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A perfect day for my perfect girl.
She smiles when she sees me, and she picks up the pace, walking quickly through a throng of people to get to me. When she does, she practically crashes into my arms. I grunt at the force but smile as my eyes move down to her face. I drop my lips to hers.
“What is this place?” she asks when she sees where we’re standing.
“It’s new. It’s not quite open to the public yet, but I got us in to give it a try. You ready?”
She nods, and I go in first, holding the door open for her.
“Surprise!” the huge group of people gathered yell, and her eyes are drawn to the bright pink neon sign perched behind the counter that will eventually be the cashier stand: Cookie’s Cookies.
Her jaw drops as she spins around to face me, but I’m already down on the floor. She gasps as she sees me kneeling.
“Ava Cookie Maxwell, I love you. I love your cookies and your cakes. I love your talent. I love your drive and your ambition. I love your kind heart and your sweet soul. I want to spend forever with you right here, whether we call it Sinful or Cookie’s Cookies or Ava’s Haven or Nash’s Nibbles. This place is yours now, but it’s our future, the place where I envision long days and late nights filled with laughter and recipes and experiments and fun.”
My big, planned speech that I rehearsed hundreds of times seems to have flown out the window at the pressure of having her entire family looking at me.
“But it’s not just this new bakery I want you to have today. I’m also handing over my heart. You've owned it since the day we reconnected at the Gridiron. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, whether it's here at this bakery or kissing you from the sidelines. This place can be our first baby, and if and when the time is right for us, we’ll have more. All I know is I want to be with you, and I want to give you everything you deserve.”
The room falls silent. Deafeningly silent.
I pull the box out of my pocket, and she gasps as I flip open the lid.
The diamond glints in the light, and her hands fly to her mouth.
“Ava Louise Maxwell, will you marry me?”
“Oh my God! Yes! Yes, I will marry you!”
I laugh as I yank the ring out of the box, shove it onto her finger, and rise to a stand so I can pull her into my arms and kiss her properly.
It takes a solid beat before I realize people are clapping and cheering. I think it's Beckett’s loud whistle that brings me back from the cloud where I’m floating back down to solid ground.
I pull apart from her lips. There will be plenty of time for that sort of celebration later, but I have a lot of details to share with her about this place, and her entire family is here ready to celebrate with her.
The first person who comes rushing over for a hug once we pull apart is Kelly.
“Oh my God!” Ava squeals. “I can’t believe you’re really here!”
“I can’t believe you’re really engaged!” she squeals back. “Congratulations!”
Ava reaches down and rubs Kelly’s growing stomach. “You look so good!”
Sandra moves in for the next hug while Beckett claps me on the back.
“Holy shit, man. You actually did it. Congrats.”
I chuckle as I give my future brother-in-law a hug. “Thanks, man. For everything. For being here. For not getting mad that I’m banging your little sister.”
“Dude. Our friendship doesn’t have to change, but if you ever say that again, it will.”
I laugh. Oliver and Alexander are here, too, and it’s been a full decade since I’ve seen either of them. Beckett actually did bring lunch, so after the excitement starts to die down, we sit at the tables that were left behind from the last restaurant that moved out a little over a month ago.
I’m sitting beside Ava, and as she digs into a sandwich, she asks, “So how soon until we can have this place up and running?”
I laugh. “I have a business contact who can help us with a lot of the lifting, and I thought long and hard about whether I should finalize the details or not, and ultimately I knew you’d want it to have your own touch. It’s your dream, so I just had the place painted white and cleaned out so you could build your dream from scratch. But I also want you to know that you’re not doing this alone. I’ll be right here every step of the way, and together we’ll make your vision a reality.”
She leans over and presses a kiss to my lips, and when she pulls back, she bumps my shoulder with hers. “The neon sign is a perfect touch. I think I might have to go with that name after all.”
