Now that both of my hands were free, I caught her around the waist and pulled her down, laying her back on the bed and rolling over her.
"Marie," I kissed her quickly. "You never cease to surprise me."
She nodded, her brow still knit with worry. I kissed her again, deeper, because she tasted awesome and it felt like the right thing to do in the moment.
But before things could get out of hand, I lifted my head, placed the box-the box-on her chest, popped it open, and showed her the ring inside.
And improvised.
"Marie Harris, I don't want to think about my life without you. You are the sine to my cosine, and those cufflinks are perfection. So is your cooking, everything you make is perfection. And delicious. And you're delicious. I love how you taste. I want to taste you now. But first, I have to finish saying this. I love how you feel. I love your bravery and honesty, I love how fucking smart you are-sorry for cussing while proposing, but you are so fucking smart-and how good, how deeply, deeply good. And sexy. Petabytes of sexiness."
Unable to restrain myself, I kissed her again, noting that her mouth was open and it took her a few seconds to respond because-clearly-I'd shocked the hell out of her.
Leaning away, I pushed my fingers into her hair and looked straight into her eyes. "To put that quantity into perspective, one petabyte is one million gigabytes."
"Oh," she said, the word more breath than sound.
I sucked in air, suddenly nervous for reasons I couldn't presently comprehend, and prepared to ask the question I'd been wanting to ask, but hadn't because I'd wanted to wait for the right moment.
"Marie, will you marry me?"
She released a short exhale, her eyes darting between me and the ring, her smile growing massive, and nodded. "Yes. Yes. Of course!"
In the next moment she reached for my face and brought my lips to hers. We kissed while I surreptitiously removed the ring from the box and slid it on her finger. I wanted her wearing that ring as soon as possible. I'd waited long enough. But now I understood, I shouldn't have waited.
Because every moment with Marie might not be perfect, but it would always be the right moment.
-The End-