For one, his expression is way too intense for just a casual knee-drop. For another, we’ve always been so in tune with one another and what we’re thinking and feeling. So yeah, I figured.
It involves a question like he said. And an answer.
Oh, and a piece of jewelry.
That goes on your finger.
And the moment he went down on his knee, I knew what my answer is going to be.
“Yes,” I blurt out, completely ruining the moment.
Completely.
You idiot, Echo.
“Yes what?”
“I will marry you,” I say because he was right.
Fuck it.
I mean, it’s already out there, my yes. And I know guys like to be in control of these things and whatnot but the thing is that I’m uncontrollable. These things inside of me that I’m feeling are too wild to be controlled or contained by rules.
Too wild. Too untamed. Too euphoric and happy and pink.
And too fucking wonderful to be contained within my rib cage.
“I didn’t ask yet,” he says, his features flashing with amusement.
“But I’ll marry you anyway.”
“Yeah?”
“God yes.”
“So then, you gotta chill and let me ask, Bubblegum.”
I press both hands to my cheeks, trying to chill. “Okay, yeah. Right. Sorry.”
He takes another few seconds to study me, my breathless form in a pink peacoat, my honey-blonde hair tied up in the kind of intricate braid that he likes.
And of course, my blushing cheeks.
Those, he takes in for the longest time and with the gravest of expressions.
Then, “I bought this ring,” he fishes one out of his pocket, “four months ago. The day I decided to believe. The day I came to see you. And I’ve been carrying it around in my pocket since then. I sleep with it. I eat with it. I write about it in my diary every night. I even bring it to practice and put it in my locker because I can’t… I can’t bear the thought of ever being apart from it. I can’t bear the thought of it disappearing when I’m not looking. I guess I have this crazy notion that this ring is somehowyou. That I’ll blink and you’ll disappear. That these past months would turn out to be a dream. Well, they’ve been a dream. Better than any dream I’ve ever had but yeah. I…”
Then, staring down at the ring, he says, “All I know is that I want you to wear my ring. I’ve wanted you to wear it for a very long time now, probably way before I bought it. But every time I thought about giving it to you, I thought it wasn’t enough. The words I’d planned to say. Or the moment I’d planned to do it in. Or just the fact that I haven’t fully showed you yet, all the things that we can be together. All the ways I can love you or cherish you or be the kind of a boyfriend you deserve. But fuck it, yeah? Because I figure if you wear my ring, I could show it to you for the rest of our lives. So even though everything that I’ve just said is not enough, this moment isn’t enough, and I’ve got a ways to go, I want you to have this ring.”
He looks up then, his eyes liquid and his face vulnerable. “Because I’m insane for you. I’m obsessed with you. You’re the life in my veins and you’re the thing I crave more than air. I’m sick for you, Echo, and I want you to marry me. Will you?”
At this point, I’m just crying.
I’m bawling and I realize that I was wrong.
I didn’t ruin the moment.
Because he just saved it.