“I love you.” She pulled on his arm and jumped on his back for a piggy back ride. “Now, carry me to the stage. Please. And let's get that corn dog ya promised me first. Me and Dolly are hungry.”
“For the last time, Dolly can not eat a corndog, Gin.”
“Just a bite, babe. I don’t think it’ll hurt her.” She changed her voice to the one she knew Dolly loved best. “Wouldn’t you like a fried treat, Baby Girl?”
He slipped his phone out of his pocket, typed a text so quickly Ginny couldn’t snoop fast enough to read it, and then took hold of her thighs around his waist. “Who ya textin’, Coach?”
“Nonya business, Virginia.”
“Tell me.” She pinched his arm, but Ryan only tightened his grip, carrying her to the stage and hopefully not feeling the anxious pitter-patter of her heart against his back. “Come on… I saw it was Georgie.”
“I’m adjusting, pest. You ruinedmyplans.”
Ginny cackled but squeezed him tighter. “That’s what I’m best at, Ry. Ruining all your carefully laid plans.”
He carried her easily down the street, greeting neighbors casually as if it weren’t unusual to see him carrying Ginny on his back, blissed out with a corndog in her hand, and their dog happily trotting at their side.
“I don’t see any cloggers,” he said, completely unsurprised when they reached the stage. Instead, they found all their friends and family gathered near the front, waiting for their arrival. Ryan nodded to Danger in greeting, receiving their friend’s charming and over excited grin in response. “What are you doing, Ginny?”
Ginny squeezed her arms around his neck and smacked a kiss to his cheek. “I have a surprise for you. Danger helped me.”
“This is why you’ve been kickin’ me outta Mac’s office twice a week with cookies?”
“Cookiesanda kiss, Mister. Don’t you forget it.” She tapped his shoulders, sounding far more bold than she felt. “Now, let me down so I can woo you, and then we can get to all that ferris wheel snoggin’ you mentioned before.”
He released her but not without placing a quiet kiss on her lips. Ginny bent down to give Dolly a scratch before rushing up the stage’s stairs and picking up the guitar Ryan had gifted her for Christmas the year before. He’d had the strap custom made and covered in the lyrics to her favorite songs.
She tapped the mic at her lips. “Hey… um… hey, y’all.” She cleared her throat and though she spoke to the crowd, her eyes never left Ryan’s. “Many of y’all were privy to mine and Ryan’s romance last year at the Bicentennial Homecoming.”
Mrs. Woodhouse lifted praise hands, and Ginny’s mama high-fived her with a, “Yes, indeed. Hallelujah!” Caroline and Georgia, both heavily pregnant, hollered as their husband’s cheered at their sides. And Dakota, who’d flown in for the weekend with Sadie from their new home in Utah, smiled wide with knowing twinkles in his eyes. It caused Ginny to pause, but she thought little of it in the face of what she’d come there to do.
“I’ve loved Ryan Hood for a long time. And last year I fell in love with him all over again. In letters, and prayers, and lyrics to songs. So Coach…” She smiled and bit her lip, feeling thosenerves slip away in the face of the man she adored so much. “I thought I’d play my favorite love song here for you tonight.”
Ginny strummed the guitar and the chords to the first song Ryan had ever learned on the guitar—the first song she’d learned to play—Forever and Ever, Amenrang out over the makeshift fairgrounds down Sugartree’s main street.
“You may think I’m foolish…” she sang, as Ryan, still holding her gaze, took slow steps in the direction of the stage. “This love I feel for you always will be.”
Step. Strum. Step. Strum.
He approached the stage, handing off Dolly to Georgia but never once looking away from her, making it feel as if they were the only ones standing in the middle of Main Street, under the night sky.
When Ryan finally reached her, just as she began to sing the chorus of the song they both loved, he turned her away from the crowd and sang the words right back but down on one knee and with a ring held between his fingers.
“Marry me, Virginia Maple?” Ryan asked, pulling a note from his pocket—just as he had a year before—and holding it out for her. She paused her strumming, hearing the silence of the audience she’d thought had come to hear her sing but now suspected had known this would happen all along.
With shaking hands, she took Ryan’s note and ran her fingers across the words.
Mood Music,
Do you love me? Do you want to be my wife?
Check yes or no.
Yours, Forever and Ever
Melody Man
Ginny laughed and put the guitar down before jumping into his arms.
