The Proposal

by R. R. Banks

  Even as we enjoyed the happy daze of new parenthood and contended with sleepless nights, we both knew the countdown had begun. We were busy trying to get a hang of all those parenting skills you know must be so easy yet totally defy you, like attempting to change a diaper while also breastfeeding in the middle of the night, but there was one thing constantly in the back of my mind.

  Just before I was discharged, Doctor Larkin visited me and gave me some parting words of wisdom. She told me things that I never wanted to hear about my body and reassured me that even when I felt like something was wrong, it was most likely perfectly normal. She handed me a few prescriptions to fill at the hospital pharmacy, before leaving her final words of instruction.

  "Remember. No sexual activity for six weeks. You need to heal."

  That was going to be a challenge.

  I had a mental countdown of how many days were left until I could be in Gabriel’s arms again, but I tried not to fixate on it too much. It only made it harder to think about how long we had left. I concentrated all my time and energy on Georgia, lost myself in what a wondrous creature my tiny daughter really was. Just as I had noticed that I changed so quickly during the last part of my pregnancy, I noticed new things about her every single day. She quickly changed from a delicate newborn to a strong, chubby baby. She was only a few weeks old, and yet she was growing so fast and changing so much that I wanted it to slow down. And yet, as her little personality developed more, and I began to imagine the type of person she was going to be, I fell even more in love with her. It was amazing to see how she discovered the world around her and learned to interact with it. While before she had spent most of the day either sleeping or eating, as time passed she was awake for longer and discovering new things every minute. She began to smile and to gurgle, and her face lit up when she heard Gabriel's voice.

  I began to imagine what she would be like as she got older and what kind of person she would become.

  "What do you think she'll want to be when she grows up?" I asked Gabriel one afternoon as I placed her in her bouncy seat.

  She stared with fascination at the mirror above her face.

  "Well, I hope that she wants to come work with me," he said.

  His words sank in and I realized that had been the point all along. We had her in the first place so that he had someone to give the company to when he retired someday.

  "Oh," I said. "I guess that would be fine."

  "Is there something wrong with that?" he asked.

  "No," I said. "I guess I figured that would only be the plan if she was a boy. The company has only been passed down through the men in your family, so I just envisioned that you would pass it down to your son."

  "I would have wanted to pass it down to my son—"

  "See?" I interrupted.

  "If I had one. But I didn't. I had a daughter, and I believe that she will be just as capable of taking over as a boy would have been."

  "Yes, she will be," I said, leaning down to kiss her sweet face. "She's lucky that she has a daddy who thinks of her that way."

  "I have to," he said. "If I didn’t, her mama would probably throw fruit at my head."

  Five weeks after Georgia was born, I started preparing myself for Gabriel. Just one more week before my body would be ready for him again, and I couldn't wait. I was dying with anticipation, actually. We already asked Monroe to watch Georgia for the evening and while I was dreading the thought of leaving my baby for the first time since she was born, I was excited about the prospect of spending time alone with Gabriel again. We’d been waiting for so long I knew there was a distinct possibility that the second she was safely in her grandfather’s arms, we would be headed straight for our bedroom. I wanted to make sure I was ready for that.

  For the last two days leading up to the date we had circled on the calendar in bright red marker, I spent far more time than usual grooming and primping myself. I wasn't exactly sure what was behind the compulsion I felt to preen so extensively. I hadn't gone through all this effort before our first time together, and Gabriel had been more than happy with what he had found in that shower that night. But that had been in the heat of passion. That night was the result of a long simmering desire that finally erupted when neither of us could contain it anymore.

  This was deliberate. This was planned and anticipated. And after six long weeks, I wanted it to be incredible.

  The day before the six-week mark, I was making dinner, having claimed the kitchen from Emma that night, when Gabriel came into the room. He stepped up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist, kissing the side of my neck. I giggled and leaned into the kiss, then turned around and kissed him back.

  "Dinner is going to be ready in about twenty minutes," I said.

  "Is Georgia asleep?" he asked.

  "Yes," I said. "I gave her a bath earlier and she drifted right off."

  "She's a good girl," he said.

  "I hope she continues that pattern tomorrow night when she's with your father. Are you sure that you don't want me to ask my mother to help?"

  "He’ll be fine," he said. "Besides, your mom has come over and gotten to spend a lot more time with Georgia than he has. He wants a chance to bond with her too. And he might just want a chance to have her alone, so he can start telling her all of the company secrets."

  "Corporate espionage?"

  Gabriel laughed.

  "I think he hopes that if he starts now, she'll be able to usurp me and take over the company when she's twelve."

  "That might be pushing it."

  "Alright. Fourteen then."

  I laughed and gave him a spoonful of the leftover filling from the pot pie I was making. He groaned and opened his mouth for another bite.

  "You're going to have to wait," I said. "The actual pie is in the oven. It'll be ready soon."

  "How about you?" he asked.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Are you ready for tomorrow night?"

  A shiver ran through me and settled between my thighs. I bit my bottom lip as my nipples tensed in anticipation from thinking about peeling his clothes away and feeling his thick, hard length inside me again.

  "Yes," I said. "I can't wait. I go to the doctor at ten. Georgia has her checkup at eleven."

  "I'll have Harlan here to pick you up at eight."

  "Harlan?" I asked. "Pick me up? What?"

  "For our date."

  "But I thought…"

  "I have something planned," he said. He kissed me again before heading out of the room. "It's a surprise! Don’t ruin it."

  Chapter Fourteen

  Gabriel

  I walked around the restaurant again to make sure that everything was absolutely perfect. I had already checked it a dozen times before and knew that nothing had changed, but I couldn't stop myself. I was too excited. The anticipation for this night has been building up for so long and now that it was finally here I felt like I might burst. I was amazed that I had been able to keep this a secret from Cherry, to be honest. She was amazing at uncovering even the smallest of surprises that I tried to plan for her. I didn't even think that she did it intentionally, she just happened to discover any plans I made while trying to do something nice for her without her knowledge. While that made it easier to make sure what I was planning for her was something that she actually liked, it did take some of the thrill out of being able to surprise her. But this time, I wasn't going to compromise. I couldn't have her find out before tonight. I had gone to fairly extreme measures to make sure that all the details were just right and that the plans I made were done so in a way that she couldn't possibly discover them. At this point, and considering our track record, I figured that it was far more likely that she would think I was carrying on some sort of clandestine affair than actually figure out what was going on.

  I knew that she originally had different plans for tonight. The hunger in her eyes every time that she looked at me told me that she was having the same thoughts I was as the first six weeks of Geo
rgia's life passed by. I counted down the days. I spent nights thinking about touching her. But that's what made these plans so much better. She knew that both of us had been waiting these six long weeks to pass us by so that we could be with each other again. So she was surprised to find I had made plans for a night out. I could only hope that any feelings of disappointment she had wouldn’t last long.

  I checked the time and saw that it was nearly six o’clock. I had chosen that time specifically. It was a cheesy little nod to our milestone, but I knew that she appreciated my oddball sense of humor and found it funny. It would be a good start to our night. Right at that moment the doorbell at our house should be ringing. Georgia was already with my father, so she wouldn't know that standing on the front porch was a woman delivering a gown I had designed and brought to life, just for her. A few minutes later, a makeup artist and hairstylist would arrive to help her get ready for the evening. I wanted her to feel special and beautiful tonight. I wanted her to feel like the most important woman in the world, because to me, that’s who she was.

  Finally it was eight, which meant that Harlan would be now arriving at the house to pick her up. Part of me hoped that she hadn't been paying close attention to where we went the first night we had dinner together after being separated all those years. I didn't want her to figure it out, at least not too quickly, that she was heading to the restaurant at the hotel.

  The car arrived at the restaurant exactly on time and the host walked down the back staircase to get Cherry so that he could escort her up to me. I stood in the middle of the restaurant holding a single chrysanthemum. Something I had learned over the last few months was that Cherry hated roses. If they were growing on bushes, she could admire them for their beauty and their smell, but as soon as they were cut, they brought back too many bad memories. They reminded her of her ill-fated engagement and family funerals. I never wanted her to think about those things, especially when she was there with me. Tonight was all about her being happy and I wanted to start things off by giving her the flower she had mentioned was her favorite.

  Cherry smiled as she stepped into the room, her eyes falling on the flower

  "I can't believe you remembered," she said.

  "Of course, I did."

  I leaned down and kissed her.

  "I love that you brought me back here," she said. "This place is so amazing. I'll always think of it as where we had our first date. Even though I guess that dinner wasn't technically a date."

  "Who said that wasn't a date?" I asked.

  "Was it?" she asked.

  "Yes," I said. "I knew from the minute I saw you again that I had to have you. I never stopped thinking about you."

  "You didn't?"

  "No," I said. "Walking away from you that night was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do."

  "Why did you do it?" she asked.

  This was a conversation that we should have had so long ago, but we had avoided it like the plague. It was something that hung over us every time we were together, but we didn't want to acknowledge there was a problem there. It was a crushing, painful memory that neither one of us wanted to relive again. But I knew this was the right moment to talk about it. We had to talk about it. From tonight on, I didn't want to have any secrets, any lies, hanging over us. I didn’t want her to have any questions or doubt.

  "I almost didn't, I admit it. When I walked into that room and I saw you, all grown-up and gorgeous. I wanted you so bad. I had for a while, but I wasn’t sure if you felt the same. It didn’t help that your brother was adamant that I wasn't to have anything to do with you. I never wanted him to feel like I betrayed him or his memory."

  "I was a big girl," she said. "My brother didn't get to say what I did and didn't do, or who I was allowed to have feelings for."

  "I know," I said. "And I didn't walk away for him. I walked away for you."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You weren’t ready for me then," I said. "Your mind was somewhere else. Brent had just passed a few weeks before, and you hadn't even figured yourself out yet. I knew that there was so much left in the world for you to experience and I wasn't in a place in my life where I could give you what you needed. You were so young and scared and broken. You weren't ready to make that decision and if I hadn't walked away from you, I would have felt like I took advantage of you. I would be taking something from you that was far too precious for me to take back then."

  "Losing my virginity to you was something I had been thinking about for a really long time," she finally replied.

  "I wasn't talking about your virginity," I said. "Though, of course, that was important too. I was talking about your choice. If I had stayed in that bedroom with you, I would be taking away your ability to choose the memories of your first time. Even though you thought you were there because you wanted to be, and that it was what you really wanted, you weren't in your right mind that night. You know that as well as I do. I wasn't either. But I was old enough to know that if we had sex that night, and you woke up the next day and I was gone, you would carry that with you forever."

  "Yeah. Instead, I carried the weight of you rejecting me and leaving me alone. For years."

  "But at least with that, you had the opportunity to wonder why it happened. You wondered why I didn't stay there with you. Why I didn't take you up on your offer. I'm sure by that point, you had heard plenty about me and my less than sterling reputation, and you probably wondered why you weren't good enough to be one of the girls I slept with. I was positive that you would think about that for the rest of your life. And I was okay with that. Because the alternative was that you would think I was a callous asshole for the rest of your life and that you were so worthless I could take your virginity and leave you behind, never to see you again. You see, it was never that you weren't good enough to be one of those girls. It's because you were too good to be one of them. I never saw myself as being the type of man who wanted to settle down or have a family, not even then, but when I looked into the future, I always saw you. I always hoped that we would somehow find our way to each other again."

  "Why didn't you tell me that?" Cherry asked. "Why did you say that we could be married for an appropriate length of time and then go our separate ways? If you saw me in your future, why would you want to do that to me?"

  "My father loved my mother more than I think anyone should have the right to love. Even when I got older and he got more serious and spent increasingly more time working, their marriage was strong and loving. Of course, they fought and squabbled. I do remember times when it seemed like they couldn't stand to be near each other, but I never once, not in my entire life, questioned that they loved each other. These were people who couldn’t even get through a complete fight with each other because all they wanted to do was comfort one another. They adored each other more than anything in the world, until the day that my mother died."

  "That was the way my parents were, too."

  "Then you know what it's like to watch them and wonder if you will ever be able to find something that even remotely resembles what they share and feeling terrified that you won’t. When you grow up with parents that in love, it's easy to feel scared that your own marriage will never be that wonderful. You hear so often what marriage is like from unhappy, miserable people and realize that their relationship is truly special. I told you before, you are the only person I’ve ever envisioned being with for my entire life. That was true the first time I said it and will be every time I say it. To be honest, I was scared that if I tried to have a real relationship with you, it would mean that I would eventually lose you. If we got married, I thought that somehow, I would mess it up, and it would end with us hating each other. But if we pretended that it was just for show, and separated amicably after a while, I could keep on loving you for the rest of my life."

  "Well," Cherry said. "I think you were right on a few things."

  My heart started beating a little faster.

  "You do?"

  "Y
es," she said. "We did get married. And you did try to divorce me."

  There was a hint of laughter in her voice and I reached down to take her hand. I guided her across the restaurant to the table we had sat at the first time we had dinner together. I had arranged for the lights throughout the restaurant to be lowered and strands of tiny lightbulbs to be hung around the table so that when we sat down, it was like we were in our own little cluster of stars. She gasped when the strands turned on and the lights dimmed.

  "I've made a lot of mistakes, Cherry. I've said this to you before. I'm sure I'll say it to you again. And it will probably be warranted. But I want you to know that I will never try to hurt you and that I never meant to hurt you in the past. I've been scared of even trying to fall in love my whole life, but right here, right now, I know that I’m not scared anymore. I can't bear the thought of going even a single day of my life without you at my side, and I want everyone in the world to know how I feel about you. Being with you is more than worth the risk of maybe losing you some day, because I will devote every single day of the rest of my life to make sure I do whatever it takes to make sure I don't. I love you, Cherry. I love you because you know who I really am and who I was and love me anyways. I love you because you don't know who I'm going to be in the future and yet you're still willing to stick around and find out. I love you because of who you are and who you were and for whoever you're going to be. I love you because you never stop surprising me. I love you because you make me laugh in ways I've never laughed before. I love you because you are the best part of every day. I've been thinking about this for a long time and I hope that you feel the same way that I do. Because even though you are technically my wife," I said, reaching into the strategically placed centerpiece on the table and pulling out the hidden ring box inside. I opened it and eased myself down onto one knee in front of her. Holding the ring toward her, I took a deep breath. "I wanted to ask you... Will you marry me?"