"Yes"

I'm kind of a dick, huh? Leaving ya'll hanging with that last simple post without a word for, what, two weeks? I'm really sorry about that, but it's been overwhelming even thinking about writing the details of that Friday night. I want to get back to day to day blogging, but I know I can't do that without filling you in on the deets, so here they are.
.....

We were moving in together on Saturday morning, ya see, and so we had planned to go on our last date as a not-living-together couple on Friday night. He had been planning that date for the past month or so, and I was looking forward to it. It was a cute idea: a "first date redux". You see, on our first date, the fancy French restaurant he had wanted to take me to was closed that evening, so in an effort to make things right, we'd go back there and have our proper first date.

As I got ready for the date, donning a cute dress I hadn't yet worn around him, sexy smoky eyes and a couple fake lashes for dramatic effect, I thought to myself...what if? Hell, we'd been talking about wanting to marry each other pretty much since we met. We talked about rings, discussed what we both wanted in a wedding (small, very DIY), and glossed over smaller details.

I imagined how he'd ask me as I gave myself a final once-over in the mirror, then quickly pushed it out of my head and admonished myself for getting my hopes up so stupidly. He was nervous when he picked me up, though. His mouth was dry and he was being even more of a dork than usual (adorably, of course).

He swiped an (real) eyelash from where it had fallen on my cheek and instructed me to make a wish, "make it a good one" he commanded. Then I did something I almost never do: I made a specific wish, instead of a vague wish for a happy life or something, like I usually do. It was a wish that I had no way of knowing would actually come true that night, and was actually in the works for the last month, if not longer.

We drove to the restaurant, my hopes being dashed a bit as his nerves seemed to subside, and we ate an amazing meal and talked happily over dinner about our plans and excitement about living together. "Can I tell you something?" I coyly asked over dessert. "I was hoping you'd have proposed tonight...I know it's so dumb! It was just something that was on my mind."


He apologized profusely while we walked back to the car, and gave me a million excuses as to why it wasn't the right time. Meanwhile, my best friend, who had been in-the-know since he bought the ring on my birthday some two weeks prior, was lighting the candles as per his detailed instructions back at our new house.

"I have a surprise for you," he told me as he threw a tie at me from where he sat in the driver's seat of his car, and instructed me to blindfold myself. He hung a right and started up the hill towards our new house. I giggled excitedly as he told me that he had re-done the bedroom closet I had so detested - the one thing in the new house that I wasn't totally charmed with.

It didn't even cross my mind that this was a ploy or a ruse. Not for a second. So excited by the new closet, I barely noticed the heat from the lit candles as he led me blindly into the bedroom and placed me in front of the closet.

"Okay, you can look," he said in a shaky voice from behind me. I took the tie off, and...my god...I can't even describe that moment properly.


I stared at the sign hanging in the same old closet and then slowly turned around to take in the scene. Forty two candles (my favorite number: the answer to the meaning of life according to Douglas Adams) and more red roses than I could even imagine. And then he dipped onto his knee and held up his hand for me to take.

I'm glad he did that, because I was frozen in place, already starting to cry, with my other hand over my mouth that was agape with surprise.

What he said, how he asked, is between myself and him, but I said "yes", of course. How could I not? He is the most wonderful man I've ever met. He makes me feel amazing and beautiful and wonderful, and every day I wonder how the fuck I got so lucky. I can't believe this is my life. I can't believe I've won this prize. I can't believe I get to marry him.



.....

I'm laying in bed right now, in that same room where he bent on his knee and told me all the things I had hoped my entire life someone would feel about me, but secretly never truly thought I would find. I've been staring in awe at the ring (a beautiful vintage thing that is everything I never knew I wanted in an engagement ring) every day and I really just can't get over it all. "This is my life," I have to keep reminding myself. I love, love, love that this is my life.