Marriage of Unconvenience

“I have so many questions,” I said, barely getting the words out.

“He also owns several lions, castles, helicopters, and at least one spaceship.” She was playing this up with a complete straight face and it was so much funnier that way. This wasn’t the first time Cara made me laugh so hard that I thought I was going to rupture a lung or two.

“Only one spaceship?” I said, wiping my eyes.

“He’s building a second as we speak. We’ll go to Mars for our honeymoon. That is, if I accept his offer.” I sat down on the bed and gulped down some orange juice.

“Well, that’s a lot to compete with. I’m not a billionaire or a cowboy and I don’t have a spaceship or a tiger.” Cara huffed dramatically.

“Then what do you have?”

“Money?” I said. “And I do love you. Not in a marriage way, but that still counts, I think. And I’m really good at shoulder rubs.” She nodded seriously.

“That is a lot to consider. Give me a moment.” She pretended to be deep in thought, but her hand was fiddling with something under the pillow.

“Okay,” she said, nodding decisively. “I have made my decision.”

“And?” I said. I had a feeling I knew what she was doing, and my heart had started pounding a heavy rhythm. Was she?

“And I have chosen you, Loren Alyssa Bowman. Will you marry me?” She brought out the ring and held it out to me. My hands shook, and I thought I was going to cry and laugh at the same time.

I couldn’t even speak. My heart was going berserk in my chest and I didn’t know how to calm it down. I didn’t know how to calm me down.

“Yes,” I finally said, my voice choked with emotion. My eyes burned and my chest was so tight, it was as if my organs had expanded and were too big to fit anymore.

Cara put the ring on my trembling finger. I held my hand up and tilted it back and forth. The ring was just so pretty and I was happy to finally have it on my hand.

My focus went from the ring to Cara’s smile and I was hit with a thousand emotions, all of them intense, some of them confusing. A thousand voices were screaming in my brain, all shouting different things, a cacophony of joy and elation.

“I know it wasn’t fancy, but we’re not fancy, so there you go,” Cara said, and I wanted to scream and jump up and down and drink a shot and dive into a lake and do a bazillion other things. There was too much inside and I had to let some of it out.

“Are you okay?” she asked, and I realized I was crying, so I wiped the tears.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said and started to get a little embarrassed about my outlandish reaction, even if she had no idea what was going on inside me. I took a few deep breaths and then tried to distract myself with food.

“You did a good job,” I said, and she smiled.

“Good. You were kinda quiet there, so I was worried I’d been too much of a dork.” She wasn’t a dork. She was my best friend and I loved her more than anything.

“No, it was perfect,” I said. It was just the kind of proposal I’d want if I was really getting married, but this was probably the only one I’d ever get, so I was going to treasure it.

The sparkle of the ring kept distracting me as we ate, and I couldn’t stop looking at it.

“It took me a while to get used to,” Cara said, catching me looking at my newly bedazzled finger.

I held my hand out and she put her left hand next to mine. I snuck a picture with my phone.

“You’re not going to post that, are you?” she asked.

“No. I just wanted to have it. That’s something else we need to discuss. I know we’re going to tell close friends and so forth, but are we going to announce this on social media or anything?” Cara munched on some bacon and thought about it.

“I don’t see where it would come up? Like, we don’t have to post anything publicly and then no one will even know. If we posted even something vague, I think we’d have to deal with way too many questions. Don’t you think?” I wasn’t sure what I thought, but I did know I didn’t want her to do anything she wasn’t comfortable with.

“Yeah, probably. And you’re not, you know, queer, so that would lead to a lot of questions for you to answer.” In an ideal world, we wouldn’t have to worry about that, but it wasn’t, and I wondered what she thought about it all.