Page 36 of Snowed In
“How do you know she doesn’t—”
“Because I’m observant.”
“Well, stop observing my future wife,” he says before he pauses. “Oh, that sounds good.Wife.”
“Let’s get through the proposal first.”
“Stay away from my wife,” he continues in a mockingly deep voice, and I double the order for the petals.
“I’m booking you in. You’ll get an email in a few minutes.”
“Thank you,” he says, and there’s some rustling where I picture him moving through clothes. “I’d better go. I’m going to be late for work, but I wanted to tick one thing off.” He pauses, sounding nervous. “It feels more real now that I’ve told someone.”
“You’ll be fine. And you don’t have to do anything big. Molly doesn’t care about that stuff.”
“No, I know, I just…I want it to be special. She deserves it.”
“She does,” I say. “She’s great, Andrew.”
“She is, isn’t she?”
I smile at how happy he sounds. The same way he always sounds when he talks about her.
“Any excuse for a party, right?” he adds.
“We’ll make it a good one,” I promise. “And I won’t say a word.”
We hang up as I stare at the main picture of the cabin, a staged photo of a beaming couple drinking champagne in the hot tub, and take out my phone, pulling up my photo album. I must have taken dozens of Megan on our date, but I choose one from the end of the night. One which she’s barely even in. Just the left side of her. With her brown hair swept over her shoulder, a peek at the gentle slope of her nose, and the hint of a smile as she starts to look back at me.
I send it to her, seeking permission, and five minutes later, her answer comes through.
Okay.And then:You can tag me. And then:Do it before I change my mind.
I take her at her word, uploading the photo, and announcing our relationship to every social media account I have. It takes only a few seconds for the first few likes to start coming through. Only a few seconds to make it official.
And that’s it.
We’re coming home for Christmas.
EIGHT
MEGAN
Just over a week. That’s all the time we have before we go home. All the time we have to rehearse, to learn, to get as comfortable as we can around each other. If this were a movie, we’d be meeting every day, we’d be going for walks in frost-covered parks, our heads bent in deep discussion. We’d be sitting in coffee shops, pouring over weirdly intricate family trees. We’d be in the best montage ever and yeah, okay,maybeI thought that was what was going to happen. Maybe I was even looking forward to it. But of course, it didn’t.
Number one we both had full-time jobs (and in Christian’s case he made it sound like full-time plus overtime) and number two…it was Christmas. Or the run up to Christmas. The run up to Christmas when we’d both be taking two weeks off. We were busy. I had the office party, two different friend group parties, plus the most important party, the Frankie and Megan party, where we eat as much pizza as we can and watch a BBC period drama of our choice.
I devoted one evening on top of that to shopping for presents and two to getting Christmas-ready. That meant hair, nails, wax. Buff, polish, shine.
It was chaotic. It was fun. And it left very little room for anything else.
We didn’t have time to meet in person. But that was okay. Because what we did have was emails. Emails and texts and voice notes, back and forth, over and over.
Instead of laying out our life stories to each other, Christian decided it would be better if we shared the smaller parts of ourselves. To drip-feed information so it was less rote memorization and more get an idea of each other’s habits. Our likes and dislikes and whatever else springs to mind.
Unfortunately for Christian, I took this to mean I can tell him whatever I want, whenever I want, and again, on a week with no less than three Christmas parties, I told him a lot.
I don’t think we should explore the ocean.
