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“Don’t be grumpy, Tom,” Katherine says. “And he’s right. You know I always practice my closing statements aloud.”
“That’s different.” I look at the clock. Three hours to go. And no exit route.
“Not really that different,” she presses. “Doesn’t Lolo deserve better than some shoddy, off-the-cuff ramble?”
She doesn’t add like the one you gave me, but I wonder if she’s thinking it. Hope desperately that she isn’t. Hope that she understands . . .
“Go on now, Tom,” Gorby says. “You just pretend we’re not right here, and you’re down on one knee in front of Lulu.”
Neither Katherine nor I correct him.
I close my eyes. “If I do this practice proposal nonsense, I want something in return. An hour of no talking.”
Gorby slurps his empty cup. “Hmm. I suppose that’d be fine. Katherine?”
“Sure, I can handle that.” She makes a gesturing motion with her hand. “Proceed, Tom. Propose away.”
I can’t believe I’m considering doing this, but the prospect of silence at the end is too tempting.
I clear my throat. “Okay, um. Well, Lolo. We’ve been dating almost a year now. We’ve had some good times. We’re well suited . . .”
Katherine pretends to fall asleep. “Good God, Tom. Do you want her to say no?”
Before I can reply, Gorby chimes in, because of course he does.
“It’s got to be romantic, Tom.”
I shove my thumbs into my eye sockets. “Does it, Gorby?”
“Here.” He fiddles with the knob of the radio until he finds a song he likes. “This will help. Get you in the amorous mood.”
Katherine nods. “Amorous,” she repeats.
Gloria Estefan’s balladesque “Christmas through Your Eyes” fills the tiny cab. I almost wish for another car accident.
“Come on now, Tom. Don’t be shy.”
I take a deep breath. The sooner I appease them, the sooner I get my hour of silence. “Okay, um. Lolo. My family has a very important Christmas Eve tradition . . .”
Katherine looks quickly down at her hands, and I glance over. “Hey, if this—”
“No, no.” She looks up, smiling again. “I’m totally good. This proposal, on the other hand. You want me to google proposal ideas? Just as a backup script?”
“Good idea. Never be too proud to ask for help, Tom,” Gorby says. “Speaking of . . .” He hands me a bag of nacho-cheese Doritos, which I open for him with a sigh and hand back.
“You know,” Gorby says around the crunch of a chip. “I think the problem here is that you’re just talking to air. Not a real person. Why don’t you practice on Katherine there.”
“Yeah, we did that once. Ended really well,” I mutter.
“No, no, he’s right!” Katherine says excitedly, pulling at my earlobe until I’m forced to face her.
She fluffs her hair and bats her lashes. “Here. Pretend I’m Lolo. No, no, wait . . . I bet my cans are better than hers.”
Katherine tries to flatten her breasts with her palms. “Okay, now go.”
Gloria belts out the final notes of her song, and the station rolls right into another holiday song, and not something safe and grating like “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” but the haunting opening notes of Dan Fogelberg’s “Same Old Lang Syne.”
Damn it. The bittersweet nostalgia of this song always gets to me, and it does exactly what Gorby intended, putting me in a different frame of mind, where it’s just me and a woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.
I take a deep breath, and though I wasn’t lying when I said I’d practiced my proposal to Lolo dozens of times in my head, when I open my mouth, something else entirely comes out.
“I didn’t mean to fall in love with you,” I say slowly, my eyes locked on the taillights of the truck in front of us, which look blurry through the wet snow coating the windshield.
“I sure as hell didn’t intend to stay in love with you,” I continue. “But I’ve learned . . . lately, that the best things in life aren’t the ones you plan. The best things in life aren’t easy.”
I take a deep breath, then press on. “The best things are the ones you hold on to for all your worth, and if you’re stupid enough to let go, then you fight like hell to get back.”
I swallow, still staring straight ahead. “There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that I’ll make mistakes and that I don’t deserve you. But I also promise to never stop trying to make you smile, to make you happy. I promise that I’ll never give up. If you’ll only give me a chance.”
When I finish, I very deliberately don’t look at Katherine. Gorby reaches a beefy arm across my chest and dangles a tissue in Katherine’s face. “There you are, hun.”
“Thanks,” Katherine says, her voice a little raspy, and I’m surprised when she takes it and dabs her eyes.
