“Who wants a normal baby when we can have a supersized one, right?”
I always spoke of this baby asours, and it was, in a way. I loved her and her parents enough to officially refer to the collective whole asus,and certainly I wouldn’t apologize for living vicariously through Shannon until I had one of those growing in my belly too.
We chattered on and on about all things baby until she shifted the conversation. “So, I’m assuming there was no marriage proposal last night? I didn’t hear anything and didn’t want to call and take you away from the tub of ice cream.”
“So considerate of you. And no. No proposal.”
“You should just ask him, Sam. Stewart and I had it all planned for months. There was no surprise, but it went down exactly as we wanted… except, you know, for your refusal to play along.”
“Okay, look, we’ve been through this a thousand times. No way was I going to play the slave Princess Leia and be chained to Jabba the Hut all night. That would have set feminism back forty years!”
“So what happened last night?” Shannon pried. “You were convinced he was going to ask you.”
“So after I got the dinner invitation, I left work early. Booked an appointment in a blowout bar and had my makeup done there too. Then I hurried home and changed into that dress I’d worn to the charity ball – remember the pink one that shimmers? Anyway, instead of telling me what restaurant we were going to, Keith said he’d ping me his location. I’m imagining some fairytale palace with snowflakes and twinkling lights.”
“Snowflakes in Southern California?”
“It’s my fantasy, so shut it!”
Only after we had a nice little chuckle did I jump into the nitty-gritty of my cautionary tale.
“I knew something was up the minute I pulled into the parking lot.”
“Uh-oh.” Shannon giggled. “Why?”
“Because it was Jorge’s Mexican Restaurant. You know, the one with all the plastic owls?”
“Why would he propose to you at a hole in the wall like Jorge’s?”
“Because, Shannon, he wasn’t proposing. He was justeating.”
“So, you’re saying he invited you to dinner – toeat? How dare he?”
“Exactly. And I walked into the owl nest looking like I was going to prom… yeah, it was embarrassing, to say the least.”
“Did Keith notice? What did he say?”
“Obviously he noticed my glamour shots makeover, but he was so busy stuffing his face with nachos he couldn’t really say much. Still, he was grinning at me all night like he was in on some secret I wasn’t. I swear, Shannon, he’s just playing with me. He knows I’m expecting it, so he’s torturing me. And I only have myself to blame.”
It was true. This was all my fault – and the biggest sore spot between us as a couple. The truth was he had proposed to me – twice. And I’d denied him – twice. But aside from Shannon, no one knew the truth. To the rest of the world, and by that I meant his family, Keith was viewed as the commitment-phobic chump who refused to settle down and I as the long-suffering girlfriend, longing for a marriage proposal that would never come.
I swear I tried to correct the assumption, not wanting Keith to take the blame for something I’d done, but he insisted he’d rather be seen as the bad guy than the poor sap that continually got shot down by the woman he loved. God, I was such a shithead.
The second proposal came nearly a year to the day after the seaweed proposal. Only this time, Keith proposed on dry land, down on one knee, and with a gleaming diamond ring ready and willing to be slipped onto my finger.
If the seaweed proposal was a victim of overeager spontaneity, the diamond ring proposal was the victim of poor timing. See, Keith had chosen to ask for my hand in marriage on the exact day I’d spotted my mother at the local mall, carrying on like a raving lunatic. She hadn’t seen me, but I’d heard her. The entire mall had heard her. Her f-bomb-laden outburst was over tomatoes, and while she was still in the middle of aggressively chastising the food court worker for adding them to her burger, she’d been dragged from the area by mall cops as horrified mothers dove over their toddlers, shielding their innocent ears from harm.
Shaking from the encounter, I’d driven straight to the pier where I’d promised to meet Keith for an evening stroll. I hadn’t had a chance to make sense of what I was feeling, or to tell him what had happened, before he was on the ground with my hand in his and a shiny diamond was being slipped onto my ring finger. I still cringed every time I thought back to that moment. Bursting into tears, I’d handed the ring back with some half-assed sob about him not wanting to marry me and then ran off into the night.
Yeah. Not my best moment.
That night, even after explaining to him why I’d freaked out, Keith was pissed and rightfully so. We didn’t speak for a week, which was a little difficult seeing that we were living together by then. Eventually he got over it, and we went on with our lives. We only spoke about it one other time when he crushed my heart by asking if I’d ever marry him.
It was then that I made him a promise – and bought myself some much needed time. If, after five years together, I wasn’t bat-shit crazy, he could propose to me again … and then, I’d say yes.
* * *
Well, that five-year mark came and went a week ago, and there was still no proposal. Keith didn’t even act like he knew the significance of that date; or worse, that he’d remembered. And because of my past assholery, I couldn’t say anything either. So Keith and I just existed in this weird expectant bubble, and last night… I couldn’t shake the feeling he’d been messing with me.
