Chapter 17 #2
Etta took her by the hand and brought her over to a bistro table set among a bed of tulips.
Jamie sat, letting Etta help her scoot in her chair before she sat across from her, a single candle burning between them.
Jamie propped an elbow on the table and gazed at her, wondering how she ever became so lucky.
One day I left my ramshackle apartment and returned home with a job offer I couldn’t refuse.
Now, here she was, gazing into the exquisite visage of her fiancée.
“Did you think I would say no?” Jamie asked after the sommelier came by with the wine and left again. She picked it up, ready for a toast. “Really, now.”
The happiness flickered on Etta’s face. “I had been told no before.” She picked up her glass as well. “I’m never sure about anything.”
Their glasses hovered in the air. “You want to marry me?”
“Yes, I do.” Etta didn’t give her any condescension. No, “Of course, silly, why wouldn’t I?” That was one thing Jamie loved about her. Etta always gave her a straight answer… assuming she gave her an answer at all. “Here’s to us.”
Jamie smiled. “To us.”
Their glasses clinked together. A waiter chose that moment to ask Jamie whether she would like the calzone or the special four-cheese lasagna. She picked the lasagna and enjoyed the first sip of her red wine.
“Now, you have to tell me what finally made you propose to me.” Jamie put her glass down and rested her chin atop her hand. “Because I know you, and it wasn’t any one thing. You never base your decisions on one thing, even love.”
Etta took her hand on top of the table. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while. A certain someone may or may not have been nagging me. The bouquet was not exactly subtle.”
Jamie snorted. “She has not shut up once about you asking me to marry you. No wonder she came all the way down from the mountains today. She knew, didn’t she?”
“You would have thought she planned this whole thing.”
“Well? Did she?”
Etta shook her head. “She suggested the planetarium as a possible place to propose, but that was it. I told her I wanted to create a fairy tale feeling because you’re my princess.”
“I’m your Cinderella.”
“I wasn’t going to say it first.”
They toasted again. Jamie wasn’t sure she wanted Monique to meddle in her life this much in the future, but for now, she made winning decisions.
“There was also the…”
“Hm?” Jamie placed her glass on the table. “The what?”
Etta broke eye contact, and for a moment, their cherished moment was amiss. “There was also when you were sick.” Her voice was not meek, but it was quiet. “I did a lot of thinking during that time.”
Jamie was in no hurry to recommence eye contact. Why did she have to bring that up? She had been enjoying her evening so far. She didn’t need her girlfriend – fiancée – reminding her about that. I don’t want to feel stupid the night I’m proposed to.
“My number one thought,” Etta continued, ignoring Jamie’s demeanor, “was that I had to make sure you were taken care of. Then I had to take into account my image. It’s not a pretty thought, no, and normally I wouldn’t bring it up because I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable but considering how we got together and how it’s been a year already…
getting engaged might be the best for my already precarious image.
So I thought the best thing to do was… well, marry you. ”
“I see.”
“I tell you this so you know I have been thinking about marriage for a long while. But recently, many things came to a head and I had to make a decision. Did I want to marry you? I wasn’t opposed to the idea, I just wasn’t ready, I suppose.”
“Etta… stop…”
“No, listen.” She squeezed Jamie’s hand.
“I decided after Adele came back into my life. The other night, when I told you that I haven’t loved anyone nearly as much as you?
I was telling you the truth. At first, I was thrown for a loop when Adele showed up.
Can you blame me?” Etta snorted. “I wasn’t sure how I would act around her, but then things continued as normal.
I didn’t feel… anything for her. It was the strangest thing.
I spent so much time being hung up over her to the point I couldn’t even imagine having another serious relationship.
Then she was here, and I realized I had moved on from that part of my life. Now I am in this one. With you.”
“That’s… sweet, I suppose.” This is getting weird.
“It was then I decided for sure that I wanted to propose to you. My flower.”
Their food arrived. Jamie let go of her hand so she could stare at a plate of Italian cuisine. The sautéed vegetables made her forget everything Etta just said. “I don’t know what to say. I honestly never thought the day would come so soon, if ever.”
“Would you have been satisfied spending the rest of your life with me without getting married?”
“Well, after a while I may have started to wonder, but before a couple of months ago, it never crossed my mind. Well, not seriously. We’ve only been together a while.
You’re busy. I never felt like I didn’t matter enough.
But I guess a lot of wrenches got thrown into our lives recently.
” She laughed. “Now we have to plan a wedding.”
Etta cut her dinner before taking a single bite. “I was thinking next year, at the earliest. Plenty of time to plan and ease into it. We can make the news public after news with my business dies down. How does that sound?”
“Sounds fine with me.” Jamie stared at her ring as she ate. She used her utensils with her left hand just to look at it. “I’m a cliché, though. I’ve always wanted a June wedding.”
“Good thing we’re thinking next year, then. If we start booking things now, we might be able to actually get them. June is the biggest time of the year for weddings, you know.”
I know, thanks. “Yup. Late June. Let’s do it.” She lifted her wineglass one more time. “Let’s get married next June.”
Etta tapped her wineglass against hers. “It’s a date.”
They reached across the small table to kiss. I’m taking this rather well. The whole getting engaged thing, anyway.
What she didn’t know quite yet was that it was merely shock settling in.
They made it through dinner without incident.
Someone played violin in the distance. Dessert was tiramisu and chocolate drizzled in the shape of a heart.
After dinner, they walked off the food with a stroll through the dark gardens, hand in hand, Etta confessing that she only had one short meeting that day before spending the rest of it preparing for that night.
“I wanted you to have a proposal to remember for the rest of your life.”
“I’m sure I will.”
Another kiss passed between them. By the time they segued to the limo waiting outside, Etta was so handsy that Jamie blushed to have her rub her from behind while the driver opened the door for them.
She remained in her haze as Etta kissed her back to the penthouse. She didn’t even think about the ring on her finger until they were inside, Etta taking off her jacket and announcing she wanted to prepare something in the bedroom and that Jamie should wait a bit in the living room.
Jamie stood in front of the windows, looking out across the city.
The first time I saw this view, Etta was making love to me.
The ring twinkled in her reflection. One night, what didn’t seem so long ago, Jamie went on a trial date with Etta before agreeing to be her paid mistress for six months.
I knew when I agreed to go home with her that it was sex she was after.
Jamie’s first view of this cityscape was when Etta took her like she would soon be wont to always do.
I liked it. I was nervous, but I liked it.
Now here she was, ever so long after, with an engagement ring on her hands – and a fiancée going through such extremes during a busy time in her life.
Something dripped from Jamie’s eye. She wiped it away the moment Etta called for her.
She went, slipping out of her heels and turning four inches shorter by the time she appeared in the doorway.
“I love you.” Etta was by her side, taking her by the arm and showing her what she had done. “Before anything else, I wanted to tell you that.”
Rose petals scattered across the bed, the cool night breeze from the window swaying their tips this way and that. A trail of them led from the bed into the master bath, where a bath was currently being drawn – full of bubbles, of course.
“I already took a bath earlier,” Jamie said.
Etta held her, her scent the most comfortable thing in the world right now. “Take another one. With me.”
Now more of that pesky wet stuff was coming down Jamie’s face. It was starting to hit her. The romance of it all. The engagement. Etta, of all people, going so much out of her way to do this for her. “We never take baths together…”
“I know. It’s a shame that we should fix.”
Jamie cried. She allowed the tears to fall, one after the other, until she could barely see the blurry world around her.
I love her so much. She let Etta take her hand and bring her into the bathroom, where she undressed her, hands taking every opportunity to touch her and bring her closer.
The whole time she cried, and when Etta asked her if they were tears of happiness, all she could say was, “Yes, yes, yes.”
For the first time in so long, Jamie allowed the fantasy to consume her.
Even when she started dating Etta, she didn’t allow her Cinderella fantasies to come full circle.
There was too much danger in that. The fantasy could die at any moment, and where would she be? Crying for very different reasons.
She stopped crying by the time she stepped into the bath and got comfortable in Etta’s lap. With her arms wrapping around Jamie, nose nuzzling her throat, she felt like the luckiest girl in the world. Because I am. She would let herself believe it. Perhaps for the first time in her life.
Cinderella didn’t have to run away from the ball. It stayed with her, forever.