Chapter 10 The Proposal Story #2
“Okay, but that was not my fault. Mom and Dad wanted to know why our room smelled like a chimney and I cracked!”
“You could not lie if your life depended on it,” she chuckled, forgetting her past anger as quickly as it came.
“Trust me, I know. Why do you think I came right out with it to Mom when I lost my virginity to Jason?”
“Wait, I thought you lost it to Jonah fuckface?”
“Nope.”
Thank God, too. Otherwise, I never would have known what an orgasm was.
“See? This is why we need nights like this! So I can hear about all the dirty gossip that went on after I moved out.”
“But we’re not supposed to be talking about me! This is Mon Mon story time.”
Monica groaned, tossing her head back, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh my god, no . That nickname was only cute when you were four, and I was the only person you’d let read your Dr. Seuss books to you.”
“I promise I’ll never say it again if you tell me how he proposed.”
“Fine.” She tagged her ‘fine’ with the most dramatic eye roll in history and took yet another, generous gulp of her cocktail. “Okay, so honestly, Ethan and I had only been dating for around five months when he proposed.”
“What?!”
“Can you save all of your judgement for the end please?”
“Sorry.”
“Thank you. So anyway, we weren’t even that serious when it happened. I’d seen him around at work a bit and well, you’ve seen him. I obviously wanted to at least fuck him.”
“Oh my god,” I laughed, dropping my head into my hands.
“So, I started flirting and after a couple weeks, he started coming around to my side of the office more and would always find these dumb reasons to stop by my desk. It was plainly obvious what he was doing, but I was so game. We started hanging around, fucking around, and after a couple months we started seeing each other exclusively. You know, the average American love story.”
My eyes rolled at Monica’s remark with a smile stitched onto my lips. How romantic. Yet, that smile sunk away as I watched Monica’s do the same, and the joyful atmosphere we’d created dissipated.
“Then one week, my period was late,” she continued, lost in thought and staring at the melting ice cubes in her glass.
“I didn’t think much of it at first because my periods are late or wonky all the time for different reasons.
Then, a few days late became an entire week. And a week became two weeks.”
“Oh my God…”
“I told Ethan and he was so calm about the whole thing. He didn’t freak out. He didn’t run for the door. He got in the car with me and went to go get the pregnancy tests with me that same night.”
All the alcohol in my stomach curdled, feeling more like the acid it really was. Wherever this story was about to go, it was nowhere good.
“So we got home and I was completely freaking out, but he wasn’t.
He was so calming and poised during the entire ordeal.
” A tender note played in Monica’s stare as she reminisced about her fiancé.
I wanted to be happy in that moment with her, but the notion that this story was about a pregnancy and that Monica was clearly not pregnant right now kept any happiness from finding its way to me.
Instead, all I felt was sick.
“I took the test, and it was positive.”
My entire heart catapulted right through my stomach with those words, and I worked so hard to hold back any sort of facial reaction.
“I came out of the bathroom and showed him the stick and just… broke. I shattered into a million pieces in his arms and just cried. I was a total wreck. I didn’t want kids now, and Ethan and I had only been seeing each other for a few months, and I just… I couldn’t deal.”
Even picturing my big sister in such a state made me want to reach out and hug her and never let go.
“I asked him over and over again what we were going to do, and he just sort of nudged me out of his arms and walked down to my room, leaving me there scared shitless that he was packing up his bags. Instead, he walked back out of my bedroom with one of my rings from my jewelry box and then… he popped the question.”
“Got down on one knee just like that?”
Monica nodded. “Yeah, I was so shocked, but I was also about to shit my pants with how scared I was to do this whole thing alone, so I said yes.”
“Holy crap.”
“I know, right?” Monica wound her lips around the straw of her drink, actively searching out the bartender when her eyes came to mine. There was a crucial part of the story she was leaving out, and I was actively waiting for her to fill in the worrisome blanks.
“Oh! Yeah so, obviously I’m not pregnant now as you can see.
We went to the doctor, and it turned out to be a false positive.
Something about when I took the test, I was already ovulating again, so the results were fucked.
But Ethan had already proposed, so we just decided to stick with the engagement and just stretch it out.
I mean, it’s eventually the path we would have gone down anyway.
We just shotgunned it a bit early is all. ”
“Wow, that’s—”
“Not at all what you expected?”
I tried laughing but was still too stunned to manage that basic function. “No, not at all. And it’s not embarrassing by the way. It’s just how things went for you guys, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
She nodded, happily sipping the last of her drink.
“Yeah, I mean things were getting a bit bumpy for us right before the pregnancy scare, but if I’m hitching myself to any man for the rest of my life, he might as well have the face and ass of a model.”
Another bark of laughter sputtered past my lips. “Do you just objectify him all day long?”
“Uh yeah. Wouldn’t you?”
“Oh my God.” Steering my burning blush towards the floor, I ran through about every acceptable response in my head before responding with an uncomfortable chuckle. “That’s really not my place to answer.”
“So that’s a yes.” Monica sent me a sly wink that popped my mouth right open, flushing the rest of my body as hot as my cheeks. “It’s okay. It’s actually a shit ton of fun to talk about him like this. All the women in my firm hate me, so I don’t exactly get a lot of girl talk.”
“Why do they hate you?”
“I stole some of their clients and the hottest guy in the office. I’d hate me too if I weren’t me.”
Good point.
“Well, from what little I know about him, Ethan seems like a really great guy, and if you were going to end up with anyone, I’m happy it’s him.”
Monica’s lips pulled up at the sides. “Me too.” Then, her face lit up and she turned her phone over on her lap to face up.
“Speaking of him, I actually just texted him to come be our ride home. He’s on his way.”