"What? I will?"
"Sure. We'll stop by on the way home." I fired him a 'sucker' smile.
"Oh, wonderful!" Mum clapped with joy. "I have a roast lamb defrosting on the bench. I'll cook us all a lovely dinner."
"What an excellent idea!" Helen chimed in. "I baked a sponge cake last night. We can have that for dessert."
I went to butt in and diffuse the unplanned dinner and dessert situation, but Elliot beat me to it, except he didn't diffuse anything. He only lit another fuse instead.
"Sounds perfect, doesn't it, honey? And maybe we can share some wedding plans, too."
What. The. Actual. Fuck?
"So what do you plan on saying at the dinner table when they ask us about our so-called wedding plans?" I hissed while simultaneously admiring his jean-covered arse, which was poking out from Jackson's dog kennel.
Jackson wagged his pompom-like poodle tail and sniffed Elliot's butt, for probably the fourth time.
Elliot jerked and hit his head on the roof of the kennel … for probably the fourth time. "Danielle, seriously? Get that dog away from my arse!"
I snorted, trying to stop myself from laughing. "Sorry. My bad."
"Yeah, you got that right."
Crawling out backward, Elliot sat back on his heels and rubbed his wayward black hair. He looked both adorable and delicious, and definitely on the grumpy side.
"I'm gonna need a shower," he said, screwing up his nose. "I smell like wet dog."
I rolled my eyes. "Suck it up, princess."
He rose to his feet and stalked toward me, his eyes unwavering as they pinned me to the spot. I hobbled backward, my eyes wide, the backdoor to the house coming into contact with my heels. "What are you do-"
Elliot grabbed my hips and pressed me against the door, holding me there while he nuzzled my cheekbones with his nose. It was weird as fuck until I realised what he was up to, the stench of wet dog inadmissible.
"Yuck," I said, pushing him back "Get off me. You stink."
"Suck it up, princess," he replied, smiling.
I skip-hopped away from him toward the lemon tree, hoping I'd be able to use it as a barrier between us. "Stay there." I held out my hand, my fingers splayed.
His smile grew and he looked up, as if he'd spotted something in the branches above. "It all started here, you know."
"What?" I looked up, too, squinting but unable to pinpoint what he was referring to.
"Here. Behind this tree." He walked around to where I was standing.
"What are you talking about?"
"I proposed to you here."
The memory of Elliot and I sitting on the ground at the base of the tree trunk, eating Cheezels from the box we'd stolen out of the kitchen cupboard came careening into my mind. We'd been giggling and scoffing them as quickly as possible, cheesy orange crumbs covering our hands and faces.
"Yeah, you did," I said, smiling, a fuzzy feeling warming me all over.
"You placed one on your finger and took it off with your mouth then tried to whistle through the hole."
I laughed. "I still can't whistle."
"Really? Damn it. That was gonna be another dare for you to do last night."
I playfully whacked his arm. "Ha ha."
Reaching up, I grabbed a lemon and twisted it clean from its branch, a question on my mind that I wanted an answer to but not quite sure I wanted to ask.
"Dinner's ready!" Mum yelled, banging on the kitchen window to get our attention.
Elliot waved to her and went to head back to the house when I reached out and grabbed his arm, finding the courage to ask him what I wanted to. "Lots, why'd you propose to me that day?"
He stopped, glanced over his shoulder, and slid his hand into mine. "Because I knew you'd say yes."
Danielle and I had grown much closer since the moment under the lemon tree. We'd spent more time together and reminisced about the past, and as funny as that sounded, in the few weeks we'd been back in each other's lives, it was as if the seventeen years spent apart had never happened.
She'd stayed over with Pugly another two times, and I was starting to get used to the little turd-dropping, four-legged, furry Redbull. He was growing on me, as much as Pugly could. I think he was getting used to my place as well, because he'd stopped using my shower as a toilet and was using the dog mats sporadically placed around the apartment instead. It was a steppingstone in the right direction for Pugly and I … provided I didn't step on the mats when I wasn't looking where I was walking.
Which happened every now and again.
Danielle and I had been dating. Well, in my eyes, we had. We'd been ice skating at the nearby rink, gone out for dinner, seen a movie, and walked from one end of the city to the other hand in hand, just talking about life and all the things we'd experienced since being apart.