Slightly Married Read Free Page B

didn’t realize it.
    So I guess he can be spontaneous after all. I mean, the man got down on his knee in the streaming gutter on the spur of the moment.
    Then again, how spontaneous is a proposal after six agonizing—at least, for me—months of his having the ring in his possession?
    Not that he has any idea that I already knew about the ring, thanks to his mother’s inability to keep a secret. He’ll never know that I had actually laid eyes on it once already, when I stumbled across it while rummaging through his suitcase during our Caribbean vacation last month.
    No, I wasn’t shamelessly snooping around for the diamond.
    I’m not that sneaky.
    I only wanted to borrow his sweatshirt and stumbled across the ring box accidentally.
    Yes, I opened it and snuck a peek.
    Yes, I am that sneaky.
    Anyway, I was genuinely surprised by his proposal today. So surprised he’ll never suspect that I’ve been waiting for him to do it since Labor Day weekend; that every gift-giving occasion since then has had me anticipating a diamond, and being crushed with disappointment.
    Sweetest Day brought a Chia Pet; Christmas, a Gore-Tex Mountain Guide Gold parka…
    Need I say more?
    Like I said, though, that’s all behind us now.
    “Listen, I made reservations a few days ago for a nice dinner tonight,” he informs me, putting his arm around me as I snuggle close to him on the couch. “Do you still want to do that?”
    “Sure.” I’m relieved that he at least had a plan for Valentine’s Day. A plan that doesn’t involve a zip-out fleece lining or a creepy, living green Afro. “Where are we going?”
    “To that new bistro you wanted to check out on West Fourth Street. I heard the French onion soup is amazing.”
    “That sounds great.”
    “Hey! Maybe we can have it at our wedding!” he suggests enthusiastically.
    “Maybe we can!” I say just as enthusiastically, but I’m thinking there’s no way in hell I’m going to surround myself by three hundred people with onion breath at our once-in-a-lifetime event.
    “So what time are those reservations?” I ask Jack.
    “Eight-thirty. Why? Are you hungry now?”
    “Not really. I’m sure I will be by then, though.”
    “Yeah, I can think of a great way to work up an appetite,” he says suggestively, and in a swift, smooth move, flips me onto my back.
    He nuzzles my neck with his stubble-studded face. “Your hair is sticky.”
    “That’s hair spray.”
    “And it’s all pinned together.”
    “That’s my fancy hairdo from the wedding. Don’t you like it?”
    “No. I like it better down. Don’t wear it like this for our wedding, okay? It doesn’t feel…normal.”
    I laugh, thinking this is one of the things I really love about him.
    You know, that he’s such a…typical guy . That, aside from sock sniffing, he’s unabashedly into sex, and sports, and beer, and me…unlike the late thinks-he’s-great Will the Metro-sexual.
    I really have come a long way from that one-sided relationship with a man—and I use the term loosely—who was head over heels in love with somebody else. Not another woman. Not even another man. No, Will McCraw was deeply in love with himself. That’s the only thing we ever had in common. It just took me a couple of years and a whole lot of heartache to figure that out.
    Jack Candell, however, is indisputably in love with me. Only me. And he’s promised to love me forever.
    I am definitely basking now.
    So much so that I’m positive we’ll be able to agree on the details of our wedding.
    What counts more than anything is that we love each other, and we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together.
    Nothing else matters.

2
    O kay, so I take back what I said last night.
    Other things do matter.
    Things like head counts and menus and which end of New York State gets to host the big event—and that it will, indeed, be a big event.
    So no, this getting-married thing isn’t just about being in love.
    I figure that out the moment I