“Thank you,” Doris said, as she continued to fill out the form in front of her. She glanced at my left hand. “You’re engaged?” I nodded, and my conflicting emotions must have shown on my face because Doris made a clucking sound and gave a little shake of her head. “Uh-oh. If there’s even a drop of doubt in your heart, honey, you should listen to it. That voice inside you is the wisest part of your soul.”
I nodded, pressing my lips together so my eyes wouldn’t tear up. So much for my job distracting me from the indecision I felt. “Maybe we should barter our services,” I said. “I help you to build up your strength and you can teach me about life.”
Doris smiled, a lovely motion that lit up her entire face, giving me a glimpse of the young woman she used to be. “Oh no, dear,” she said. “The only thing I’m qualified to teach is English. Everything we learn about life comes from the living of it, good and bad choices alike. And each of us needs to make our own. That’s just the way of it.” She signed the bottom of the form with a flourish, then set down her pen, looking at me expectantly.
Just then, Trevor, the receptionist, returned from his break. “All set?” I asked Doris, and she nodded, then followed me into the gym. I talked with her about the importance of stretching her muscles before any kind of exertion, and then led her through a series of gentle warm-ups, including a fifteen-minute walk on the treadmill.
“How did you and your young man meet?” she asked me as I stood next to her, monitoring her heart rate via the machine to make sure she wasn’t overdoing it. I told her the story, and then she spoke again. “Did you know he was going to propose?”
“No,” I said, recalling the afternoon in early June that Daniel and I went rock climbing in the same spot as we had on our first date.
“Can you grab my water for me, babe?” he asked when we reached the top of our first ascent. It was a beautiful, sunshine-filled day and we both were sweating. “My calf is totally cramping.” He set the heel of his right foot on a small rock and pointed his toes toward the sky, grabbing onto them with the tips of his fingers, stretching the muscle out.
“Sure,” I said. I leaned over, unzipped the backpack he’d just set on the ground, and pulled out the silver metal bottle he always carried with him when he worked out. But when I turned to hand it to him, he had stopped stretching and was down on one knee, holding a black velvet jewelry box in his hand.
“Oh my god,” I said, slapping a hand over my mouth. “What are you doing?” Of course, I knew what he was doing, but the words were the only ones my shock-addled mind allowed me to speak.
“What I’ve wanted to for a long time now,” he said. He opened the box, revealing a small but glittering round solitaire set upon a slender silver band. “I love you, Amber. I want to be with you, always. Will you marry me?”
A hundred thoughts raced through my mind as I stared at him. I loved him so much in that moment—the sweet simplicity of his proposal, the fact that he had chosen to ask me privately, just the two of us, out in nature doing something we both loved, as opposed to in a fancy restaurant in front of a bunch of strangers. He knew me well enough to understand I would have despised something like that. But along with the love I felt came a sharp spike of confusion. We’d been together less than a year. Was that enough time to really know each other, down to our cores? Oddly enough, I thought about Tyler, that even with the few bumps in the road we’d experienced, how our friendship had lasted longer than I’d been with Daniel. Was I being fair to myself, committing myself to only one person when I was still so young? My parents had done it, but they had dated for three years before they got engaged. I knew the longevity of their relationship was a rarity—that more than half of marriages that began in a couple’s early twenties ended in divorce. There was no way to know if Daniel and I would withstand the odds.
“What do you say, babe?” he asked when I didn’t answer right away. “There’s no one on earth I’d want to build a life with but you.”
The sincerity of his words melted away my hesitation. I threw my arms around his neck, and, in the process, almost toppled us both over onto the dirt. “Yes,” I whispered. “Yes, yes, yes.”
He kissed me, and then slipped the ring on my finger. “It was my abuela’s,” he said. “I promise I’ll buy you something bigger and better when I’m a doctor.”
I shook my head. “No way,” I said. “It’s perfect. You’re perfect. I love you so much.”
“He sounds wonderful,” Doris said now, as I finished telling her the story. Her blue eyes stayed intent on me. “But you’re still not sure.”
“Is it possible to be totally sure of anything? Or anyone?” I asked, more of myself than of her.
Before she could answer, I heard my name called out from across the gym floor, and then turned to see Tyler striding toward us. “Hey,” he said, as he approached. He was in uniform; he must have just gotten off an overnight shift. We’d been spending a lot of time together since Daniel left, grabbing dinner or a coffee a few nights a week, after I got off work at the gym and before he had to be at the station. We watched movies at his place or with my parents at mine, laughing and talking like we had back in high school, before he’d taken me to prom. Being around him again made me feel comfortable. It made me feel like I was one hundred percent, totally myself.
“Hey, you,” I said. “Everything okay?”
“Oh yeah. Sorry to bug you when you’re working, but I was nearby.”
“No worries,” I said. “Doris, this is Tyler. Tyler, this is Doris.” I glanced at the time remaining on her treadmill; I’d programmed it for fifteen minutes, and she still had three to go. I reached over and pushed the down arrow to slow her pace in order to return her heart rate to normal.
“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” Tyler said, giving Doris a charming smile. Not for the first time since I’d been home, I found myself thinking how attractive Tyler was, how much more at ease in his skin he seemed to have become. I wondered if the younger girl he’d been seeing, Whitney, had had something to do with this, and was surprised to feel a barb of jealousy.
“You must be the fiancé,” Doris said. “Aren’t you a handsome devil?”
A shadow briefly clouded Tyler’s face, even as he kept smiling. “Just a friend,” he said.
“My best friend, actually,” I said. “We’ve known each other since we were kids. And please don’t tell him he’s handsome. It’ll go straight to his already giant head.” I grinned, and Tyler laughed, reaching over to give my ponytail a light tug, a motion that sent a surprising, pleasurable shiver across my skin.
“I see,” Doris said, her eyes darting back and forth between us. She looked at me. “Is it okay if I stop now, honey? I need to use the restroom.”
“Of course,” I said, hitting the red button that stopped the treadmill belt. Doris’s cheeks were pink as she turned to take a step off of the machine, and as she grabbed on to one of the handlebars for support, Tyler stepped closer and offered her his hand.
“Thank you, sir,” she said as she let him assist her onto the floor. She patted her short, silver hair and straightened her stance. “I’ll be right back.”