“Engaged?” My voice broke on the word. “Jesse, no one our age gets engaged. They live together first, to see how things are going to work out, then—-”
“We already did that, Susannah,” he reminded me matter--of--factly. “And I think you’ll agree that things ‘worked out’ beneficially for both of us.”
“Yes, but . . .” I struggled to put into words what I was feeling. The difficulty was that I didn’t know what I was feeling.
Of course Jesse and I had discussed the fact that we were going to get married someday. We didn’t have one of those dumb relationships you read about in books where they can’t talk about having a future together because one person can’t commit due to his abusive past. Jesse had had the most abusive past you could imagine, and all he wanted to do now was move forward from it. We’d both nearly died for one another. We’d both given each other up so the other could live. I’d definitely known this was coming.
I just didn’t think this would be coming now. Tonight.
And that I’d have ruined it by pulling the ring out of my boyfriend’s pants moments before, ruining the surprise.
“Can we just pretend that didn’t happen?” I asked. “I mean the thing where I pulled that out of your pocket?”
“Gladly,” he said, tersely. “But -people our age do get engaged, Susannah. You just told me that this Mark fellow—-”
“He was in the twelfth grade, and look what happened to him!”
“What about your stepbrother?” Jesse demanded. “He’s your age, and he’s married.”
“If you mean Brad, who impregnated his girlfriend with triplets soon after high school graduation because they neglected to use birth control, I don’t know that they’re the best example.”
I’d never really had high expectations for my stepbrother Brad, to whom I’d always mentally referred as Dopey.
But I’d never in a million years thought I’d live to see him pushing around a stroller with three angel--faced toddler girls in it, calling him Daddy (and me Auntie Suze).
Yet that had not only happened, it happened regularly. Weirder still, Brad was now one of the happiest individuals I knew, and almost bearable to be around. It was too bad about his sourpuss troll of a wife.
“We’re not Brad and Debbie,” Jesse said from between gritted teeth.
“Uh, no, we are not,” I said. “I’ve been on the pill for four years just in case you ever break that abstinence--until--marriage vow of yours because I don’t want babies—-let alone triplets—-until I’ve at least got my master’s degree.”
“And I appreciate that,” Jesse said. “But I’m also not like this spirit of yours, who you think was only trying to trap his girlfriend into staying true to him while she was away at school.”
“Well,” I said, “that’s a relief. But then, I never thought you were—-”
“But I am a man, Susannah,” he went on, pulling me toward him with one hand while extracting the ring box from his pocket with another.
“Well, that is abundantly clear.” I had a front row seat to the button fly of his jeans, and now that his pockets were empty, I could tell that he was, indeed, still glad to see me. “Abundantly.”
“And I’m not going to be told what to do.”
“When have I ever told you what to—-?”
“Every minute of every day since the moment I met you. Even now, you’re telling me not to ask you to marry me.”
“Well, I just think the timing is wrong. Asking a girl to marry you on Valentine’s Day is very clichéd. And asking her in her dorm room in the Virgin Vault is even worse.”
“Well, I would have done it at sunset on the beach,” he said, with a crooked smile, “if you hadn’t been off causing a freak paranormal weather phenomenon.”
“Oh, right. Blame it on me. It’s all my fault. It didn’t have anything to do with that kid in the cemetery.”
“That’s exactly my point. If two high school kids can get engaged, Susannah, why can’t—-”
I flung my hands over my ears. I knew I was acting like a freak, but then again, I am a freak. A bona fide biological freak who can see ghosts and was getting proposed to—-only not, because I’d ruined it, in the way I ruin everything—-by a former one.
“Stop talking about them,” I said, my hands still over my ears. “And where did you even get that?” I nodded toward the hand that was holding the ring. He’d flipped open the lid to give me close--up view of what I was missing. It was yellow gold—-not my style, but still very pretty—-with filigree along either side of a not--unsizable center diamond. Very retro, but probably worth a fortune.
Not that its cost had anything to do with the fact that I suddenly wanted to throw up.
“You don’t have any money,” I went on. Then I lowered my hands with a gasp. “Jesse! You didn’t spend all your fellowship money on a ring for me, did you?”