Page 66 of Not Your Basic Love Story

The sound of his voice soothed my nerves. I took a few minutes to breathe deeply, calm myself down, and then I opened the door.

Dev stood opposite the doorway, waiting patiently. His brow was furrowed with worry, but the second the door was open he bridged the gap between us and hugged me tight. “Sorry,” he whispered in my ear.

I hugged him back, a silent tear slipping down my cheek. “I’m sorry, too. I don’t want to fight. Not on the day of our engagement.”

“I should have spoken to you about all of this first before I proposed. It’s all I’ve been thinking about all week. I’ve gone over it again and again in my mind. I want us to be together, but I also want to respect my family and everything they’ve done for me. This is the only way I can see it happening.”

I closed my eyes and held him tight, breathing him in. “I’m sorry for bringing up your ex. And for panicking. I want to be with you, but I want you all to myself. I’ve never had a roommate before... I don’t like living with strangers. You know that.”

Dev rocked me lightly back and forth, kissing my hair. “I don’t graduate for another two years. Two years of you and me, all by ourselves. And by then, they won’t be strangers. They’ll be family.”

I wiped away my tears and exhaled, releasing some of the stress and tension in my shoulders.

Dev pulled away and kissed my forehead before looking deep into my eyes. “We love each other. That’s all that matters. Together, we can overcome anything, right?”

I looked up into his eyes, and my heart thudded in my chest. I nodded. Another tear slid down my cheek, but he nuzzled it away with his nose before pressing his lips against mine. My lips joined his fervently. My body ached for his touch; my soul needed him closer.

Unwilling to separate even for an instant, we stumbled to the bed and collapsed onto one another.

His weight on top of me, his lips on mine, our eyes searching one another, the sense of wishing our bodies would become one instead of two separate entities, that’s what it was all about. At the end of the day, all the concerns, the problems, the lists, the plans, they all faded away.

It was just us.

All that really mattered.

###

“You are WHAT!” Miranda screeched.

If we’d been in public, I would have been embarrassed, but we were sitting in her spacious North Vancouver home. It was a craftsman with high, peaked ceilings and exposed beams. It felt like you could walk out of her backyard and right onto a ski lift in the winter. Now, in the early summer, the yard was lush and green with hummingbirds and Steller’s Jays.

Miranda snatched at my hand and pulled it, nearly knocking our coffees off the table to oglemy ring. I don’t know how she hadn’t noticed it immediately. It kind of stood out.

“Rebecca! This thing ishuge!”

“I know. It’s too much, isn’t it? It’s so big. I’m constantly whacking it into things,” I pulled my hand away and eyed the diamond with uncertainty.

“But I thought you two were breaking things off!”

“I tried to, but he proposed and he said he loved me and, you know, I love him, too, so I said yes…”

“Obviously, I mean, look at that thing. I’d have said yes, too!”

The serious tone to her remark caught me off guard, and a touch of anger rose at her insinuation, but I took a calming breath and brushed it off.

“Okay, so, how did it happen?”

I told her about the suspension bridge, and how he’d gotten down on one knee out in the trees, and how romantic it all was. “But then, when we got home, he kind of laid a lot of information on me. I don’t really know what to think, you know? When we’re together, everything feels so perfect, and then when he’s gone all I can think about is hownotperfect it is and all of the problems.”

“Problems? Like what?”

I took a deep breath. “Miranda. We’re getting married in three months.”

She screeched again. “You’re pregnant! Our kids are going to be the same age! This is how we always planned it, remember?”

“Miranda, listen to me. I’m not pregnant.”

“You’re not?” She was visibly disappointed. “Then why the rush?”

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