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“Tim, the pacing. It has got to stop before you make a hole in the floor.” Lucy’s voice comes from the living room and shakes Tim out of his reverie. She didn’t need to look up to know Tim was pacing; it was basically all he did around her since picking out the ring. It was the only way he could stop himself from asking her for advice on her own proposal, just like when he’d called for fashion tips before their first date. Now he is stuck debating with himself about proposal locations and wording and dates and if there should be a photographer or not while wearing holes in the floor.
Tim absentmindedly nods and mumbles, “Mm hm.” He also continues to pace, significantly undercutting his response and forcing Lucy to finally look up from her book. Lucy stares at him for a few seconds, weighing her options on how to proceed, before settling on one. She slides her bookmark in place and sets the book on the side table.
Her voice is almost unbearably gentle this time. “Tim, babe, come over here.” Tim makes it to the edge of the couch before Lucy grabs his hand and pulls him down onto the cushions. He sits forward, facing the TV so he won’t look at Lucy and accidentally let something slip, and she slings her legs over his lap and leans her chin against his shoulder. Her eyes felt like they are boring holes in the side of his face. “I didn’t want to do this, but I’m nervous you’re going to get an ulcer from all of this and I’d be a bad girlfriend if I just let you keep freaking out.”
Tim no longer had thoughts in his brain, just sirens blaring.
“I know about the ring.”
Tim is nauseous instantaneously. All of that effort for nothing.
Lucy is also nervous instantly. She is chewing on one of her nails the second the words come out of her mouth. Her perfect manicure for the proposal be damned. They both sit in their discomfort for a minute before remembering how to speak.
“You’re just so stressed-”
“How did you-”
“I wouldn’t have said anything-”
“I was trying so hard-” All their words come out in a jumble, spilling over each other. Finally Lucy puts both her hands up and stops both of them in their tracks. Silence reigns for a few seconds before she starts again.
“I know about the ring because I found it in that old Baker to Vegas mug. And you’ve been so stressed and you weren’t telling me what was going on. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together when I found the ring.”
“Why were you looking at the mugs at the very back of the cabinet?” Tim knows it doesn’t really matter, but it’s a point of pride. He’s always been better at hiding things than Lucy. That mug hiding spot was absolutely perfect.
“I had to hide part of your birthday present and you told me at Valentine’s to find a better hiding spot. So I thought about where you would hide it and when I got there, there was the ring.”
“My birthday is still four months away,” Tim says like it is a solid rebuttal to anything Lucy has shared that evening.
“I can buy your birthday present four months early if I want to. Don’t judge,” she says with perhaps more defiance than the situation merits. Lucy is not distracted by his feeble attempts to turn her attention from the ring and barrels forward. “Anyway, I want to help with the proposal.”
It is Tim’s turn to look incredulous. “You can’t help with the proposal. That’s the whole point of the proposal. It’s a surprise.”
Lucy scoots closer to Tim, practically sitting in his lap. “Okay, so I won’t help with the details or planning, but I can still do something, just so your hair isn’t gray by the time you actually pop the question.”
“I appreciate that you want to help, but this is how I am supposed to show you that I love you,” Tim says with a surprising amount of vulnerability in his voice. “You could plan a better proposal than me in your sleep. You come up with better Valentine’s gifts and I’m sure whatever you have going for my birthday will be way more thoughtful than what I do for yours. This is my chance to try and show you how much you mean to me.” Tim takes a deep breath. “I just really want to get it right.”
Lucy’s eyes soften and she places her hand on his cheek, pulling him closer and casually whispering, “Then let’s practice.”
Tim purses his lips, clearly confused. Lucy is up on her feet, one hand extended toward Tim, in the blink of an eye. “Practice makes perfect, Bradford. C’mon. Let’s do this.”
Ever the traditionalist, Tim stays firmly seated on the couch. “No.”
“Come on!”
“You don’t practice your proposal with the person you’re proposing to in your living room. That’s insane.”
Lucy laughs, “We practiced our first kiss in my living room. If anything, not practicing our proposal would be the break in tradition. Stand up!”
Tim stays sitting down. All the insecurity he’s been trying to purge from his body via pacing rears its ugly head at once. His speech isn’t perfect, Lucy is supposed to be surprised, he isn’t supposed to be in a t-shirt and jeans and she certainly shouldn’t be in pajamas, absolutely everything is wrong. Nothing about this is perfect. Nothing is deserving of Lucy. And if he can’t make a proposal worthy of Lucy, what does that say about him? “I can’t. It’s not right yet.”
That seems to slow Lucy down. In a strange inversion of the expected events, she gets down on her knees, making his downcast eyes meet hers. Her voice is so quiet Tim thinks he might have imagined it. “You know my answer isn’t going to change if you have the perfect proposal or not, right? It’s a yes either way.” Her smile is small but radiant and it banishes Tim’s insecurity and soothes all the stress away in the way only Lucy has ever been able to.
Tim blinks his eyes quickly to get rid of the tears he can feel sneaking up on him. “Is that a promise?”
Lucy smiles and squeezes his hand. “Of course it is,” she says reassuringly. “Now let's practice.”
Tim slides down onto one knee while Lucy stands. If she is as nervous as he is in this moment, she is hiding it far, far better. She looks around for something to stand in as the ring before grabbing her book and passing it over to Tim. “Do we really need to practice this too? I know how to open a ring box.”
“This way you can feel out exactly when you want to open it. Make sure you do it at the right moment. Practice as you intend to go on and all that jazz.” Lucy seems to be actively enjoying this and it is slowly setting Tim more at ease. She makes life easier, makes being him easier. “Ready, set, action!”
Lucy gives the most dramatic faux-gasp, faking shock that Tim is kneeling in front of her with a “ring”. Neither can stop themselves from the fit of giggles that overcomes them. It takes a couple minutes for them to both regain their composure. Lucy pulls her hair back from her face, sets her shoulders, and in a serious voice says, “Okay, go ahead for real.”
Tim had planned some of this speech already but all of that goes out the window now, looking up at Lucy in her pajamas with pink cheeks from laughing. All the prepared words are gone and in their place is serenity and something Lucy had said years ago as they prepared to be a pretend couple: “You ended up in my building- frantic, looking for a place to hide, and- and I opened the door for you.” It had been a fake story then, but the sentiment has never felt so true.
Tim takes a deep breath and Lucy gives him an encouraging smile. His voice is steadier than he expected when he finally opens his mouth. “Lucy, all my life I feel like I’ve been going from door to door, hoping that someone will open up and give me a safe place. Some people haven’t opened the door, some have slammed it in my face, some have let me in and then kicked me out. When I met you, I didn’t want to knock on any more doors. I didn’t want to open myself up. Which worked out great because came into my life with your door wide open and basically dragged me inside.” Lucy gives a little laugh. Tim looks at her, searching for confirmation he is doing okay. Lucy responds by grabbing his hand and squeezing.
“You had your door open from day one and kept it open when I pushed you away and hurt you and didn’t deserve to be with you. Even when you felt you could only open it an inch, that door still opened every time I knocked. Maybe it’s stupid to use a cover story you came up with on the fly to sum up why spending my life with you feels right, but I don’t know if there’s a better way to describe what you mean to me than this. Lucy, I love you for so many reasons, but I want to marry you because I can’t imagine anyone else always opening the door for me the way you do.” Tears run down Lucy’s face and Tim can feel some threatening to leak out of his eyes too. He breaks from his serious voice for a moment, leaning forward, and asks, “Is that too much with the door thing?”
“No, no. It’s perfect,” Lucy says, swiping away a tear. “Keep going.”
“Lucy Chen,” Lucy stuffs the book into Tim’s hand before he can continue. He tries and fails to open it like a ring box while still holding Lucy’s hand before giving up. He’ll be able to open the ring box one-handed when it actually counts. “Will you marry me?”
Despite her tears and her enormous smile and the fact that she is nearly vibrating with joy, Lucy remains the perfect image of calm. She kneels to the floor and confidently says, “Yes. Just you try and stop me, Tim Bradford.”
Her arms are around his neck and he’s on his feet and lifting her in the air before either of them know how they got there. Everything is a mix of laughter and euphoria and relief. The air feels lighter. Lucy is somehow more beautiful than she was two seconds ago. Kojo is barking in the backyard because they have both forgotten he exists and that brings on another round of laughter. It feels like the perfect proposal.
Tim tries to duplicate it a few weeks later with more lights and fancier clothes and an actual ring. It’s a gorgeous proposal and they both cherish sharing it with their loved ones as they recount the story over and over again in the lead up to the wedding. The story of the living room proposal stays between just the two of them for years until one day a little girl with dark hair and blue eyes asks about it. They have no choice but to tell her the truest version of the story of when Tim proposed to Lucy.
Though of course they refer to themselves as ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ in the retelling.