“Right.”
“They are leaving June open, in case we get married.”
“ThisJune?”
“This June. Next June. Every June, until we get married.” I stare into Mirabelle’s beautiful blue eyes and hope I’m conveyingwe will get married.Inevitably. Some day.
“But…that’s so soon. That’s what your PR team wanted. And, speaking of PR, I’m still not sure I’m comfortable with the publicity aspect involved in being with you…”
“There hasn’t been another rude article for weeks. We’re boring now. A wedding will likely make us less boring for a minute, but that minute will come and go. After, we’ll fade back into the mundane. We aren’t the kinds of celebrities that people create cult followings for. We’re just a brief moment, now and again, to meet someone’s story quota. It’s been that way my entire life. Twenty seconds of fame every so often, overshadowed by months of business as usual.”
“Isn’t this kind of fast?” she asks, large eyes pinned on me.
“I have filled one and a half pro and con notebooks in the same number of weeks with nothing but pros. I am sure I wantyou. Forever. Endlessly. Since I made a promise I’d be honest for six months, that’s the honest truth. If you tell me yes at any point during them, I’ll promise to be as honest as I can be with you for the rest of my life.” Capping my Sharpie, I set it down and cup her cheek. “I love you. I don’t want to live in a world where I don’t. I can’t imagine waking up and not having you be the first thing on my mind. I don’t want to. This is how serious I am, Mirabelle. So I’m a little frazzled to learn that your parents live down the street, you don’t appear to hold them in poor regard, and I have not yet begged your father for his blessing.”
She jerks, taken aback. “You’re intending to get my father’s blessing?”
“Obviously.”
Her expression mutates, rife with disgust.
I poke her in the nose. “What’s allthismean?”
“Nothing.” She continues to glare at me with a face that very obviously meanssomething. “How old are you again?”
My shoulders sag. “Thirty-four.”
“Thirty-four,” she echoes. “I didn’t know people from your generation still did that wholegetting the father’s blessingthing.”
“I am fairly certain most people still do that.”
Her head shakes. “No, no. Kids these days are out here eloping and living together without a single word to their parents. Babies are having babies, and parentsmightlearn about it months after it’s impossible to hide anymore.”
“Kids these days,” I echo.
She nods. “The rowdy youths!”
My lips tip in a soft smile. “Are you trying to close the distance between our generations, or are you making yourself out to be one such rowdy youth?”
“I’m clearly a rowdy youth, considering my parents know you asMr. Anders, my new boss, notDamion, man attempting to make me his fiancée.”
I take a moment to scan her, then I sigh. “You’re right. I’ve never seen a rowdier youth. So. When are we telling them I’m robbing the cradle?”
Heat crawls up her neck. “When are we putting up Christmas lights?”
“Are your parents coming to help us?”
Her lip juts. “You’re not going to drop this, are you?”
“I will if it’s making you uncomfortable. But I am also willing to draft an essay discussing the matter of my wish to marry you and why you should say yes.”
Her face lights at the idea of me writing an essay to convince her to marry me
My heartsqueezes, and I find it painful to keep myself from wrapping her up in my arms.
“A…Baconian essay?” she hedges.
“A persuasive Baconian essay. In MLA format. Undergraduate level at roughly five thousand words.”
