"Why do you want to marry me?"
"That's it?" His brows rose, and then he was
laughing and holding her close. "I thought you were going to ask me a
tough one. I want to marry you because I love you and I need you in my life. It
changed when you walked into it."
"A two-part question," he murmured. "I could promise
you anything." He drew her away to kiss her cheek, then her brow, then her
lips. "I wish there were guarantees, but there aren't. I can only tell you
that when I think about tomorrow, when I think about ten years from tomorrow, I
think about you. I think about us."
He couldn't have said it better, she thought as she touched
his face. No, there weren't any guarantees, but they had a chance. A good one.
"Can I ask you one more thing?"
"As long as I'm going to get an answer eventually."
"Do you believe in Santa Claus?"
What made it perfect, even more than perfect, was that
he didn't even hesitate. "Sure. Doesn't everyone?" Now she smiled,
completely.
"I love you, Sam."
The Name of the Game
_________________________
By Hannes21061984 [CC BY-SA 4.0
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons
Before getting married, it's important to come to several layers of understanding with your partner. Obviously you'll want to discuss where you think you'd like to live, as well as fun things like how often you'd like to go on vacation. (You know, couple-y stuff.) But you'll also want to have some serious conversations before getting married.
While not always the most fun, it's important to ask the hard questions and learn as much as you can so you know who, exactly, you're marrying.
_________________________
It was
very odd waking up with a man in your bed. A man took up considerable room,
for one thing, and she wasn’t used to worrying about how she looked the minute
she opened her eyes in the morning.
She
supposed she’d get over the last part, if she continued to wake up with this
man in her bed for any length of time. And she could always get a bigger bed to
compensate for the first part.
The
question was, how did she feel about sharing her bed—and wasn’t that just a metaphor
for her life?—with this man for any length of time? She hadn’t had time to
think it through, hadn’t taken time, she corrected.
Closing
her eyes, she tried to imagine it was a month later. Her garden would be exploding,
and she’d be thinking about summer clothes, about getting her outdoor furniture
from the shed. Henry would be due for his annual vet appointment.
She’d
be planning Jenny’s baby shower.
Laine
opened one eye, squinted at Max.
He was
still there. His face was squashed into the pillow, his hair all cute and tousled.
So,
she felt pretty good about having him there a month from now.
Try six months. She
closed her eyes again and projected.
