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“How about Chinese?”
“Why? Do you have another engagement ring for me?”
“No, but I do have something else for you.”
I was so excited about proposing that I completely forgot about the locket until now. I went to my office and got a small gift bag from my desk drawer.
“What’s this?”
“A gift. Just open it.”
She opened it, and when she popped open the long black velvet box, her eyes grew wide as she gingerly removed the delicate locket and held it by the chain.
“This is for me?”
“Yes. Look inside.”
She slid her fingernail in the seam and opened it to reveal two pictures that I placed in there—one of me and another of the both of us.
“Now, you’ll always have me with you no matter where you are.”
“It’s beautiful. Can you put it on me?”
I secure the chain around her neck and notice the locket falls just between her lovely ivory cleavage.
“Mmm, perfect.”
“If I didn’t know better, I would say that you planned it that way.”
“Maybe I did, but it’s fitting.”
We were both tired, and when we went to bed, we slept in each other’s arms.
Chapter 8
Lana is pissed at me, once again. I’ve been overloaded at work, and we’ve had arguments on an almost daily basis. She complains that I never spend enough time with her. It started right after the Thanksgiving holiday, and we had our first huge blow up on my birthday.
She planned on taking me to dinner and had a beautiful birthday cake in the refrigerator for when we got home. I had a meeting that ran late, and William called me before I left the office to update me on Cora’s condition and wish me a happy birthday. I didn’t want to rush him off the phone and arrived home after our reservations had passed.
She ended up cursing me out and locking herself in the bathroom to take a bath while I sang myself happy birthday and had a slice of cake for dinner. I ended up sleeping on the couch because she didn’t want to share the bed with me. So that was a birthday I won’t soon forget.
Since then, our relationship had been rocky, but it took a funeral to shake us back to reality and made us understand what was important. In early January, Cora died in the hospice where she had been for over a month. I knew William was a basket case, and we drove to Dover to attend the wake and funeral.
I think seeing him so broken up over the loss of his wife set us straight. We were having so many arguments that we couldn’t see how petty they were. This brought things back into perspective. The issues we were arguing about were ruining our relationship.
The first night at the hotel, we made love slowly and held each other. I apologized and told her that I would try to do better. She told me that she would try to learn to deal with my absences. When we got home, our seemingly stalled marriage plans went into full force. We picked a date for late June, and she began dragging Paige out to hunt for wedding dresses.
Most of February, I had a cold I couldn’t shake. I was working fourteen-hour days, going into work at 5:00 AM so I could come home at the relatively decent hour of seven. I was sleeping in my office for most of the month because I didn’t want to get Lana sick. She finally forced me to go to the doctor, and it turned out that I had pneumonia.
She ordered me to bed for a few days and took off work to take care of me.
Bed rest and a good dose of antibiotics got me back on my feet and gave me the energy to once again make love to my fiancée; it had been three weeks. We were getting along great, and our sexual activity was several times a night; that is until early May.
Two of the three projects we had in the works were full of bugs. I was working with the head programmers, Jack DeVoe and Henry Yamata, to get with the testing team to fix the issue as soon as possible. It was very stressful besides the fact that Lana and I had to finalize certain things for our wedding.
We hadn’t yet chosen a cake, and the two times we had an appointment, something came up at Eltech that didn’t allow me to leave. Lana was livid, and once again, I found myself in the doghouse. I tried to appease her, but she only rebuffed me. I ended up sleeping on the couch for a few nights.
I needed to unwind one night, and Miguel invited me out for drinks at Clancy’s. I hadn’t seen him for weeks, and when Grace came by, it was a party. I drank a little too much and came home late, stumbling around and knocking over the floor lamp in the living room. Lana was asleep on the couch. It looked like she had been there waiting for me. I kept texting her to say I was coming home, but another drink got in the way.
