Chapter 22: The Proposal

A year later, Max arrived home from work with a bag from the pricey grocery store downtown and an expression she couldn't quite read, while Grace was arguing with her laptop.

The woman said, "Please tell me you didn't spend our entire food budget on truffle oil again," without raising her eyes from her screen.

"I didn't spend our entire food budget on truffle oil."

"But you did spend some of our food budget on truffle oil."

"A reasonable amount of our food budget on truffle oil."

When Grace looked up at last, she saw Max unpacking ingredients that most certainly weren't from their typical frugal shopping excursions. 

Fresh lobster, authentic saffron, what appeared to be wagyu beef, and, yes, a small bottle of truffle oil that likely cost more than their monthly N*****x subscription.

"What's the occasion?" she inquired.

"Can't I cook something nice without there being an occasion?"

"You can and do. But you don't always look like you're going to vomit while doing it."

Max stopped in his unpacking, a bunch of frozen broccoli halfway over the counter. "I don't look like I'm about to throw up."

"You look just like you did the night you told me of Derek. Which is to say, scared but attempting to cover it below culinary perfection."

"I'm not terrified."

"Max."

"Okay, I'm a little frightened."

Grace shut off her laptop and gave him her complete attention. In the eighteen months they'd been together…….officially, not by chance……….she'd learned to read his moods like weather patterns. This was not work-related stress, family drama, or residual anxiety from their shared experience. This was something really new.

"What's happening?"

"Nothing is going on. I'm making dinner. A lovely dinner. To my girlfriend. Who I adore and want to prepare extravagant meals for."

"You're being weird."

"I'm not being weird."

"You're being odd." And when you're nervous, you arrange your vegetables by color."

Max gazed down at the wonderfully orderly rainbow of produce he had inadvertently arranged on the counter. "I always arrange vegetables by color."

"You arrange them based on size." Always by size, unless you're nervous, in which case you arrange them by color because you believe it's more aesthetically beautiful and will somehow help whatever you're nervous about."

"That's..." Max focused on his color-coordinated vegetables. "That's disturbingly accurate."

"I have been studying you for eighteen months." I recognize your calls."

"Apparently I have to tell you."

"You have numerous tells. Now, what's wrong?"

Max slumped on the counter, appearing weary. "Nothing is wrong." Everything is correct. "That is the problem."

"I'm going to need you to expand more on this."

"Grace, this is the most significant relationship I have ever had. The happiest I've ever been. "I've never felt more settled, secure, and normal."

"That sounds terrible."

"That sounds fantastic. Which scares me.

Grace came to stand in front of him, close enough to notice the familiar gold flecks in his eyes and the new worry lines that hadn't existed when they first met. "Max, what are you trying to tell me?"

"I'm trying to tell you that I bought a ring."

The words hung in the air between them like smoke from a constantly triggered fire alarm. Present and impossible to ignore, although not always suggesting an emergency.

"You bought a ring," Grace said again.

"That was three weeks ago. Every morning when I get dressed, I look at it and consider whether this is the right day to pop the question, but I always chicken out because I'm afraid you might say no. It's been stashed in my sock drawer.

"What if I say yes?"

"That's even more frightening."

A chuckle emerged in Grace's chest, not one of contempt but the kind of startled delight that occurs when you learn  someone you love is even more wonderfully ridiculous than you thought they were.

"Max Walker, are you asking me to wed you?"

"I'm asking if you would be willing to consider the possibility of maybe discussing the idea of potentially getting married at some point in the future if that's something you might be interested in."

"That's the most hedge-filled proposal in the history of proposals."

"This is not a proposal! "This is a pre-proposal inquiry."

"A what?"

"Marketing research. To see if an actual proposal would be well accepted, or if I should return the ring and pretend this conversation never occurred."

Grace stared at him for a long time, taking in his tense countenance, defensive posture, and the way he gripped the edge of the counter as if it would protect him from whatever came next.

"Show me the ring," she requested.

"What?"

The ring. Show it to me!"

"I am unable to show you the ring while conducting market research. That undermines the aim of market research.

"Max."

"If I show you the ring, this will become an actual proposal, and I have not prepared for an actual proposal. I have notes for a genuine proposal."

"You have notes?"

"I have notes and a plan and a backup plan and a speech that I've been practicing in the mirror for three weeks."

"Oh my god, you've been practicing a proposal speech in the mirror."

"Stop making fun of me. "This is significant."

"I am not making fun of you. I'm becoming more in love with you, something I never thought was possible."

Mak blinked. "You're what?"

"I'm saying yes."

"Yes to what?"

"Yes to considering the possibility of maybe discussing the idea of potentially getting married at some point in the future."

"Really?"

"Really. But I am also answering yes to the question you are too afraid to ask."

"Which is?"

"Max Walker, will you marry me?"

His expression was one of total shock. "You're proposing to me?"

"Someone has to, and you're clearly going to stand there arranging vegetables by color until we're both too old to remember why we wanted to get married in the first place."

"You cannot propose to me. I am expected to propose to you. "I have a ring."

"So go get the ring."

"But then………." Max. Go grab the ring."

He rushed into their bedroom with the haste of someone who just discovered he was late for his own wedding. Grace heard drawers open and close, followed by what sounded like muffled curses.

When he returned, he was holding a little velvet box and had the expression of someone who had just realized he was holding a live grenade.

"I should probably say my speech first," he told me.

"Say your speech."

Max opened his mouth, then closed it before opening it again. "I forgot my speech."

"What did you want to tell me?"

"I love you." That you inspire me to be bolder than I am. That living with you has taught me the distinction between safety and happiness.

"Those are good reasons to get married."

"That's not all of them."

"Tell me the rest."

Max dropped to one knee on their kitchen floor, close to the grocery bag filled with expensive ingredients and the rainbow of nervously organized veggies.

"Grace Chen, you are the most unexpected thing that has occurred to me. 

You moved into my flat and turned my entire meticulously planned life upside down, and somehow that chaos became the best thing I've ever known.

"Keep going."

"You make terrible coffee and load the dishwasher wrong and leave books open everywhere, and I love all of it because it means you're here, making this place feel like home instead of just somewhere I sleep."

"I'm listening."

"You jumped down an elevator shaft rather than allowing someone to hurt me. You choose to stay even though you could afford to leave. "You propose to me when I am too afraid to propose to you."

"Those are very good reasons."

Max opened the ring box with trembling hands. Inside was a simple solitaire, classic and lovely, precisely what Grace would have picked for herself if she had the option.

"Would you marry me, Grace Chen?" "For real this time, not just market research?"

"Yes," she replied, and the word felt like coming home and falling over a cliff at once. "Yes, I'll marry you."

The band fit perfectly, leading Grace to believe Max had worked out her ring size through meticulous observation and possibly a plot with her sister. When she looked up from adoring it, he was still kneeling on their kitchen floor, smiling at her like he had just hit a jackpot.

He spoke the words, "We're engaged," as though he was practicing them.

"We're engaged."

"I'm going to marry you."

"You're going to marry me."

"I should probably stand up now."

"You should probably stand up now."

With the passion of someone who just made the choice to spend the rest of her life discussing dishwasher loading techniques with her favourite partner in the world, Grace threw her arms around him and kissed him when he also did.

"So," she muttered as they parted ways. "About that expensive dinner you were planning to make."

"What about it?"

"Do you believe it will last until tomorrow? Because truffle oil isn't the only thing I have in mind for how we should celebrate our engagement."

Max grinned instantly and nefariously. "Rain check on the lobster?"

"Definitely rain check on the lobster."

Grace reflected on the surprising routes that had brought them to this point as they made their way to their bedroom, abandoning the meticulously organized romantic supper in favor of something far more direct and intimate.

She had been a lady seeking temporary housing eighteen months prior, fearful of commitment. Max had been a man who believed that love was a luxury he couldn't afford and that caring

about someone was harmful.

These two individuals had discovered that the most exciting experiences did not lie in grandiose gestures or perilous circumstances. They were discovered by selecting the same individual each day and by constructing a life together, one minor choice at a time.

They would begin arranging a wedding and eat pricey lobster tomorrow. They would discuss guest lists, venues, and all the intricate details of combining two lives into one by calling their families.

Tonight, however, they were just Max and Grace, freshly engaged and crazy happy, enjoying the reality that sometimes the most unlikely roommate turns out to be the most likely spouse.