Tears began welling up in my eyes as I became aware of the entire class staring at us, making no attempts to hide what they were looking at. The class had never been as silent as it was now, to Dr. Weber’s immense frustration, I didn’t doubt. At the thought of Dr. Weber, I flicked a quick sideways glance to see his reaction and he appeared to be embracing a coronary, while his face assumed an expression of utter confusion.
My momentary lapse in concentration from what was going on in front of me with Zayden literally down on one knee in the middle of a class was broken when I heard him say my name like he had never said it before.
“Aria,” I heard him say. I had to bring my attention back to his piercing blue eyes, staring into my own with so much intensity it felt like he could see right through me.
“Hey, what are you—”
“I love you, Aria Roberts,” he cut me off to the sound of gasps encapsulating the whole room. I could sense the whispers of my classmates on my skin, but somehow I couldn’t register any of the words they were speaking. It was as though a movie was playing a few rooms down the hall and we were privy to snippets of it traveling through the distance.
I love you, too. Those were the words meant to come out of my mouth. Or they would have if I had been at all capable of opening them or producing a sound. It was like words were now captured somewhere deep in my lungs, imprisoned forever.
“I love you and I never thought I would say these words to a woman and mean it,” Zayden said, his eyes still firmly on my own. “When you first came into my life – or into my bank, I should say,” he said with a grin. “I saw the most beautiful woman I had ever laid my eyes on. But I couldn’t have anticipated the whirlwind that became my life after. I have seen many beautiful girls. But Aria, Aria, Aria,” he repeated in slow rhythms matching my heartbeats. “You really did a number on me. It only took a few conversations with you for me to realize that your beauty was only your least impressive quality. Your mind, Aria, your brilliance, your confidence,
the very way you walk and talk like the world marches to your drums until it starts doing exactly that! I have never met anyone like it. Twenty years old and you have more maturity than my mother does. I don’t think there is anyone quite like you, Aria. There is one and only one Aria Roberts, and I am the luckiest man in the world just for having your love. Make me luckier than the luckiest man in the world, Aria,” he said and reached into his pocket.
My eyes were probably swollen to twice their size by now, as I felt my whole face get drenched in my own tears, while an insufferably painful grin was plastered to my face that I couldn’t get rid of no matter how hard I tried. Zayden had said all those wonderful things about me. In my college. In front of my whole class. And my professor. The most sought-after man was down on his knee, telling me - little, useless Aria Roberts with a little apartment and a little life – that I made him the luckiest man in the whole world.
While everyone was watching.
When he pulled the ring out of his pocket, I gasped loud enough for the whole school to hear when I realized that it was, in fact an enormous piece of diamond on a ring. I felt heavy just from imagining the weight of it around my finger. All the time. For the rest of my life. Another gasp. Too much was happening too fast, and it was crazier than my wildest fantasies. None of my daydreams where Zayden proposed to me came close to living up to this very moment where the man I loved was about to ask me to be his forever.
But before I said anything…before this got real and we were together forever and I would be his and he would be mine, legally, emotionally physically…I had to make sure.
With all the might I could muster, I forced myself to produce a sound at last, “Zayden, but the divor—”
He cut me off with a kiss squarely across my lips, to spontaneous applause from the whole room. Through the corner of my eyes I could even see a confused Dr. Weber joining his hands together in continuous motions.
“Aria,” Zayden said, breaking off in almost a whisper. “It’s taken care of. The papers arrived. Just answer me now and stop torturing me. Aria Roberts, will you please marry me?”
I took the deepest breath of my entire life and said the most wonderful single word to have come out of my mouth: “Yes.”
Chapter Four
Zayden
I went into the bank feeling good. The curious gazes of all my employees upon my arrival did not bother me at all; rather, it gave me a sense of pride: they were looking at me because they knew. They knew that I had managed to get the most amazing woman in the world to agree to marry me. Whether they were jealous or judgmental or just plain curious, none of their whispers and gasps bothered me in the slightest. In fact, it was probably their lucky day, because I was suddenly in the mood to issue an office-wide bonus. Grinning wildly, I approached Aria’s desk.
“Hi,” she said, beaming.
Instead of responding to her greeting, I leaned in and kissed her in front of the whole office. Aria broke off first, perhaps feeling uncomfortable by my show of affection in the workplace. But the smile on her face continued to be radiant.
“My office, 15 minutes,” I said. Then I added loudly, “I love you.”
Aria’s face went completely red as she mumbled something that sounded like, “I love you too.”
Exactly 15 minutes later, my fiancée was sitting across from me in my office, her huge ring flashing the bond that now tied us together.
“I don’t want to wait, Aria,” I said simply.
“What do you mean?” She looked confused. “I already said yes, I don’t know if you remember. I mean, maybe I remember it incorrectly too. It was all happening so fast it’s hard to hold on to the memory exactly as it transpired. That doesn’t of course, explain the ring,” she added cheerfully, surveying her hand. “This is too big, Zayden. I hope you didn’t pay a fortune; it’s not worth it.”
“Don’t you dare ever tell me you’re not worth something again. You deserve the very best of everything in the world and I’ll make sure you have all of it. But I can’t wait, Aria, to get married to you. To make you mine irreversibly forever.”
She grinned. She was obviously in a playful mood. “I’m not too sure about the irreversible part. People get divorced all the time—”
“Don’t ever say that again, either,” I snapped.
“I was,” Aria said, screwing up her mouth. “You know I was joking.”