by DL White
I yawn, still perched on the side of the bed. “I’m up. Damn.”
“Get out of the bed and put clothes on and come downstairs.”
Irritated, I slap the mattress. “Really, Preston? I wanted us to wake up together on Christmas morning. Instead, you’re playing Drill Sergeant, and I’m not amused. I’m up. I’ll be downstairs when I get good and ready to go downstairs.”
He walks into the closet and pulls out a thick UCF hoodie. He pulls it over his head, talking through the fabric. “Five minutes, Evangeline. Dress warm; it’s a little chilly out.”
“Out? For what? Where are we going?” I thought we were done with surprises, but I see that we’re not. “Whatever this is had better be good, Preston.”
“Four minutes.”
“It was five!”
Preston chuckles and walks back out of the bedroom. “Wasted a minute arguing with me.”
In three minutes, I am downstairs in jeans, sneakers, a long-sleeved shirt, and a hoodie. I rake my fingers through my hair, deciding that the short spikes I’m sporting are the best it’s going to get.
I still smell coffee and bacon, but the coffeemaker is dry and empty, and Preston doesn’t cook bacon. The house is quiet and as clean as we had left it the night before. The tree is lit, the lights winking at me in a synchronized fashion. Over the fireplace, two festive stockings hang.
Preston is in the kitchen, leaning against a counter and tapping away at his phone, which is vibrating every few seconds. The mirth on his face is boyish and fun and reminds me of the funny kid that lived down the street that grew into a handsome teenager, that I fell in love with and then lost for a while and thankfully came back to me.
My heart melts, watching him. It’s early and cold, but he’s planned a surprise, and he’s excited about it. I can play along.
“I’m downstairs. What now?”
Preston glances up at me, then slides the phone into his front pocket, plucks a set of keys from a hook next to the refrigerator, and points toward a basket sitting on the table. It’s wicker with red and green gingham fabric around the edges and woven around the handle. The bacon smell is coming from inside the basket.
“Grab that, and let’s hit the road.”
It won’t do any good to ask questions. Once he gets something in his head, it has to play out, and apparently, I have to be a part of it. I pick up the basket, hang it in the crook of an arm, and follow Preston out the front door.
Where I stop and stare with my jaw hinged open wide.
A vintage 1993 cherry red Jeep Wrangler sits in the driveway. It’s a soft top with the spare tire on the back and removable doors. The interior is tan leather, cracked with age. It looks eerily similar to the one Preston owned for years and drove until it died. The one we used to cruise around Orlando in. The one we used to hang out at Lake Conway in.
Preston stalks right to the driver’s side, keys the lock, and hops in before unzipping his window and hanging out of the opening. “C’mon. We’ve got places to go, baby.”
Stunned, I walk around the vehicle to the passenger side door. I climb inside and settle in my seat, pulling the lap belt over me.
Preston starts the Jeep, and high school memories flood back—the rumble of tires on the pavement under my seat, sitting high above the traffic, the gentle rattle of the engine. The memory of sitting in the passenger seat of a Jeep next to Preston makes me smile.
He puts the Jeep in reverse, and the house gets smaller as we back away from it. I watch out of the window as Preston speeds to the entrance of the subdivision and hangs a right. If we were going to town, he’d turn left.
“This is the way to the other side of the lake.”
He nods, his expression blank. “So it is.” He loves doing this to me.
He pushes the Jeep a few hundred yards and confirms my guess that we’re heading to the other side of the lake by taking a right turn on a familiar dirt road.
“We’re doing this? Right now? Today? On Christmas, we’re going to the other side of the lake?”
“Have you been out here since the last time we were together?”
The weekend before homecoming. We spent hours together and had the millionth conversation about our future. We broke up the next weekend, and I hadn’t seen this side of the lake since.
“No.” I glance over at him. His expression is getting less playful and more serious. “You said you hadn’t. Is that true?”
“True.” His eyes leave the road long enough to direct a concentrated stare at me. “So, it’s about time we came back out here, right?”
I don’t answer. The question is rhetorical, and we’re doing it, whether I agree or not.
After a few minutes, the Jeep bursts through a thicket of trees into an open area where a field of grass separates the road from the water. This signals that we are near our spot—a nice divot in the grass where we back up to the lake. After passing it twice, Preston finds the spot and maneuvers the Jeep perfectly, as if he’d just done it yesterday. He puts the vehicle in park but leaves the key in the ignition, keeping the heater on.
“You know the drill.”
Preston isn’t the only one who remembers things from decades ago. I climb into the backseat and unhook the clasps that hold the seat up. Once they are loose, the seat flops back, and we have space to sit. Preston opens the basket and pulls out a light blanket that’s usually slung across the back of our couch. He spreads it with a flourish.
“I’m sorry this is a little cheesy. I know it’s cold, and you wanted to sleep in, and there are better things we could be doing on Christmas morning.”
I glance through the thick plastic in the frame of the rear window. The sun is high in the sky, bright and reflecting beautifully off of the choppy lake waves. The trees that line the banks stir in the breeze. I’m sitting in a warm cloud of nostalgia next to the love of my life.
“It’s not cheesy at all.”
He grins, obviously proud of himself. “You can’t tell me you’ve ever had a picnic breakfast before. This is romantic as fuck, right?”
I close my eyes and try hard not to laugh. “It is, as you say, romantic as fuck. What is the occasion for a Christmas morning picnic breakfast?”
Preston begins pulling things from the basket—two large sandwiches wrapped in foil, that are still warm when he hands them to me, a container of thick cut potato wedges, and a Yeti thermos that has kept coffee so hot that steam curls from the lip when he unscrews the cap. There is also a carton of milk and packets of sugar.
“I’ll do the coffee.”
In a few minutes, we have a rudimentary picnic breakfast set up between us. Preston flips the radio dial until a 90’s R&B station tunes in. Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men harmonize through One Sweet Day while we feast on bacon, egg, and gruyere cheese on toasted croissant sandwiches, well-seasoned, crispy potatoes, and share a cup of red velvet flavored coffee blend from the lid of the Yeti thermos.
It’s familiar, not unlike devouring burgers and fries after a football game or pizza after a dance. We used to love to steal away to the lake to be alone, to make love and dream out loud about our future.
“Who got up early on Christmas to make breakfast? This is still hot.”
“Matthew.”
“Aww! Really?”
“Couldn’t stop him from offering.” Preston chews the last of his sandwich before balling up the foil and tossing it into the basket. “Jackie is pretty persuasive. She actually insisted. I was going to try to cook for you but nobody thought that was a good idea. She said if I fuck this up, she’ll never forgive me.”
“That would have been a hot mess. I don’t mind Matt’s cooking at all.”
“Good,” he says, his mouth full of eggs and bacon. When he swallows, he goes on, indicating the bracelet that graces my wrist that he’d given me the night before. “I was going to give you that bracelet out here.”
“That would have been sweet.”
“Yeah.”
He starts
to say something but hesitates. He seems enchanted by the water rushing by, but eventually, he begins again. “This is going to sound weird, but I’m grateful that we broke up.”
“That wouldn’t be the word I would use.” Though I was angry at him for so long, I was also miserable. I mourned what might have been for nearly two decades. “Why grateful?”
“Because our parents were right, you know? We were so wrapped up in each other. It was intense. I was crazy about you, so crazy that when we broke up, it changed me.Yeah, we were in love but—”
“It was immature,” I finish, understanding and nodding in agreement. “It hadn’t been tested.”
“Right. Hopeful and dreamy. And naïve. It’s the same thing I try to tell Troy. It was easy to be desperately in love when we both lived at home, and I worked part-time, and our biggest problem was making it to homeroom before the bell rang and finding a private place to have sex. We needed time to stand on our own two feet. Maybe it didn’t happen the way it should have happened. And maybe we didn’t need two decades, but that was my fault.”
“Not all your fault.”
Preston concedes my point with a nod. “I wonder if we would still be together if we would have never broken up. Would we have burned bright and then fizzled out? Or would we have stuck it out? I look at Nate and Morgan, and I can’t imagine we would have had what they have. They’re the exception to the rule, and even they split up for a minute.”
“But they realized what they meant to each other and ultimately got back together.”
I set down the coffee and breakfast sandwich and cup his chin in my palm, turning his head toward mine. The stubble of his overnight beard growth pricks at the tips of my thumbs. I love that feeling, especially against my cheek every morning.
“We can’t change a single second of what’s happened between us. There’s no sense in regretting those years we could have been together. All I want to think about is the years I have with you now.”
His smile returns, brightening his whole face. He leans in to kiss me and says, “Happy to hear you say that, Evangeline.”
Then he reaches for the basket and roots around the bottom.
When his hand emerges, he’s holding a velvet box. My stomach does a quick flip-flop, and my heart rate speeds up so quickly I can’t breathe.
It’s not a surprise. I’ve known it was coming, but I’m caught off guard because I didn’t imagine that he would propose on Christmas. I imagined this happening differently. Not in casual clothes in the back seat of a Jeep, for instance.
But then I realize that this is perfect. It’s happening exactly where it should happen.
“I can’t do this in here,” he says. His voice is thick, and the tiniest bit shaky. I think it’s cute. He’s nervous! “Let’s get out.”
I scramble toward the door and climb out of the Jeep. Preston follows and directs us around to the tailgate. The lake babbles softly; the air is crisp, the sky a cloudless blue, but I don’t notice anything but this man I have loved my whole life, holding a pretty little box in his great big hands.
He clears his throat while gripping the box in one hand. “I’ve wanted to ask this question since that day that I came home, and you were setting the table on the patio. I let my mind wander for a second and imagine that you…”
He swallows, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “… that it was you and me hosting our friends for dinner. What we have right now is what I’ve always wanted with you. I’ve had a million chances to ask, but the time wasn’t right.”
“What makes the time right now?”
He swipes his tongue across his front teeth and hides a smirk.
“It’s kind of like Nate and Morgan’s wedding. We have to go sit at my family’s table and your family’s table and I don’t want to do any of that without knowing, for sure, that you’re mine. That I’m yours, that you’re going to let me take care of you for the rest of your life. That we can reboot that future we started planning all those years ago out here. And uh…”
Sheepish, he bobs his head a little. “Truthfully, I’m ready for everyone in our lives to see that I pulled my head out of my ass, that we’re officially committed to each other, and we’re ready for the world to know. I don’t know who’s getting married next, but you shouldn’t have to sit through one more engagement or bridal shower or wedding and not be celebrating your own. I need to make that right.”
In a smooth motion, Preston sinks to one knee in the soggy grass and flips the box open, revealing a glimmering emerald cut three stone diamond set in platinum. My heart is so high in my throat, the rhythmic thump echoes in my ears.
It’s perfect. The exact size and shape that I fawned over when each of my friends got engaged. He had to have asked them for advice. Which means they all know that it’s happening.
Preston clears his throat, now that he’s steady on one knee. He gives me a conspiratorial wink, and then a serious, reverent expression takes over his face.
“This has been a long time coming, Evangeline. The one regret I have in life is disappointing you. I wasn’t the man that you needed me to be, not in high school and certainly not in the years since then. I need to make it up to you, to spend my life making it up to you. I’ve never been able to imagine my life without you. So, I’m asking, finally. Will you marry me?”
It takes everything in me to hold back a scream. I could explode into a million happy pieces, but I inhale the deepest breath possible, then shove it out and let the word ‘Yes’ escape.
Preston’s eyes narrow as he gives me a sidelong glance. “Was that a yes? I’m making sure I heard right.”
My head bobs forward. I can’t stop laughing as tears spring to my eyes. “Of course, it’s yes. Finally. Yes.”
Preston heaves an audible sigh. His shoulders relax as if he was afraid I would say no. Before I can change my mind, he plucks the ring from its velvet lined case and slips it onto my left hand. It’s a little loose, almost perfect.
“We’ll go get it sized right away. You can show off that bad boy at the New Year’s Eve party.”
“Yeah, that’s absolutely what I’m thinking about. Get up, come here.” Preston stands. I grab his face and pull him to me, landing a kiss. “I love you. I always have. I always, always will.”
“Promise? Can Asshole Preston come back then?”
“Don’t push it,” I answer, trying to frown.
“Well, I uh…” He gestures toward my hand and finishes his sentence softly. “I hope it’s worth the wait.”
With one arm still around his neck, I hold my left hand aloft and stare at the sparkling gem on my finger. I’m already used to its presence. “It’s worth it.”
From a distance, I hear the sounds of clapping and cheering. I whip around and notice a small crowd at the edge of dirt between Preston’s yard and the banks of Lake Conway.
“Oh my— hey!” I wave at them; the group waves back. Nate’s ear-piercing whistle carries across the lake. I turn back around and grin at Preston.
He looks more satisfied than smug, and entirely less tense. He wraps both arms around me and pulls me to him, dipping his head toward me. I rise onto my toes and meet his lips with a playful kiss that turns sultry and heated in an instant. My knees go weak; I wilt against him. He tightens his grip, and any thought of moving from the spot we’re standing fly out of my head. I’m warm and getting warmer as the kiss grows slower and deeper.
Way earlier than I’m ready for him to do so, Preston groans and pulls back, glancing up at the sound of more cheers from the gang in his backyard. He returns his attention to me.
“No one thought this would actually happen. I said they could watch.” He nods his head toward them. “From over there.”
“You put a lot of effort into this. Thank you.”
“Now we can relax and celebrate our first Christmas back together. How about we go home, Evangeline Reid?”
“Uh, who said I was changing my name?”
“You
can do whatever you want with your name, but you’re Evangeline Reid to me.”
My full name somehow sounds amazing next to his. I already love it.
We climb back into the Jeep after packing up our makeshift breakfast and lifting the seat back into position. “Too bad we didn’t have time for sex,” he quips. “That would have been nostalgic. The icing on the cake.”
I slam the rear door and get into the front seat next to him, pulling the seat belt across my lap. “After two years of fucking in the backseat of your Jeep, I prefer sex in a bed.”
“Uh… agreed.” Preston starts the Jeep and begins to pull back onto the road, hanging a left to head back home.
“Whose rig is this, by the way?”
“A friend of Keith’s.” He glances over at me. “The second I said I was proposing, everybody jumped in. Keith knew a guy that had a Jeep I could borrow. He picked up breakfast from Matt’s and dropped it by before you woke up. Everybody’s been texting all morning, pumping me up. Sending me memes. And Jackie reminded me not to fuck it up.”
I turn my attention to the scenery outside of the plastic window. If someone had told me six months ago that I’d be engaged to Preston Reid, I’d have slapped the words out of their mouth.
Now I’m wearing his ring and we’re on our way home. Our home, deed and all.
Life comes at you fast.
“What are you smiling at?” Preston asks. “Your control freak friends?”
I must be subconsciously beaming. I could probably glow in the dark. I reach over to tap his knee, still wet and muddy. “Just thinking.”
“About?”
“About how payback is a bitch. Morgan is going to hate helping me with my wedding.”
“I knew their plan would work,” says Preston.
“You did not.”
“Did so. When Morgan made you beg me to help you plan the wedding.” He giggles, making a tooth sucking sound. “It was only a matter of time.”
“But we had that agreement, remember? That we’d never see each other again after the wedding.”
Preston grips the top of the steering wheel as we barrel down the street, then swings into the subdivision. “That meant that I had four months to make you mine. Almost didn’t make the cut.”