“What do you know, something else I’m not going to disagree with,” Dion replies, and I can hear the smile in his voice. “Come on, my hopeless romantic. Let’s go see the Eiffel Tower all lit up and sparkly.”
“On y va!” I declare, and as soon as we are walking, I start to swing our arms again.
For a late September evening,the air still feels warm and a little humid, and it’s nice to be walking around in unzipped lightweight jackets. It also adds an extra layer of energy to our surroundings and the people we join as we reach the open public space. Everyone is relaxed, talking,laughing, gathering. Young, old, families and couples. There’s music playing somewhere, although I can’t identify the source, and countless tourists are having quite demanding-looking amateur photoshoots all around us.
But Dion and I, we’re just standing on the spot, our arms around each other as we stare at the Eiffel Tower, all lit up with what could easily be a million flickering lights. When I was a kid, they only did this at Christmas or national holidays. But somewhere along the way, they realised that this kind of magic, this kind ofspectacle,shouldn’t only be reserved for special occasions. Even our most ordinary days deserve a little sparkle.
Maman taught me that. She didn’t save perfume or lipstick or fine clothes for birthdays or parties or special moments. She wore them every single day. While I may not have adopted this commitment to fashion and personal grooming, I’d like to think I am following her example by trying to make every day a bit magical. For my pupils. My colleagues. For Dion. For Dion’s family. And for myself.
Whether it’s two squares of dark chocolate with my post-lunch coffee. Whether it’s playing Daft Punk for my students to warm up to in lessons. Whether it’s making Dion one of the recipes from my mother’s recipe book, where she hand-wrote all my favourite dishes, cakes and treats – even the ones that made me very, very sick. I try to make the most of every day.
Today, that is easy. It’s already been one of the best days of my life. Getting to stand here and watch the Eiffel Tower shimmer is just the icing on the cake.
I only think how perfect a setting it would be for a proposal when I see a woman go down on one knee about five metres in front of us. My breath hitches as I watch the woman she’s facing clamp a hand over her mouth and take asmall step back. The people around them also move back, and it creates a stage for this scene to play out. I glance at Dion, not knowing if pointing this out would be the right or wrong thing to do, but he’s already watching, a small, closed-lip smile on his face.
I don’t say anything to him and go back to watching the women who are centre stage.
The woman on one knee is speaking, but she’s just too far away, and there’s just a bit too much traffic noise for me to catch what she’s saying. But when the other woman steps closer, bends down and wraps her arms around her girlfriend, her “Yes!” is loud and proud.
Immediate applause erupts from all around us, and I take my arm off Dion’s shoulders to join in. When he also starts to clap, I feel a sense of relief that I can’t quite explain.
“That was,” he says as the applause fades away and the happy couple are lost in the crowd once more, “very sweet.”
“Wow,” I rock back on my heels. “Did youlikethatcheesy,romantic, verypublicproposal?”
“I’m very happy for them,” he says carefully.
“Me too,” I say, and I lean down to kiss him, but he’s not there.
He’s moving backwards. One step, two. And then he’s pulling his hand out of his jacket pocket, and there’s a box.
“Dion,” I gasp, but he’s already going down on one knee, and I swear time stops. Time and everybody else inRive Droite, in Paris, in the world. They all stop. Disappear. It’s just him and me. Us.
“Benjamin Pierre Smith,” he says with a perfect French accent. “From the moment I met you, there was something about you-”
“Wait!” I hold up my hands. “Stop! What are you doing?”
Dion looks at the closed box in his hands, around at the small crowd circling us, and then back at me with this deadpan expression of his that I love so much.
“I think it’s pretty obvious,” he says.
“But you said… You said no proposals in Paris.”
“You’re right,” he sighs, but it’s not an exasperated Dion smile. It’s a sigh of something else. Hope, perhaps. “But then I saw your blue eyes sparkling in the Eiffel Tower’s illumination. And I noticed the way you looked at that couple and… I realised I was an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot,” I reach a hand down and cup his beautiful, beautiful face. His stubble scratches my hand as he nuzzles against my palm slightly.
“Oh, I am. I was an idiot to think that us getting engaged in Paris would be anything but… perfect. When it’s such a big part of our story. When it was maybe our first beginning.”
“But you have a ring,” I say, nodding at the box. “That means you were also kind of planning this.”
“I’ve had this ring for eight months,” he says and opens the box. “I was browsing this website of a jewelry wholesaler for work, and this white gold band, it just spoke to me. And that was weird because I look at jewelry a lot at work, but this… I just knew it was meant to be for you. I’ve been carrying it around with me since then, waiting for the perfect moment.”
I barely look at the ring. It’s beautiful - a thin band that also twinkles in the illuminations around us - but it’s nowhere near as wonderful to look at as Dion is right now.
“You knew you wanted to marry me eight months ago?” My stomach is flipping both slowly and rapidly, and I should feel sick with it all, but I don’t. I’ve never felt better.
“Maybe longer,” he says. “I mean, I have a whole speech prepared to explain, but someone keeps interrupting me…”
