by Lucia Jordan
“Uh, just a sec,” I said as I tried to stall in order to calm my nerves. “Let me talk to the photographer. I’ll be right back.”
I stepped outside the store to catch a breath of fresh air and gather my thoughts. What if this didn’t go the way I hoped? I had to push that thought from my mind; it would go perfectly. I looked up at Hensley in the window as I walked over to the photographer to say something to him, although I really didn’t have anything planned to say.
“She’s beautiful,” he said.
“Yes,” I nodded in agreement, “she truly is.”
He gave me a solid pat on my shoulder while the other guy I brought with me stood there and grinned. They both knew what was about to happen, and I thought they could both tell how nervous I was.
“I’ll capture all of it,” the photographer said. “Go get your happily ever after.”
He smiled at me, and I saw Hensley grin through the window. She saw the chair and pointed to it with a shrug as if she were asking me whether or not I wanted her to sit down. I nodded, and she took a seat. The dress cascaded down the faux forest floor, and the slits fell open to the sides of her legs, exposing her bare thighs beneath.
I walked back into the store, nodded at Meg, who was hanging back to watch on with a huge grin on her face and eyes that were already starting to water.
When I climbed up into the window display with Hensley, she looked excited, but she was excited about the wrong thing. There was more to come.
“So, what kind of poses do you want me to do?” she asked. “I don’t think that sitting in this chair, which is exquisite by the way, will show off the design very well for more than a couple of pictures. I think the shots should mostly be standing, don’t you?
“Yes,” I agreed. But as Hensley started to stand up, I put my hand out to deter her from moving just yet. “Let’s just do a few pictures like this first, and then we’ll have the chair removed from the scene, okay?”
“Sure,” she smiled. “Sounds good.”
I stepped to the side of the window to get out of the camera frame and let the photographer snap a few shots, both so that it would look believable for a few moments longer and because Hensley was so stunning in the window that the pictures couldn’t be missed. After a few rounds of camera shuttering, I stepped in closer toward her. She got a little confused since the photographer was still snapping shots, even though I was within the frame in my jeans and T-shirt and looking completely out of place for the aesthetic.
“We should have dressed you up like a wild prince,” she laughed. “Then, we could have done the shoot together.”
“I want to do everything together, Hensley,” I said with a tone of seriousness that didn’t match her playful bantering and made her look at me with a curious pause.
“Me too,” she smiled.
“I don’t need to be dressed in costume to be your prince,” I said as I stepped close enough to pick up her hand from her lap and take it into my own. “You are my princess always, no matter whether you are in this soul-pulling dress, or whether you are wearing one of my T-shirts with your hair tied up in a messy bun.”
Hensley beamed at me, less concerned about the photographer and more enraptured by what I said to her. That was exactly how I wanted it.
“I know that we’ve only officially been dating for only a week or two, but we’ve been friends for years. I feel like our souls might have known each other for even longer than that. This doesn’t feel rushed to me. In fact, it feels like something that I’ve been waiting on forever.”
Hensley’s eyes started to glisten with moisture as she listened to me talk and stared into my eyes.
“The other night, when you told me that you loved me, I’m sorry that I didn’t respond to you. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to or because I didn’t know what to say; it was because I was surprised. I was surprised at how natural it sounded, how easy, and how right the words fell from your lips even without thinking about it. If I hadn’t already had this idea in mind and known that it was about to play out in a matter of days, then I would have responded differently to you. But I wanted to give you this—this moment. And so I needed you to wait for just a little bit.”
“I don’t understand,” she said as she looked around the window display, suddenly starting to figure out that this wasn’t just an average photoshoot. It dawned on her that there was more going on and we had an audience.
“Hensley,” I said as I started to get down on one knee inside the elaborate and magical space that I had created for us. “I love you. I love you, and I want to be with you forever. Marry me, please. Say yes, and let’s start this new chapter of our lives as much, much more than friends.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the small, glistening ring that sparkled under the reflection of all the tiny light strings hanging from the ceiling.
Hensley put her hand over her mouth, and I watched as tears silently streamed from her eyes and over her cheeks, dripping off the bottom of her jaw.
“Yes,” she cried as she let me put the delicate ring on her finger.
She stood up, and I kissed her as if she were the only thing in the world that I needed to stay alive. I kissed her inside the magical fantasyland we had created, both inside this window and inside the world outside, a space that we had carved out together just for us, a world that we would make according to our own rules. The first rule that we would toss out would be that friends couldn’t be lovers.
I picked her up and spun her around as I always did and heard the claps of onlookers both inside the store and on the other side of the glass window. The camera shutter clicked at lightning speed, and when I set Hensley down on her feet and held her face in my palms to look deeply into her eyes, she smiled.
“What are we going to do now?” she asked with eyes that were wide and beaming with happiness.
“Whatever we want,” I smiled.
She looked at me with a playful grin and put her hands against my chest. “Can I keep the dress?” she asked.
“That dress was always meant to be yours,” I said.
