It’s just not in my nature to look at things that way; I wish it were. But for a little while that night, my wish came true. With Garrett’s lips on mine as I reached my arms up and draped them over his shoulders like two vines clinging to a strong and steady wall, something relaxed inside me and I believed it, too, that nothing but good was on the horizon. What lightness! I felt like I’d assumed a secret identity, put on a beautiful borrowed dress and shoes supplied by a good fairy, climbed into a pumpkin coach sedan, and suddenly transformed into a sanguine, faith-filled optimist. By the time the driver pulled up in front of the Carlyle Hotel and the maître d’ escorted us to a VIP table near the stage, I was a new person. It felt wonderful. But it didn’t last.
The fairy godmother gown, borrowed rhinestone slippers, champagne by candlelight, the pumpkin coach car—in the end, none of it made any difference.
When Garrett dropped to one knee in the middle of the dance floor at the Café Carlyle while the orchestra played the song he’d requested in advance, pulled a small blue box out of his tuxedo pocket, and asked me to marry him, the spell was broken. The optimistic, hopeful Liza vanished and the old Liza—the one who knows that happily ever after is only for books and that real life, the part that comes after the story ends, is hard and uncertain—was back in an instant.
Garrett wanted me to marry him. I didn’t know what to say.
G
arrett got to his feet, dusting off the knee of his pant leg as he did.
The ring of couples that surrounded us, peering hopefully at us a moment before, convinced they were at the most romantic New Year’s Eve celebration in New York and ready to witness their approval of our engagement by a round of applause, shifted their eyes and began to dance again, pretending they hadn’t seen Garrett’s proposal or what, to their eyes, appeared to be my shocked and silent refusal.
“Come on. Let’s go back to the table.” Garrett grabbed my arm and I followed him, keeping my eyes lowered but feeling stares on my back as we left the dance floor, wending our way through the packed press of bodies. The crowd thinned as we neared the table. It was a quarter to twelve and nearly everyone was dancing, wanting to be near their beloved for the first kiss of the year as the clock struck twelve, balloons dropped from above, and the band played “Auld Lang Syne.”
“You know, maybe it would be better if I took you home now. So we can avoid the traffic.”
“But it’s not midnight yet.”
“Yeah. Well. Suddenly I don’t feel like celebrating.” He shoved his hands in his pants pockets and started heading past the circles of empty tables and toward the door, this time not bothering to grab my arm. Instead, I reached out to grab his.
“Hey! Garrett, wait a minute. Don’t be like that.”
He turned to face me, shaking off my grasp as he did. Unlike me, Garrett’s got a long fuse, but he was angry.
“Don’t be like that? How am I supposed to be? You completely embarrassed me out there, Liza. Now you think I should just stick around here so that everyone can stare at me?” His brown eyes flickered black.
“You were embarrassed?
You?
” I put my hands on my hips. “You weren’t the only one out there, you know. Everybody was staring at me too. It was humiliating! Did you ever stop to think what a spot you were putting me in? Whatever gave you such a crazy idea?”
“Well…I…no…I…” Garrett sputtered and turned red. “This isn’t just some crazy idea I cooked up on the spur of the moment, you know! Do you have any idea how long I’ve been planning this? You’ve got to call weeks ahead to get a table like this at the Carlyle, especially on New Year’s Eve. I planned out the whole thing, but I wanted to surprise you! Is that so terrible? You always say you love surprises!”
“I do!” I shouted. “As long as I’m prepared for them!”
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I could hear Abigail laughing.
I closed my eyes, trying to calm down and collect my thoughts.
I’ve been trying to do a better job about keeping my temper and thinking things through before I react. It takes some effort, but I can do it if I focus. That’s what I was trying to do: calm down, focus, and look at this thing from Garrett’s point of view. But it wasn’t easy.
I didn’t understand why Garrett had decided to suddenly pop the question. No, that wasn’t right. Clearly, he’d put a lot of planning into this evening. There was nothing sudden about his decision. And his intentions were really very sweet. But that still didn’t make it a good idea. What was he thinking?
Why would he propose to me—crazy, hot-tempered, impulsive, twenty-two-year-old me, who barely knows what she should do next week, let alone how she should spend the rest of her life and with whom?
On the other hand, did that necessarily make it a bad idea? I wouldn’t always be like this, would I? I was a whole lot more mature than I’d been even a couple of years ago. The fact that I was holding my tongue and trying to look at this thing rationally instead of just freaking out proved it, right? And I wasn’t so young. After all, I’d graduate in just a few more months, find myself out of the classroom and into the real world, and getting married was part of that, wasn’t it?
Maybe. But maybe not. I didn’t know. But I did know Garrett well enough to realize he hadn’t meant to put me on the spot deliberately. That was just the way it had turned out.
I opened my eyes and looked at Garrett. “I just wasn’t prepared, all right? This has been such a beautiful evening. Abigail wouldn’t give me specifics, but she called and told me you were taking me somewhere really nice and advised me to step up my wardrobe. So I
was
expecting a special evening, but I could never have imagined this! The roses, the limousine, dinner and dancing at the most elegant restaurant in the city…. Thank you, Garrett. I’ve had such a great time.”
“Right up until the part where I wrecked it by asking you to marry me, right?”
I pressed my lips together, annoyed by his petulant response. “That’s not what I meant and you know it. I was prepared to have a lovely time with you. I always do, whether we have dinner at the Café Carlyle or a cup of coffee at the Blue Bean, but I never in a million years expected you were going to propose.”
Garrett’s eyebrows flattened into a line. He pulled his balled-up fists out of his pockets and opened his hands, jerking his arms in an impatient gesture. “Well, why not? You said it yourself. We always have a great time together. We’re happy together, so why shouldn’t we want to
be
together? What’s so surprising about that?”
“Nothing, I guess. But you’re making this seem like a perfectly logical, even obvious next step. I don’t think it’s as simple as that. If two people are going to spend the rest of their lives together, there has to be more to it than just enjoying each other’s company, don’t you think?”
Garrett’s eyebrows drew apart, smoothing out the creases in his forehead. He relaxed his shoulders as if he suddenly understood everything.
“Well, sure. Of course there is! I’m sorry, Liza. I’ve never proposed before. Guess I was so focused on creating the perfect atmosphere that I left out the most important part: the actual proposal. Let me try again. I’ll do better this time.”
He took a step forward, took my hands in his, and locked his eyes onto mine. “Liza, I love you. You are the last thing I think about when I go to bed at night and the first image in my head when I wake up in the morning. You’re the smile on my face when I go to work and the song I whistle as I walk down the street. You’re the person I’ve waited for all my life. And now that I’ve found you, I want to be with you for now and forever. I love you, Liza. Please. Please, marry me.”
His whole heart shone on his face, beaming a light that melted me. He was kind, sweet, and sincere. I was so lucky to have him in my life. I knew that. And this should have been one of the happiest moments of my life. I knew that too. So why wasn’t it?
What was wrong with me? There couldn’t have been a more perfect evening, or a more beautiful and heartfelt proposal on earth. And I’d never met a man who could hold a candle to Garrett. Not one of my girlfriends would have thought for two seconds before accepting. Why was I?
“Garrett, I love you.”
His smile, which had widened with those first four words, faded as I went on. He knew. It only takes one syllable to say yes. Yes has no reservations. Yes doesn’t need to explain itself. But I did.
“And I know you love me. That wasn’t a surprise to me. I’ve known it for a long time. I bet there’s not a man on the face of the earth who is more honest and open about his feelings than you. I’m not as good about that as you are, but I’m trying to be. That’s why I can’t just say yes to you. At least…not right now.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” he argued. “If you really—”
I held up my hand. “Stop! Just listen to me for a minute, okay?” He stopped, the petulant look returning to his face. I took another deep breath, trying to beat back my frustration before trying again.
“Garrett, I love you. So much. But marriage is—well, it’s forever! At least, it’s supposed to be forever. And if it’s not, then I don’t want to do it. I do love you. But…what if love isn’t enough?”
“Liza, it will be!” he promised.
“How can you know that? How can you know that for sure? You love me now and you say you always will. I feel the same. But isn’t that what everybody says when they get married? I suppose they must mean it. But if that’s true, why is it that so many marriages don’t last?”
Garrett frowned. “So you don’t believe in marriage? You don’t believe that love can last?”
“Why would I?” I asked, throwing up my hands. “I haven’t seen many examples where it does. Have you? Your parents’ marriage didn’t last. And my father never even bothered to marry my mother. He lived with her for years and then, the minute she got pregnant with me, the second things got complicated, he took off.”
“But that’s exactly it!” he said urgently, grabbing my hands again and squeezing them. “Your father was never committed to your mother. Not the way I am to you. That’s why he never married her and that’s why he left. I’ll never do that to you, Liza. Nothing will ever, ever change my feelings for you. Not ever. Believe me.”
“I want to. I really do,” I said. “I just don’t know if I can.”
He let my hands drop from his. My palms felt suddenly empty and useless.
“So this is a no,” he said.
“I didn’t say that. I never said that. What I said…What I meant…” I stuttered, frustrated with myself and with Garrett. He was always so understanding, so why couldn’t he understand this? And me? Why was I such a complicated mess?
I didn’t want to say no, but I didn’t know how to say yes.
“Garrett, I need some time. I’ve got to sort this out in my mind. I know I love you. And I know that if I ever wanted to get married, it would be to you. But I also know that marriage scares me. No, wait,” I said, holding my hands out to interrupt myself.
“That’s not true. Marriage doesn’t scare me, but divorce does. It terrifies me. The thought that in six months or six years you could wake up and decide that you don’t love me anymore is more frightening than never having been loved in the first place. Do you know what I mean?” His expression told me he didn’t.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I said. “You had a lot of time to make up your mind, first to decide you wanted to propose and then to figure out exactly how you wanted to do it. There was nothing spur-of-the-moment about this. You said so yourself.”
His eyes were flat. I didn’t know if he was angry, or hurt, or listening intently. I moved closer, reached out with one finger, and traced a tentative path from the elbow of his jacket down to his hand, letting it rest at the end of his fingertip.
“You’ve had weeks to plan this, but it’s all new to me. Don’t I deserve some time to absorb this?”
His eyes rolled up toward the ceiling, resting there a moment while he thought about this.
“You’re right,” he said finally. “It’s a big decision. You should take some time. I want you to be sure.”
“So do I. Thanks,” I said, relieved. “I’ve got to ask you something. Did Abigail know you were going to propose tonight?”
“She asked me where we were going to dinner and I told her—after making her promise not to tell you and spoil the surprise, which obviously did a lot of good—but I never told her I was going to ask you to marry me.”
I nodded. “Maybe it would be better if, just for now, we kept this to ourselves. You know how it is in New Bern. There’s no such thing as a secret. I don’t think either of us wants to deal with the pressure we’d be subjected to if people knew we were thinking about getting engaged.”
“I guess.” He shrugged. “But there’s just one thing.” He reached his hand into his pocket, pulled out the blue jewelry box, and opened it.
I’d been so shocked to see Garrett sinking to one knee when we were on the dance floor that I really hadn’t had a chance to look at the ring. It was exquisite, a brilliant square-cut diamond in a simple, wide platinum setting, very modern and sleek and exactly what I’d have picked if I’d chosen it myself. Garrett knew me so well.
“What should we do with this? I know you don’t want to wear it, but…do you think you might just want to hold on to it? For a little while. Just until you make up your mind?”
He held out the ring and looked at me with spaniel eyes. I knew it didn’t make sense for me to take the ring until I could give him a definitive yes, but he looked so miserable. I just didn’t have the heart to turn him down a second time.
“If you want me to,” I said.
“I do.” He took the ring out of the jewelry box and laid it in my open palm. It felt awkward, holding it without actually putting it on.
“Wait a minute. I’ve got an idea.”
I handed the ring back to Garrett, dug into my evening bag, and pulled out a thin silver chain. “I had this left over from one of my jewelry projects,” I explained before threading the chain through the ring and putting it around my neck. The chain was long, so the ring dangled just beneath my silver choker, almost like I’d added a diamond pendant to the silver piece. Later, I’d be able to wear it under my clothes. No one would know it was there and, for now at least, that’s the way I wanted it.
“There!” I said after I fastened the clasp. “What do you think?”
“It’s fine. Makes it look a little like we’re two eighth graders going steady, but if you like it…” He shrugged noncommittally, but I could tell he felt a little better seeing the ring hanging around my neck.
“It’s a gorgeous ring. Thank you.” I reached out to squeeze his hand, wanting him to feel how much I meant what I said.
Taking in a deep breath and then letting it out slowly, he pulled his hand back and looked at his watch. “One minute to midnight. This isn’t exactly how I pictured us beginning the new year.”
“No? How did you picture it?”
“With you and me on the dance floor. Cheek to cheek. Lip to lip.” He pushed his hair up off his forehead.
“Well,” I said, slipping my arm under his and curving my body toward him, “there’s still time for that. I know we made kind of a spectacle of ourselves before, but what do we care? We’ll never see these people again. So what do you say? Do you want to dance?”
“Hmm,” Garrett mused. “I don’t know. Can I have some time to think about it?”
“Nope.”
“Well, in that case, lead the way.”
I did, holding his hand as we returned to the floor, wrapping my arms around his neck and lifting my lips to meet his as the band-leader counted down the seconds to midnight, and the balloons fell, and the crowd cheered, and I wondered what other surprises the new year would hold.