“She’s going to be Olivia Tabitha Beauregard,” he said through his smile. “And you’re going to be Josephine Pear Beauregard.”
Yes, my middle name was Pear after the fruit. Wylda had decided that I had to have a middle name when she was completing the forms in hospital after I was born, and had seen a pear on her lunch tray, hence the strange middle name. Inspired, right?
“Can we not say my full name out loud?” I asked. “I’ll go by Jose Beauregard.”
Tilting his head to the side, he thought about it and then shook his head. “Nope, can’t do it, my little pear. In fact, I think that’s what we should name our first child, followed by Apple. It fits with Olivia perfectly if we shorten her name to Olive and not Liv.”
I wanted to say he was joking, but I suspected that he really wasn’t.Chapter 19Ellis
7 weeks later…Jose and Tabby were preoccupied with the arrangements to meet their dad just now, and I was busy with my proposal to her. It was something that I’d been doing for weeks now as I took photos for the day that I popped the question, and I was still trying to figure out when the best time to do it was. I’d seen something online about a guy who took photos of himself holding up the ring or something to do with the proposal itself, and the idea had grown from there.
Right now, I was trying to get a sneaky photo of her butt as she dried off, pleased with myself for writing the words Marry Me on her skin with sunscreen as she lay in the garden earlier. This one was the one I fully expected her to catch me out on, even though you could only just see what I’d written because she wasn’t badly burned, but I’d still done it, anyway. Looking down at the screen of my phone as I sat on the bed watching her, I hit the red button at the right time, and saved it in the folder on my phone. I’d also done things like write Will You Marry Me on the side of my foot on Monday, not wanting her to see it, but not concerned about what it would mean if she did. Both ways worked out for me, even though one would mean the proposal would happen without my elaborate scheme. Because of its location, though, and the fact I had so many tattoos on my body, Jose hadn’t noticed it. When I’d gotten home that night, I’d rested my foot next to her thigh as she worked on the couch beside me, and had taken a photo of her looking at the screen of her laptop, with my foot resting on her thigh. This photo joined the many photos I had now with me doing things like holding up a sign with it on while she stood behind me looking at her phone or brushing her teeth, or my favorite one – her changing Liv’s diaper while I helped, with the question on the back of the t-shirt I was wearing. It was daring, it was stupid, and it really was absurd, but it would be memorable, and we’d have a book of photographs of our proposal to look back at and show our grandkids one day.
Just then she started humming a song that I didn’t recognize. “What’s that, baby?”
Confused, she frowned at me and asked, “What’s what?”
“That song, I’ve never heard it before, I don’t think?”
“Ah,” she nodded as she went back to getting dressed. Tabby and DB had Liv for the night, her first sleepover with someone else, so we were taking our time doing things instead of rushing to make sure she stuck to her schedule. “Jarrod was singing it when I took the car in to the garage yesterday. I think he’s mixed three songs together, which is pretty cool when you think about it,” she said and then sighed. “Can you believe he doesn’t want to be a professional singer? I’d listen to him all day if I could.”
And that’s when I realized I was going about this proposal the wrong way. Yes, I had a ton of photos that I could still use, but I didn’t have the ultimate weapon – Jarrod. If I could figure out how to do it, I could totally use him singing to set the mood for the proposal and still use the photos, too. Keeping my head down so she didn’t see my smile, I asked, “What do you want to do tonight? I feel lost without her.” That was no lie, I really was. My little partner in crime, the Scooby to my Shaggy, the…
The ringing of Jose’s phone interrupted my analogies. Leaning over and looking at the screen, Jose frowned when she hit the screen. “What’s up, Tab?”