When a woman pops the question, the answer she gets is not the one she was expecting...

WILL YOU MARRY ME?

a short story by

Terri Darling

Copyright © 2010 by Terri Darling

Published by Fiero Publishing at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Will You Marry Me?

Terri Darling

Karin gripped the edge of the dining room table and took a deep breath as Bill walked into her kitchen for the dessert. This was crazy, what she was about to do. The man’s job. Only he wasn’t doing it and she--

“This thing up on top of the fridge?” he called back to her.

“Yes!” She almost choked as she answered. “Leave the cover on!”

Then he was walking back. Her Bill. Easy and confident like he was loping off a high school football field again. The covered cheesecake plate was balanced on one hand, two forks and the cake knife in the other. He swooped the plate down in front of her with a grin. “Le voilà, Mademoiselle.”

Karin’s hands hadn’t left the table edge and her heart was thudding so hard he must, she thought, be able to see it above her low-cut top. Heart thudding, head hot and getting lighter like it was separating from her body.

No! She needed to ground herself. She knew this was right one hundred percent. She’d set the stage with the candlelight dinner, the perfectly poached salmon, the dry white wine. Then she’d cleared the table, changed the CD, and asked Bill if he would go and bring in the dessert because she was feeling a bit weak.

The last wasn’t a ruse. Her legs were jelly under the table.

“Open it,” she whispered before he sat down.

Bill paused a second at her voice, looked at her strangely, then set down the forks and knife and reached for the cheesecake cover. Lifted it.

Karin held her breath, perfectly still. Then she flicked her eyes up to his face and saw the blankness.

What? she thought in a panic, and looked down at the cheesecake, wondering if she’d just dreamed her preparation. But it was exactly right. A chocolate swirl creation with a raspberry drizzle around the outside, an arrangement of mint leaves and two whole raspberries ringing the center. And in the very center...the man’s gold wedding band they’d admired in the jewelry store window last week.

Her eyes went back up to Bill’s. He looked at her and said, “Does this mean what I think?”

She nodded. “Will you...?” She swallowed and tried again. “Will you marry me?”

He half-frowned, putting down the cheesecake cover. “We’ve been dating, what? Eight weeks?”

“And three times in high school.”

“I need to think about it.”

Karin’s face flushed, the chair suddenly wobbly under her. The whole world wobbly. “You...need to...think.”

“Yes,” he said, straightening up. “I need to think it through. This isn’t something you just jump at. It’s a serious, life-changing decision.”

“But....” Karin held her stomach and pushed out of her chair to face him. If there was one thing she’d seen in Bill from the first time she’d met him, it was that he did not have trouble making up his mind. He knew back in Grade 12 that his strengths were teaching and fundraising and he pursued those, leaving town for college, leaving her, teaching three years in Reave before returning here. And when he finally began courting Karin again, it was with so much energy, setting up outrageous dates like tree-climbing nature walks, midnight rendezvous in after-hours pubs....

If he didn’t know yet that he wanted to marry her, she should have known not to ask.

“I guess this was a stupid idea.” Karin leaned forward and picked the wedding band out of the cheesecake, turned to take it back to her bedroom and the box it came in.Bill grabbed her hand. “It wasn’t stupid. It was brilliant. I just need to think about it.”

“Uh-hunh.”

Silence.

Bill said, “Should we call it a night?”

“Yes, Why don’t you go think.”

***

The next week Bill only saw her twice, for a Tuesday pep rally he’d helped organize and for lunch Thursday. The other times he called he seemed distracted. And because he said he’d be busy Friday night, Karen worked late.

By the time she left the office it was late and cold with dead leaves blowing across the parking lot. Karen sniffed the air and looked about, half-expecting Bill to pop out of nowhere like he’d done other times, carrying flowers, whisking her off to an impromptu romantic dinner. Saying yes.

But the only sound was some other late working starting up their car and crunching out of the lot. Bill was...elsewhere.

Karen slowly walked to her car and climbed in, biting her lip. Was it time, she wondered, to start preparing for the worst?

***

Saturday. One week after the proposal.

Bill was due to meet her at the high school stadium for the opening football game of the season. Not able to pick her up because he was involved in some intensive meeting with the half-time organization. That he cared about.

So Karin entered alone and picked her way through to the blue bleachers, eight rows up as he’d directed. It was an odd choice since the home crowd always sat on the other side of the field, but Karin was too preoccupied to care.

Where was Bill?

Then she bit her lip and squinted across the sunny field at the bodies filling up the other middle bleachers. One, bigger than the rest in his shiny windbreaker, was directing them to their seats. Bill. And those were all ‘his’ students. She recognized them from the pep rally.

Them he’d committed too. Them he was on time for.

He turned, saw her, and waved. Then he loped down through the filling seats, sprinted around the bottom end zone of the field to the cheers of his students, leapt over the guard rail at the foot of Karin’s side, and jumped up the stairs three at a time to join her.

“You’re the pre-game show?” she asked as he dropped down beside her, zipping down his windbreaker.

“Cheap rates,” he panted with a grin.

“Bill, have you...?”

“What?”

Karin shook her head, tight-mouthed. “Let’s watch the game.”

***

Half time. The home team was fourteen, the visitors nine. Karin was a wreck.

Summoning her courage one last time, she turned to him on the bench. “I deserve an answer.”

“About?”

“Bill....”

Bill looked at her, turned, and nodded. “All right. Here it is. My life’s been about creating special events for people. For my students, for the school, for you. This school’s been crazy enough to virtually give me free reign to stir up spirit, try new things in the classroom.”

“Last Saturday night. That was an event.”

“A brilliant one. Offering a ring for dessert, on a cheesecake. Cheesecake, sex, marriage, cheesy. It resonates.”

Karin swallowed. “But....”

He rubbed his neck ruefully. “I had trouble with my part in it. A simple ‘Yes.’ It’s so simple, final,...anticlimactic.”

“You’d rather have been the one asking.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s just...I guess I have trouble facing the day to day ordinariness of being married.”

“It doesn’t have to be ordinary,” Karin whispered, eyes misting.

“I know.”

She blinked. “You know?”

“Now. After you forced me to take my head out of you know where.” He turned and took her hands in his. “I just had to imagine life without you to realize the specialness involved in saying a single word.”

“‘Yes?’”

He nodded.

“So say it.” She held her breath.

“Yes.”

Karin gasped out a sob and began to shake but he grabbed her by the shoulders. “Wait,” he said. “Let me try that again.”

Bill leapt to his feet, faced across the stadium where the band Oom-pah-pah’ed between leaping cheerleading squads, and waved his hands over his head. Someone in the band was watching because the music suddenly stopped. The cheerleaders stopped too and hushed the crowd, then they looked up at the home crowd bleachers expectantly.

Then, in a silent wave, one at a time, the students Bill had helped seat earlier stood up and raised Styrofoam boards over their heads, big enough that even Karin in her seat across the stadium could read the thick black letters on them. They spelled:

Y E S, K A R I N. I W I L L M A R R Y Y O U.

Then, after a moment, a second wave two rows down:

D O Y O U S T I L L W A N T M E ?

Karin looked at Bill who had turned to her uncertainly, waiting. She could barely see him through the tears. “Life with you’s never going to be boring, is it?” she sniffed.

“That a ‘Yes?’”

“Yes,” she said.

On either side of her, two grinning teens shot to their feet with their arms high. The crowd and band went wild. And in the middle of it, Bill drew her in close, his breath hot in her ear. “One more thing,” he whispered.

Karin groaned. “What now?”

“Just...when should we tell people?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you enjoyed this story, why don't you check out Terri Darling's other works listed where you bought this one, or sample other authors from Fiero Publishing.

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Will You Marry Me?