“Is everything alright, Aria?” I heard the professor, Mr. Weber, say, pulling me out of my thoughts.
“Uh…yes. Sorry, I am a little out of it today. Didn’t get much sleep last night, was working on your paper.”
“Of course you were!” he exclaimed happily. “Wouldn’t expect anything less of you. And don’t worry, we are all a little out of it sometimes. Plus, you’re the top graded student in this class.”
I heard some grunts around the room, but couldn’t help but feel really flattered and guilty at the same time. The guilt made me try hard to focus on the Public Finance lecture – but my mind kept trying to take me back to that day Mr. Weber had brought in Zayden as a guest speaker – what an incredibly dramatic ordeal it had been.
No, stop. Pay attention. He was saying something about mortgages and government loans. I looked at the time; it was half way through class. One more quick lab later and I could run to work…I muffled a giggle, trying to pass it off as a cough, at the thought of being that person who actively looked forward to going to work.
Mr. Weber was discussing tax breaks and housing bubbles when there was a knock on the classroom door.
My heart leapt. I must have been imagining it this time. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. When I opened them again, Zayden was still standing by the door of my classroom, looking directly at me, with an enormous grin on his face.
“Oh hello, Mr. Sinclair!” Mr. Weber exclaimed delightedly. “What a wonderfully pleasant surprise! You should have mentioned you were paying us a visit! I would have made arrangements. Did you just want to sit in on my lecture? Or were you looking for something else?”
“Actually,” Zayden said, taking small strides into the classroom. “I was hoping I could talk to one of your students.”
“Oh, for some kind of a market research or something?” Mr. Weber asked curiously, as my heart started thumping so fast I could hear it beating. When I tried to move my legs they seemed to have given in to complete paralysis. I had no idea what was happening, but I felt like I knew where this was going…it had to be…but here? In front of my whole class? Would he really?
“I have a particular student in mind, Mr. Weber. And no, it’s not for research or survey. It’s…personal.”
The whole classroom went entirely silent and Mr. Weber looked confused. Zayden walked towards me. I wasn’t sure whether I was imagining it because the whole scenario was rather cinematic, but it felt like somebody had paused the live Zayden and set him in slow-motion. He was walking insanely slow, not helping the situation of my heartbeat at all.
When he reached me, he fell down on one knee, rendering me completely incapable of feeling anything other than my own thumping heart which seemed to have picked up a pace three times its usual. Shit, shit, shit. This was it.
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 producin
g 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 a 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 4