of them willingly caught in orbit. Good. That’s precisely where she belongs.
“He understood the assignment.” Noelle smiles.
Nalani leans in next, eyes sharp, reading the ring the way she reads plays on the ice.
“That’s a Tiffany solitaire,” she says. Not a question. “Platinum. Clean. Classy. No tricks. That’s about permanence.”
Claudia hangs back half a step, arms crossed loosely, a smile tugging at her mouth. She watches Sofie’s face more than the ring, which tells me everything I need to know about her. “He chose something that doesn’t compete with her. That’s… rare.”
Savannah squeals in my arms, and I whisper. “You have absolutely no sense of subtlety and no desire to acquire it. Never change that.”
Sofie laughs, a little overwhelmed, and instinctively leans back into me. I wrap an arm around her without thinking, my hand settling at her waist like it’s always lived there.
“It’s big, like someone would want to chop my finger off and steal it big,” Sofie says.
What the fuck?
She finally looks up at me then, eyes warm but assessing, “I love it so much.”
