I like our story. It's starts out with boy-meets-girl and will turn the
page to new a chapter in October when boy-marries-girl and they live, we
trust, happily ever after.
It starts last May when I made the fateful decision to ask the curly-haired
girl from work out for a margarita after our shift. It actually started a
year or so before that when she first moved to Rhode Island from Utah to
work and happened to sit a few cubes down from me. At the time, I thought
she was quite a few years younger than me, and that she had a long-time
boyfriend (I missed the part of the story where they broke up) , and so we
never really got to know one another and she went to work in a different
part of the building and that seemed to be that. Until the margarita night.
So I finally realize she's not seeing anyone and I can ask her out. She
agrees to go "Stuffies" for drink or two after work on a Friday night. We
have two or three and talk 'til closing time. Neither one of us feels quite
ready to call it a night, so we sit in her car in the parking lot and talk
for a few more hours. "Holy cow," I think, "this girl sure likes to talk."
Which is good, because I'm better at awkward silence than ebullient
conversation and I learn that we have a lot of the same values and have
learned many of the same lessons from our lives up to that point. It's a
great night and we agree to go out again.
How it came to be a long-ish time between dates is a bit of a long-ish
story, but I heard she had sort of another date and wasn't sure if she liked
me the same way I liked her and yadda-yadda-yadda it took some time for us
to get on the same page.
I happened to be going out to Utah around the 4th of July to visit a friend
and got to thinking I need to take decisive action to get this thing going.
Time's-a-wasting! So I ask her if she'd like to take a daytrip to NYC when
I get back. She's cool with the plan ... I figure she must know what she's
in store for, so things are looking good.
I have a great time in Utah and am thinking about her and our trip to NYC
the whole time I'm there. I figure because I've been to her home state
we'll have lots to talk about over the course of a long car/train/subway
trip and it'll be fun.
My plan is to take her into the city, take a stroll around until we find a
sidewalk cafe, then bring her to Central Park for a romantic walk. The plan
works well and we wind up sitting on large rock overlooking a one of the
park's ponds with a few of the trees and water and the skyline and it's
going well. It seems like a perfect time to give her a kiss. She pulls out
her phone and says, "I have to call home and tell my mom where I am!" Her
excitement is charming, but is foiling my carefully laid plan. She talks to
her mom for a while and I'm working up to the smooching again when, just as
I draw my breath and begin to pucker up, she jumps to her feet and says
she's, "ready to see something new!" Again, charming excitement, but I'm
thrown off by the timing. The day finds us roaming to various parts of the
city and there's never another real clear time when it seems good to get
that first smooch in. As it nears dusk, I finalize plans to meet up with
Neil and Charisse on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge. It's going to
be a long walk over the bridge and I know a good spot to stop, lean on a
rail, and check out the downtown skyline.
We get to the spot and I finally blurt out my plan and try to clear the air
about the long several weeks of off-and-on dating with no clear objective.
I'm a little nervous at this point because I'm mad about this girl and want
it to go smooth. At the same time, I know I'm starting to ramble and talk
nonsense, which isn't helping. Finally, mercifully, she plugs my piehole
with a kiss and the whole chain of events leading to October 3rd gets on
track.
There's no missteps and no deviations from the plan from that moment on. I
know in my heart that I want to marry her and I know she's feeling the same
way, even though we don't talk directly to that point until much later.
After Christmas, it's time for another trip to the city. No bridge this
time, but after seeing the holiday decorations in Times Square we go back to
Central Park. My recollection is a bit of a haze at this point, but I've
got the ring in my pocket ready to go and a vague plan for something to say.
It's snowy and cold. There are skaters on the pond and the skyline is lit
up. It's warm in the horsedrawn carriage and, even if the blanket smells a
bit more horsey than one might like, it's the perfect time. I think I
dropped the ring and I know I botched what I was planning to say, but
ultimately she was saying, "yes" and the ring was on her finger.
Yeah, I definitely like this story.
-- Chris
