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Her eyes glimmer back at mine and her excitement has me convinced that this whole idea James came up with actually makes sense—Amelia makes sense.
I reach out and grab her hand, pulling it into mine.
“Well then, I guess it’s fitting,” I say, smiling over at her.
“Oh my God!” She gasps. “You’re proposing? Tiffany said she thought it would happen tonight. Thank God she talked me into those manicures today.”
“Well… what I wanted to discuss was—”
Amelia doesn’t hear a word I say and instead waves down the kid walking around refilling waters.
“Do you know how to work a phone?” she asks him in a serious tone.
“I’m seventeen… so yeah,” the kid says, and then looks over at me. “No offense.”
No offense?
What the hell does he mean ‘No offense’? I’m thirty-six, not a hundred.
“Good, you’ll have to do,” she says, practically throwing her phone at him. “Now record this and make sure you get my right side —it’s my best side.”
The kid moves to her right side, and I do my best to ignore the few highbrow onlookers. They appear more concerned about Amelia having someone record in this upscale establishment than they are about our awkward proposal scenario.
I was hoping we could discuss it and come to a conclusion if this is something she wanted to do. But now I can see based on the mockup production Amelia is trying to toss together, she’s expecting more than I planned.
“Perfect… right there should be good. And get an angle where you can see him in the shot but mostly me… and don’t crop out my shoes. Keep rolling until I tell you. I’ll just crop out whatever dialogue I don’t want in post,” she instructs.
In post?
And I guess the “him” she’s referring to is me?
She turns back toward me, gives her hair a quick fluff, and then lays her hands gently down where mine sit on the highly starched white tablecloth. She gives me a demure smile that looks practiced to perfection.
“Ok, go ahead. I’m ready now,” she tells me, batting her lashes.
“Uhhh… ok,” I say, my eyes jetting up quickly to our ‘cameraman’.
“Pretend he’s not even there,” she says, waving a hand in the kid's direction.
Right…
He’s not here.
I’m no stranger to cameras and an audience. Every day I play a game that is televised at one level or another.
But this?
This is an unusual experience for me.
“So what I was going to say…” I continue, shaking off the weird start to this proposal and taking her hand in mine, wrapping my right hand around her left. “…is that we’ve been together for a while now.”
She sits there nodding profusely with a pearly white smile. Her eyes glimmer back at me.
“...and with my visa about to expire, I think it makes sense that we get married,” I say.
Her eyes go wide and her smile broadens. This was the reaction I was expecting, and I’m relieved to see it, even with the weird start.
“Oh my God, Ryker…” she says, putting her right hand against her chest as if she’s surprised.
