Under His Influence

“You got me. Just don’t tell anyone, okay?”

“Of course not. Your secrets are safe with me. So spill.”

He heaved a sigh, playing with her fingers, so delicate and small, twining his own between them.

“It doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want it to,” he opened diffidently. “If you like, you can just call it a present. A token. A love token—because you know I love you, don’t you?”

Anna’s toes curled and her heart burst at the casual way he had said the words, almost as if they didn’t need speaking, so elementary were they.

“I… Well, it’s always nice to hear it. And I love you too. Of course. You knew that, right?”

“I was hoping so.”

“Gosh, it’s not supposed to happen like that, is it? Except in the fairy tales. You aren’t supposed to fall so far, so fast. But how can you help it?”

“Exactly. You can’t.”

“It’s like, once you’ve fallen off the building, you can’t exactly reverse motion. Gravity is gravity.”

“Gravity. Yes.” He paused, lost in thought for a moment. “And love is love. So, bearing in mind that this can be what you make of it—a love token, or…anything else—” He broke off, picked up his jacket from the side of the bed where he had dropped it, and took a box from the inside pocket.

“John.” Anna shook her head on catching sight of the maroon velvet. “What have you done?”

“I guessed your size,” he said, holding it out on the flat of his palm. “I hope I got it right.”

Anna handled the box gingerly, as if it might burn her, and almost choked with the force of the inhalation when she opened it.

“John!” She stared wildly, white-faced, at him.

“Whatever you want it to be,” he repeated softly.

Colour rushed back into her cheeks. “What if I want it to be…?”

“Do you? Do you want that?”

He reached down and plucked the box from her, holding it up to the light so that the diamonds glinted shards of light against the bedroom walls.

“Oh, John.”

“Is that yes or no?”

“Yes.”

Anna had the giddying sensation of a rope being cut or untied and a balloon careering up into the sky, weightless and free, too late to go back now…

“Then we must do this the right way.” John was off the bed now, pulling Anna by the wrist so that she sat on the side, giggling as he dropped dramatically to his knees and proffered the ring. “Anna, beautiful Anna Rice, will you do me the very great honour of becoming my wife?”

“I will,” she exclaimed, as if surprised at herself, then she burst into delirious laughter, allowing John to sweep her into his arms and lift her from the floor, swinging her around and around until they collapsed on the bed once more.

“You know,” she said, as he slipped the band of gold with its flower-shaped cluster of diamonds on her finger, “I should probably have been dressed. To receive a marriage proposal. You know, if we were properly following the conventions.”

“Conventions be damned,” John said, checking that the fit was every bit as perfect as he had planned. “All you need to wear from now on is this. And it fits. Just like you and me, eh?”

“I feel like I’m in outer space. It’s all unreal.”

“Outer space isn’t unreal.”

“Oh, you know what I mean. It’s a dream. I’m getting married!”