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She smiles. “I’m quite fond of pizza.”
“How about skeeball?”
“I might have a decent memory or two of skeeball.”
“Good.” I turn onto the highway to take us out of town. “Let’s go have some fun.”
* * *
Eliza throwsher head back to laugh and my heart beats a little faster.
“I think that’s two wins for me,” she says, “and zero for you.”
“Who knew you had such a hidden talent for busting balls, Ellie?” I joke, shaking my head at the scoreboard as more tickets spit out the bottom of the machine.
“It’s my specialty.”
I laugh and gather the tickets. “One more game?” I ask, glancing around the nearly abandoned arcade. My nerves skip around, torn between delaying the inevitable a bit longer or ripping that bandage off.
She holds back a yawn. “Sure, if you want.”
I smile. “Or would you like to go home and get some rest?”
“Do you mind?” she asks, her face scrunching up.
“Not at all.” I feel a rush of panic but it quickly goes away while I look into her eyes. “Come on.”
I take the tickets to the counter and Frank grins at us both.
“Nice haul tonight, Junior…” He pulls the tickets towards his counting machine. The numbers tick up and I stare at Eliza’s gorgeous face as my pulse skips faster towards the next moment.
“Looks like…” Frank turns to the prize wall and points towards a line of teddy bears. He fires a wink at me. “One of those.”
“She’ll take it.”
Eliza laughs. “The last one is mostly covered in drool now, so I can definitely use a new one…”
Frank pulls the bear off the wall and hands it to Eliza. “For the lucky girl.”
I instantly flash back to that night. She’s absolutely right — it’s hard to believe it’s been a whole year since I first brought her here. Back then, it was just a fun night out with a pretty girl that hopefully ended in copious amounts of casual sex. Back then, that’s as far forward into the future as I was capable of thinking. But now…
Eliza squeezes the bear in her hands, grinning just like she did before. It’s the exact same bear with light brown fur and extra soft padding, but it doesn’t take her long to notice the one difference between this one and the one tucked inside our daughter’s crib.
Her finger slides along the red ribbon around its neck until it touches the diamond ring hanging there waiting for her.
She pauses, her face blank as fresh snow until it finally sets in. “Junior…”
I lower down to one knee and her jaw drops.
“Ellie… I know we talked about this…”
“Junior, what are you doing?”
I take the bear and slide the ring free of its ribbon. “But I want to talk about it again.”
“Oh, my god…”
I hold her left hand and it shakes in my fingers. “I love you, Eliza Pierce. I’ve said that to you every day since November but I still don’t think you believe me.”
