Talk sometime? Like hell, I wanted to talk to him. I walked up the stairs to my apartment and double-checked after locking the door.
19
Toby
“Come on, it's not that much further now.”
“You said that already,” Maggie said, huffing behind me. I looked over my shoulder. She wasn't that far back, but she had been complaining steadily for the last five minutes. I wasn't lying to her, we were actually close. She just wasn't the hiking type.
“When did you even find the time to locate this place?” she asked me. We hadn't been out here long but being stuck in the cabin every day had gotten boring, not to mention gave me flashbacks, so I had done some exploring. The area immediately around the cabin had been reclaimed from the forest, but around the perimeter, it grew wild.
I came across a trail that led through the trees about ten minutes before coming to a clearing that looked over a gully. It looked like something out of a movie and I thought she would appreciate getting out of the cabin for an afternoon. Turned out I was wrong.
“Come on, just follow me. You're going to love it.” I reached out and grabbed her hand. She kept stumbling but she followed me. Neither of us were nature lovers but this place held a special place in our history, even though it wasn’t necessarily pleasant the first time we were out here.
“Here it is,” I said as we came out to the clearing. She looked around, panting.
“Is this it?”
“What do you mean is this it? Look around you, we're in paradise.”
She looked at me in disbelief.
“You brought me out here to look at trees and twigs when there's going to be snowfall coming tonight? I'm going back to the cabin.” She turned and started walking away. I went after her, grabbing her hand to stop her.
“Okay, no, that wasn't all I wanted to show you out here.”
“Then what? I don't want to be caught out here when the snow comes down. We've been through that before,” she said. The somewhat unfortunate circumstances of the first time we were out here came to mind. I checked the forecast before this trip, and we were supposed to be good for another few days but that's what we thought before the first trip too.
Despite everything that happened that trip, it was important to both of us. It was the first time we were alone together and were forced to face our feelings and without it, we might not have gotten to the point we were at now.
It was cold though and the surprise wasn't shaping up the way I thought it would. The forest wasn't even what I really wanted her to see. I dug my hand down into my pocket and clutched the velvet-covered box that I had been hanging onto for a month already, waiting for the perfect moment.
“Toby, come on, let's go back to the cabin.” I grabbed her hand and got down on one knee.
“Only if you agree to marry me first,” I said to her. She was dumbstruck. Her mouth hung open and she looked like she was on the verge of tears.
“Oh… oh my God, Toby.”
My eyes flew open.
My phone wailed with the sound of my alarm, startling me out of my dream. That was what it was, a dream because there was no way in hell anything like that would happen in real life. Marriage now? I was losing it.
I rubbed my hands over my face, wondering why another morning had to come. Now instead of dreaming about her, I could just have her invade my normal daylight thoughts. I couldn't shake her and I felt like it was getting worse.
It had been weeks since we had gotten back from Colorado and I was still thinking about the woman. I hadn’t seen or talked to her in that time but that didn't matter because she was always on my mind.
I fucking missed her. I wanted to see her and be with her and touch her and that wasn't on the table.
You're clearly in love with her, I thought.
Yeah, well not on my watch. I threw the covers off and got out of bed. This sort of thing was like a cold, you got over it eventually, right?
I took a quick cold shower to clear my mind and then I went to the kitchen to down some coffee before heading to the office. Work was supposed to distract you from your real life, but it had been weeks and I was still waiting for it to happen.
I took my time going to work. When I got there, one of my employees was standing in the elevator. I saw the look of shock on her face when she noticed me coming inside and noticed as she slowly edged away from me as the doors closed. I hit the button and we started our trip up to our floor.
“Good morning, Mr. Anderson,” she said softly.