He stood up, sweat glistening on his brow, his hands dirty and covered in oil. Why he persisted in trying to fix this gate was beyond me. We’d been together for four months by now, and in that time he’d tried to fix it at least six times. Each time, the gate had not sped up at all. Even Zeus and Athena looked exasperated as they sat next to him watching.
‘And I also think you should stop trying to fix this gate and just let me buy a new motor for the engine.’
‘No!’ he said, in that same stubborn voice he used every time I mentioned buying a new motor.
I rolled my eyes. ‘You’re obsessed with this gate engine.’
‘I know I can fix it though.’
I shook my head at him. ‘You cannot fix it. You’ve tried and failed multiple times.’
‘Did you say you think we should get married?’ He leaned against the wall and folded his arms.
‘I did. We’ve been living together for four months already, and we still love each other, and it seems like we’re just putting off the inevitable. Also, financially, it makes so much more sense for you to sell your place. We could build an extra room here, or even a cottage for your RC planes. That’s really the only reason you go back home anyway. Also, we could file joint taxes, which would save so much time and money, and tax season is coming up.’
‘This is all very logical and practical of you,’ Andrew said with a smile.
‘I know. I told you, I’ve thought about it quite a lot.’
‘Are there any other reasons you’d like to get married?’
I smiled at him. ‘Not really. Just that.’
He pushed himself off the wall and walked towards me. ‘Are you asking me to marry you?’
I shook my head. ‘No, just pointing out the benefits of marriage, if that is what you wanted to do . . . Is it, what you want to do?’
He walked all the way up to me, placed his hands on my shoulders and tangled his fingers through the pigtail braids that he’d done on me earlier. ‘The thought had crossed my mind, once or twice. But I wasn’t going to bring it up for a while. I didn’t want to freak you out.’
‘It doesn’t freak me out. Nothing that I thought would freak me out has freaked me out so far.’ This was true. From the moment Andrew had gotten off that plane and I’d fallen into his arms the relationship had moved very quickly. I’d thought that living with him would have freaked me out, but it hadn’t, because he was flying internationally now, which meant that he was away for almost two weeks a month, which suited me perfectly. I got to have my own time, which was important for me, and best of all, when he came back we were so in love with each other and had missed each other so much that the never-ending sex was amazing.
‘Good to know,’ he said, and his hands moved off my shoulders and down to my hips. ‘But you have kind of taken the romance and the surprise out of this moment, you know that.’
‘I hate surprises. If you ever decided to drop down on one knee in front of me and pull out a ring, I would never, ever marry you. I’d probably break up with you right there and then, in fact.’
He laughed and pulled me into a hug. A real hug. We no longer pugged. ‘I would never dream of surprising you with an engagement. And I know you don’t like wearing rings either. They make your fingers feel claustrophobic.’
‘Like they’re being strangled.’ I pulled out of the hug and looked up into his eyes.
‘So?’ he asked.
‘So what?’
‘So are we doing this? Are we getting engaged?’ he asked.
‘I think engagements are stupid, don’t you? Why do you have to get engaged first before you get married? It makes no sense. You only do that if you’re buying time so you can organize a big wedding.’
‘So you want to jump ahead to the getting-married part then?’ he asked.
‘Tax season is right around the corner.’ I smiled at him.
‘Very funny.’ He ran a hand down my cheek, stopped under my chin and then tilted my face up. ‘Seriously, though. Do you want to get married?’
‘Yes. But can we elope and not tell my mom about it.’
‘I don’t think that would be very nice.’
I sighed. ‘But let’s give her as little time as possible to plan the wedding so she can’t make it totally over the top.’
