Proposal in Room 309

by Joss Wood

  There was only one way to find out….

  ‘Ow.’ Ben rubbed the skin on his hand that she had pinched. ‘What was that for?’

  ‘What is going on with you?’ she hissed. ‘You’re acting weird and I want it to stop!’

  ‘What?’

  Oh, she recognised that look. It was the same innocent look he tried to pull when he ’forgot‘ to pack the dishwater or make the bed.

  ‘I’m not falling for it…what is wrong with you?’

  ‘Nothing. Why are you even asking?’

  ‘Well, you were super-intense during round two and you didn’t kiss my stomach or tell me that you love me and you always do and then you asked the weird sex question-‘

  ‘I wasn’t asking you for weird sex, I wasn’t even talking about sex!’ Ben’s protest was followed by a wince as several heads turned in their direction and eyebrows lifted. ‘I’m just trying to give you a nice evening for your birthday.’

  Joely’s face softened. ‘And I’m grateful. Thank you. But I can’t help thinking that you’re distracted. Is something worrying you at work?’

  Ben shook his head. ‘No, work is fine...no worries.’

  ‘And we’re fine?’ Joely sucked in a breath waiting for his answer.

  Ben couldn’t fake that amount of surprise and the coil of anxiety unwound a notch. His hand encircled her wrist and his thumb brushed her pulse point. ‘You are still the reason the sun - and other things - rises for me in the morning.’

  Joely’s lips twitched. ‘Good to know. I love you, you know.’

  ‘Love you back, babe.’

  Joely rested her chin in the palm of her hand. ‘Love the photographs on the wall.’

  Ben tipped his head to look at the wall above them. ‘I heard that they are by Ignatius, a brilliant Spanish photographer. Apparently the management use the restaurant as a canvas for art and artists and the display is changed every three months.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind one of his photographs. The whirlpool one behind you is stunning,’ Joely stated.

  ‘I’d buy you one but, apart from the fact that these were all sold the first night they were unveiled, each piece is worth more than a decent-sized house.’

  Joely’s mouth dropped open. ‘Seriously? Each one?’

  ‘Ignatius is a serious artist and while he takes thousands of images for his shows which he only holds every five years, only about twenty five are deemed to meet his ludicrously high standards. Scarcity plus brilliance translates into a big price tag.’

  Huh, Joely thought. Guess I won’t own an Ignatius photo any time soon. Oh well, at least I get to look at them while I eat some seriously good food.

  Ben shifted in his seat and Joely watched as his face turned sober. Here we go again, she thought on an internal sigh. She just wished that he’d spit it out and put her out of her misery.

  ‘I’d like to rephrase the question from earlier and let me make this clear and say that this has nothing to do with sex. Is there anything you’d like changed between us?’

  Joely frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Are you happy with this us living together…the status quo? I mean, do you want kids, a house in the suburbs, a…dog?’

  A dog? Joely was fairly sure that he’d been about to say something else but substituted dog at the last moment. Was he trying to ask, in a very non-Ben, beating around the bush type of way whether she wanted to get hitched?

  The problem with being very outspoken was that sometimes those opinions came back to bite you in the ass, Joely thought. When she’d met Ben, she’d been virulently anti-marriage, anti the institution. Living with him, loving him, had softened her outlook… marginally. She was still sure that she didn’t want to get married but she knew that she wanted him to ask her.

  Hey, she was a girl, she was allowed to be irrational. Sue her. It was a nice fantasy but she would hate to see Ben asking her and her having to say no. That would kill her and change the essence of who they were, what they were.

  Joely tapped her finger against the blindingly white tablecloth not knowing what to say, how to say it without hurting him. She’d rather give herself a colonoscopy than hurt him… This was too important to muck up, too crucial to blurt out the words she wanted to say without making sure that they were perfectly phrased.

  ‘I love our life, Ben…I love you….but…’

  ‘This merlot is off. It’s oxidized.’

  Both she and Ben turned at the loud, bumptious voice from the florid man at the table next to them. The sommelier stood next to his small, bird-like wife who looked excruciatingly embarrassed. The doctor in Joely scanned the man. Veins in his nose, too much alcohol. Nicotine-stained fingers, a smoker. Ridiculously obese, high blood pressure and probably cholesterol through the roof. A heart attack about to happen…Joely fervently hoped that it wasn’t tonight.

  The thought of giving him CPR made her want to gag.

  The sommelier took the glass of wine and lifted an eyebrow. “May I taste it?”

  From the annoyance that flickered in his eyes, Joely could immediately tell that there was nothing wrong with the wine. “I can’t pick up what the problem is but, if you insist, I will endeavour to find you another bottle. You do realize that this is an exceptionally rare vintage…’

  ‘That is an amazingly stupid question. Obviously, I want a fresh bottle.”

  ‘Sir, I have thirty years’ experience and I assure you that the wine is as it should be. In fact, it is glorious.”

  ‘It is gloriously oxidised. Bring me another! In fact, bring me something else!’

  The sommelier’s nose lifted. ‘Must I bring the wine list again, sir?’

  ‘No, just bring me whatever your thirty years’ experience says is good.’ Heart Attack Ahead waved him off.

  ‘Bet you that he goes to the kitchen, re-corks the bottle and brings him the same bottle,’ Ben whispered across the table.

  ‘I hope he chooses the cheapest bottle and charges him a bomb,’ Joely replied.

  ‘These guys are consummate professionals and they’d never risk their reputation by doing anything untoward. Pity because he could do with having some laxatives slipped into his drink,’ Ben said and leaned back in his chair. ‘So, Doc, time to fish or cut bait.’

  ‘I’ve never understood that saying…what exactly does it mean?’ Joely demanded, wrinkling her nose. The sommelier approached their table with a champagne bottle in his hand. Joely flashed him a smile and demanded to know if he had an explanation.

  ‘I think it means that it’s time to make a decision, miss.’

  Ben nodded his agreement, sipped and tasted his champagne and their glasses were filled with the magic bubbles. In order to make up for their neighbour’s boorish manners, Joely praised the sommelier’s taste and expertise in choosing the delicious champagne. With a twinkle in his eye telling her that he appreciated her comments, the sommelier took the bottle of wine for the table next door from his assistant.

  Ben handed her a glass, picked up his and gently bumped his crystal against hers. ‘Happy birthday, Doc. Let’s cut to the chase….do you want to get married?’

  After choking on the bubbles of her champagne, Joely leaned back in her chair, feeling like the world had shifted beneath her feet. Everything was different, slightly off balance, out of whack. She felt like he had turned their relationship on its head with his question…want to get married? Four teeny tiny words and they were enough to freeze her blood and stop her heart. They had the same impact as if he’d told her he had a contagious disease or three weeks to live.

  Joely carefully placed her glass on the table, took a deep breath and her eyes shot lightning in Ben’s direction. ‘Did you just ask me to marry you?’

  Ben leaned back in his chair, looking as relaxed as if he’d just ordered a cocktail on a beach in the Caribbean. But his relaxed slouch was a con, she could see the tension in his jaw, in his clenched hand. ‘Not exactly…I asked you if you wanted to get married.’

&nb
sp; That was her proposal? Seriously? Ok, she didn’t want to get married but neither did she want an ad hoc, toss it out there and see if it sticks proposal either! On the very few times she’d allowed herself to imagine the moment, she’d fantasised about Ben going down on one knee, telling her that he couldn’t live without her, that she was his soul mate, the reason his heart kept beating.

  His tossed out sentence, spoken in the same voice he used to order coffee, had her blood vessels popping and worse, was deeply disappointing. Yet, if she didn’t want to get married, did she have a right to feel that way?

  Joely rubbed her forehead with her fingers. God, she was tired, hungry and she just wanted to enjoy her champagne. She didn’t want to have this conversation now or maybe…ever, as she told Ben.

  Ben’s eyes hardened. ‘Tough. We’ve been together for a year and a half and every time I raise it, you duck it. I want kids, a home, and a future with you. I want to know if you want the same thing.’

  ‘Of course I do but we don’t have to be married to have all that,’ Joely protested. ‘We can do that, have the kids and the house and the dog without the…the licence.’

  Ben leaned forward and pinned her to her seat with his intense eyes. ‘Do you love me, Jo?’

  ‘More than life itself.’

  ‘Well, that’s a start. And I love you, so what’s the problem?’

  ‘Marriage isn’t relevant anymore, Ben. It’s an outdated idea. There aren’t any good reasons to get married anymore.’

  Ben shook his head. ‘Are you being serious?’

  ‘Deadly. Ok, I don’t want to have this conversation, especially on my birthday, but you seem determined to have it so …ok.’ Joely pulled the linen serviette through her fingers. ‘Living together used to be a scandal, so people got married; now it’s not. It used to be a scandal to have children out of wedlock, nobody cares anymore.’

  Ben didn’t say anything so Joely just carried on. ‘There’s the argument that marriage would make us ’official’. We could skywrite it or pay for a billboard and that would be just as much of a public declaration. ‘

  Ben ran his fingers up and down the stem of his flute and just kept quiet.

  ‘Say something, dammit.’

  ‘Yeah, there are a couple of good reasons why marriage has changed but it’s still a choice that we can make. We could say that, despite the fact that we don’t need to do this, we still want to. We can choose to make this commitment, to take a chance on each other.’

  Under the table Joely’s hands rubbed her thighs. ‘We don’t need to make it legal, Ben…why can’t you understand that? Love is an action, not a piece of paper. It’s commitment and trust and belief and a desire to make it work. It doesn’t need anything else.’

  ‘So, if it’s all those things why should having a piece of paper matter? Why can’t we have all that and still be married?’

  Oh damn, she didn’t have an answer to that. ‘I…I…I we just can’t!’’

  ‘That’s a weak argument, Jo and you know it. You’re letting your childhood issues around getting married cloud your perceptions… I am not your father and you are not your mother and we make our own choices and live with the consequences thereof.’

  She knew that, especially since every choice she made was to be the exact opposite of her flaky parents. And like her parents she and Ben could make some really poor decisions in the name of love. If they stayed as they were, which was pretty damn perfect as far as she was concerned, nothing could go wrong…

  ‘Why fix it if it’s not broken?’ Joely quietly asked him.

  The scariest thing about loving someone, being in love, about commitment, was the uncertainty. She knew, as a doctor, and better than most, there were no guarantees in life, but in this she did want something. Just a little guarantee that her heart wouldn’t get smashed. Her heart had taken enough of a battering every time her parents split up, each time she had to say goodbye to another step parent or sibling.

  ‘Why not shoot for more? Bigger? Better?’ Ben countered.

  She stopped fiddling with her linen serviette and made herself look up at Ben, his grey eyes shuttered. ‘If I say “no, I don’t want to get married” is that a deal breaker? Will it change something fundamental between us?’

  A muscle in Ben’s jaw ticked. ‘You know me better than that, Joely. And I could ask you the same thing - if I say I want to get married, is that a deal breaker?’

  Joely closed her eyes. Was it? She prepared to risk losing Ben if she said that it was. Her heart, and every fibre of her being, rebelled but her head insisted that they were just delaying the inevitable. Love didn’t last forever…

  ‘So tell me, Joely,’ Ben asked, forearms on the table between them, ‘who don’t you trust? Me or yourself?’

  Now there was a question for the ages and one she didn’t have an answer for. Joely took an anxious sip of her champagne and lifted miserable eyes to Ben’s. ‘I don’t want to discuss this anymore.’

  ‘Ok…when can we discuss it?’

  Never? Never sounded like an excellent time. ‘I don’t know…I don’t want to think about it.’

  ‘Well, I am thinking about it. I want to get married, Joely…not today, not tomorrow but sometime in the near future. I want you to be my wife and I need you to start wrapping your head around it.’

  Joely felt a rush of anger and welcomed it. It was so much easier to deal with than feeling at sea and scared. ‘So, how I feel doesn’t factor into it?’

  Ben raked his hand through his hair in frustration. ‘Of course it does, dammit, but your feelings are based on fear, based on your parents’ many crappy marriages.’

  ‘You weren’t raised within a Disney family set up either, Ben!’

  ‘I know that and that’s why I know that we can do better.’

  ‘I don’t want to do better!’ Joely cried. ‘I don’t want to do it all!’ Joely leaned across the table. ‘I told you the night we met that I didn’t believe in marriage but you didn’t hear that, did you? You thought that you could talk me round, negotiate your way through it because that’s what you do…you negotiate, you manoeuvre, you scheme to get your way.’

  Joely felt her pride swell up into her throat and she threw her serviette onto the table between them. ‘I am not going to be manoeuvred, manipulated, negotiated into this Ben. Not now, not ever.’ She pushed her chair back as she stood up. She reached for her champagne glass and quickly drained it. ‘Thanks for the birthday dinner you are about to eat alone, Duncan.’

  Ben shot to his feet. ‘Joely wait…’

  Not a chance, Joely thought, winding her way through the tables to the exit. If she stayed Ben might just talk her into taking a bigger chance with him than she was already. Because he could do that if he really, really tried. He still hadn’t realised that there wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do for him if he pushed hard enough, long enough. She loved him that much, that intensely.

  He already held her heart, she couldn’t give him her soul too.

  Joely walked past the surprised sommelier and maitre d - she was probably the only person in the history of the world to leave the famous restaurant without touching the food - and walked back to the vaulted lobby, which was still buzzing, filled with well-dressed guests and visitors despite the late hour. At the fountain she stopped and turned in a circle, not sure what to do now. Going back up to the room was an option but Ben had the key. She didn’t want to try and make her way back home on the late night bus…

  What she really wanted to do was walk, get some fresh air, try to clear her head. She spun around to make her way to the doors and careened into Ben.

  He grabbed her elbows and steadied her. ‘Where are you going?’

  Joely stared at a point past his shoulder. ‘I was going to take a walk…maybe to the hospital and back. There’s a patient I wouldn’t mind checking on…’

  Ben nodded and jammed his hands in his trouser pockets. ‘And work always steadies you.’

  ‘I’ll
see you later…back here?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Ok.’ Joely adjusted the bag on her shoulder and walked towards the lobby doors and frowned when Ben fell in step beside her. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Coming with you.’

  ‘Ben, I want to be alone. I don’t want to talk to you right now!’ Joely protested, stopping at the door behind a rather large woman carrying a heavy backpack. The frocked doorman opened the ornate doors for her and Joely and Ben stepped across the carpet into the thundery night with a murmured thank you.

  ‘Scared you might change your mind?’

  Yes! No! Maybe!

  ‘Look, this is silly,’ Joely said, looking up at the sky. ‘It’s threatening to be a filthy night and you can go and sit in the bar or go up to the room and chill while I walk off my temper.’

  ‘Most woman get angry because men don’t suggest marriage, mine gets mad because I do.’ Ben’s even tone couldn’t hide his irritation. ‘You definitely keep life interesting, Doc.’

  Joely gritted her teeth. ‘Go up to the room, dammit. Give me some space.’

  Ben just sent her that implacable stare that made her want to smack him. ‘You can keep arguing or we can start walking. I won’t talk to you if that’s what you want but either way, I’m going to be walking next to you.’

  Joely twisted her lips. ‘You’re not going to let this go, are you?’

  ‘At some point we will finish this conversation no matter how crazy you get,’ Ben calmly stated as they started to walk away from the hotel and thunder rumbled.

  That, Joely thought, was what she was afraid of. And even scarier was how much she wanted to lose this particular fight.

  Chapter Five

  Joely used a side door that bypassed A&E, making sure that she didn’t get sucked into any of the craziness a Friday night normally brought to the hospital’s doorstep. If they saw her the vultures - i.e the nursing staff and the other doctors on call - wouldn’t hesitate to put her to work to lighten their load. She didn’t want to work, but she did just want to check on one of her patients, a young man who was in ICU with a brain stem injury.