“I don’t know. You tell me. You’re the one who’s been there.”
He kissed me, and I felt myself melting. It was a sweet kiss, gentle and full of love, and I never thought it would be the one right before he asked, “Will you marry me?”
He came out with it just like that, then stood back, waiting for a response.
He caught me off guard. I was in shock. Thiago was asking me to marry him? That didn’t make sense; that wasn’t who he was! For a moment, I thought it had been a spontaneous decision,but no. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a box. A ring! I couldn’t believe it.
“This isn’t just some crazy whim. I know what you’re thinking,” he said, nervously awaiting a reaction from me.
It was a delicate, elegant ring—simple, with a small diamond at the center. Discreet, perfect.
“When, though?” I asked. “How?”
“I bought the ring months ago in that little town up north that you liked so much, remember?”
I nodded, feeling overwhelmed with emotion.
“I waited to ask because I wanted to do it in a special way, in a special place, but then I realized the more I planned, the less special it might be for you, so I’ve just been carrying it around in my pocket since then. I knew I would feel it when the moment came, and here it is.”
A tear slid down my cheek as I simultaneously smiled like an idiot.
“I love you so much,” I said, feeling my whole body trembling from emotion, nerves, surprise, infinite love. Then I realized he was still waiting for an answer. “Yes, of course, of course I’ll marry you!”
He held me tight, then picked me up and spun me around.
We started kissing passionately and had to force ourselves to stop so he could slide the ring onto my finger.
And then everything made sense. Everything. Meeting when we were little, the long separation, the reunion, our fights, losing each other, getting each other back. All those years had brought us to this moment, and it was then that I could finally forgive myself.
Forgiveness freed me. It allowed me to breathe easy again and to keep moving forward, to start from zero with the man I loved and was anxious to build a life with.
Maybe it wasn’t normal what we were doing, him and me andour bus, with no predetermined route, but it didn’t matter, because we were alive and we were together, at last.
We made love that night—slowly, fully, like we didn’t want the moment to end. But finally we fell asleep, and I knew there in that hotel bed that everything was how it should be.
We had loved each other softly…in secret…and with millions of kisses.
