Charlie: Fine, I’ll do it.
Charlie: I want a ring the size of Texas, though.
Charlie: And we should go wedding cake tasting for real. FREE CAKE.
Charlie: Mountain Grind at 8 tomorrow morning? After Rusty gets on the bus, before work?Right now, I’m nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, as my mom would say. Already this morning at least five people have congratulated me on my recent engagement, and they’ve all said variations on the same thing: we’re so happy! You’re perfect together! We always thought that there was something between you and Charlie!
It should soothe me, but it doesn’t, because now I’m thinking about her, us, how we are together, what we’ve done to make everyone think we’re an item. If everyone thinks it’s true, what are they expecting?
PDA? A lot of PDA? Handholding? Kissing in public? Intimate, candlelit dinners where we hold hands over the table, stare deep into each other’s eyes, and coo sweet nothings while ignoring the food in front of us?
Well, we won’t be doing that because there’s no way Charlie makes it more than ten seconds of cooing without cracking up. I don’t think I’d make it more than ten either.
We’re going to have to do the other stuff, though. Holding hands. Kissing.
The thought of that last one makes my stomach feel like it’s on a roller coaster without the rest of me. I frown at my phone, tapping it restlessly on the table, ignoring my reflection in the black screen as a flicker of a memory comes to light.
Just as quickly, I shove it away, because it’s completely irrelevant to the current situation.
“You’re not even watching anything,” her voice says.
I look up from my blank phone screen, sitting bolt upright at the table. Charlie’s standing next to me, coffee cup to her mouth, both eyebrows raised.
Should I kiss her? Do engaged people kiss when they see each other?
Is it weird if we do? Is it weirder if we don’t?
“Just zoning out,” I say, and she sits across from me. No kiss. I can’t tell if I’m relieved or not.
“Why, something on your mind?” she teases, her cup between her palms.
“What could possibly be on my mind?” I deadpan, taking a long pull from my own coffee cup, and she laughs.
It’s a good sound. It makes my stomach feel less like it’s on a roller coaster and more like it’s on a lazy river.
“So,” she says.
“So,” I echo, looking across the table at her.
Charlie’s pretty. She’s distractingly pretty. Confusingly pretty. She’s got a mane — that’s the only word for it, a mane — of deep brown curly hair that goes gold in the sun. She’s got hazel eyes that always look like they’re laughing, a spray of freckles across her nose and cheekbones, and full lips that somehow always make her look like she’s up to no good.
Even in the wintertime, she looks like she’s just come in from the sun. She looks like she could shake her head and sunbeams would sprinkle the floor around her. She’s always in motion, fiddling with something, talking with her hands, tapping her feet. She’s more fidgety than my seven-year-old.
I don’t understand why there isn’t a line of men following her at all times, begging for a date. I’ve never understood that.
“I had some thoughts,” she says, and reaches for the canvas bag that seems to be functioning as her purse today.
“At least one of us has a strategy,” I say.
“I didn’t say it was a strategy,” she says, bringing out several loose pieces of paper with fringe on one side, like they were ripped from a notebook. “I said I had thoughts.”
She reaches in again and grabs a receipt, covered in writing, and then an envelope. A sturdy-looking napkin. A piece of a cardboard box.
“The notebook I was writing in ran out of paper and I couldn’t find another one,” she says.
I reach over and grab the piece of cardboard box.
“Backpacking with Caleb?” I ask, squinting as I try to decipher her handwriting.
“Don’t look at that yet,” she says, grabbing it from my hand, then frowning at the various pieces of writing-covered stuff in front of her. “I thought I numbered these,” she says to herself.
Patiently, I take a sip of my coffee.
“Here’s page one,” she says, finally shuffling her pile together. “For some reason I numbered all the other pages, but not the first one, so I—"
She looks up at me, then laughs.
“Right. Anyway. I need a ring.”
“The size of Texas,” I supply, and she grins.
“I actually don’t care what size it is,” she says. “And it can be cubic zirconia or whatever. But everyone’s going to ask to see it. I had to explain to three people already this morning that we hadn’t planned on announcing yet so I don’t have a ring, but you got surprised at the hearing and couldn’t bear lying to a judge.”