“I love you,” Kathryn says, face going soft. “This whole week I thought about nothing but how much I love you.”
And how much she wants to do the nasty intercourse thing with me, but I’m not gonna bring that up. Come on! I know she has been thinking it.
“It’s just...” She lowers her hands, and she won’t look me in the eye again. Is this going to be a pattern all day? “I had a really hard time with the concept of being married. Not just to you. In general. Don’t take it personally.”
“I don’t.” I kinda do. How does a man not take that personally? “Oh, I feel like shit because I’m married to you, haha!” I know what she means, deep down, but it’s not pleasant all the same. “It was a shock to me too. I still don’t really remember that night.” I saw the pictures. Trust me. They are not flattering to anyone. We were so drunk I looked like I was about to pass out at any moment. Worse than any of the frat parties I ever went to, because at least my room was right upstairs and I could go crash before shit got too wild. Club hopping with Kathryn in Vegas? Be still, my liver. We will get through this trying time. “But I love you too. Us having a rushed annulment because we were two stupid drunks doesn’t change how I feel about you. I’m being logical about all of this.”
“Yes, yes, you’re the logical one.” If she keeps rolling her eyes, she’s gonna lose them both. Pop right out of her head and roll across the brickwork beneath our feet. “That’s why you’ve been telling your mother how much you love me and want to marry me one day.”
I frown. I knew those two talking was bad news for me. “So what? Yeah, I tell my mother those sorts of things. It makes her happy to hear. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but my mother is obsessed with us.”
“No, I never noticed.”
“Well,” I say, “I tell her those things in part because they make her happy to hear, and because it’s all the truth. I really do love you that much, Katie. You’re the best woman in the whole world. Even if something happened to us and we couldn’t be together anymore, I don’t think I would find another woman who makes me so happy and complements my life so well. As in... I don’t think I would ever find a woman worth marrying like you’re worth marrying.”
“Aww.” She tries to sound sarcastic, but I hear the tremble in Kathryn’s voice. “It’s almost like you’re proposing to me.”
My palms are sweating. Why are my palms sweating? “Maybe I am, Katie.”
Silence falls between us. All I can hear is the fountain splashing, some cars in the distance, and heels clacking on the brick behind me as a businesswoman, dressed similarly to Kathryn, emerges from the coffee shop. Kathryn bites her bottom lip and touches her forehead to mine. “Don’t do this to me. Not today.”
“I’m not doing anything to you.” My hands go to her cheeks, massaging the life back into her face as she pales before me. “You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to respond with anything. All I want to say is... I guess it’s an open proposal. If you ever wanna get married, tell me, and I doubt I will say no.”
“Oh, so it’s a proposal to get me to propose to you one day?”
“Hey, I know it’s never going to work the other way around.”
Finally, she smiles, but I feel the weight behind such a simple action. “You’re too much for me sometimes. Speaking of which... do you remember who suggested we get married that night? I honestly don’t remember if it was me or you.”
I strain my memory, but like her, I can’t really remember. All I do remember is being plastered and making out with her every chance I had. If I’m being honest, I tend to die downstairs when I’m super drunk, so I doubt we would have ever had sex again that night, even if we wanted to. So I know we didn’t have sex after that first club, and I know we had a lot of drinks, and there was a lot of kissing.
“I may not remember, love,” I say, “but I do remember being very happy that night. Then again, it’s hard for me to not be happy when I’m around you.”
“You’re always such a ham.”
“I’m not intentionally being a ham. I would hope you know the difference between me yucking it up and being seriously in love with you by now.”
She’s blushing. It’s not hard to make her blush, really, but I still feel like I’ve accomplished something great every time it happens. “If we’re being honest...”
“Oh, we’re being honest now?”