by Claire Adams
Classes had lately become impossible to sit through, not because of certain inherent displeasing qualities in the classes themselves, but because of the state of mind I had been in. It was like a cheesy yet exciting romantic comedy was constantly playing in my head, featuring Zayden and I as the classic hero and heroine, destined to find each other against all odds and the harsh realities of life. My daydreams usually ended with him getting down on one knee at some exotic locale only suitable for the movies of the highest budgets featuring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Either that or some scenario where he made a public declaration of his love to me as I am about to go away forever – at an airport or a wedding – or I go crying, running into his arms.
As dramatic as it all sounded, thinking about the various ways in which our love story would find it’s worthy climax made it slightly easier to get through classes and count down to the time to go to work. Under the pretenses of doing my job, I could stare joyfully at Zayden for the rest of my day. Now that he had loudly professed his love to me in front of everybody at the bank, I was free to stare at him all day, answer his calls as his girlfriend, or flirt with him every time he came over to my desk. It still annoyed Mrs. Brian endlessly – as experienced by her constant disapproving sounds – but now that she knew Zayden took this seriously, she tried her best to keep her unsolicited opinions to herself. All in all, work had suddenly become my favorite place to go.
“Is everything alright, Aria?” I heard the professor, Mr. Weber, say, pulling me out of my thoughts.
“Uh…yes. Sorry, I am a little out of it today. Didn’t get much sleep last night, was working on your paper.”
“Of course you were!” he exclaimed happily. “Wouldn’t expect anything less of you. And don’t worry, we are all a little out of it sometimes. Plus, you’re the top graded student in this class.”
I heard some grunts around the room, but couldn’t help but feel really flattered and guilty at the same time. The guilt made me try hard to focus on the Public Finance lecture – but my mind kept trying to take me back to that day Mr. Weber had brought in Zayden as a guest speaker – what an incredibly dramatic ordeal it had been.
No, stop. Pay attention. He was saying something about mortgages and government loans. I looked at the time; it was half way through class. One more quick lab later and I could run to work…I muffled a giggle, trying to pass it off as a cough, at the thought of being that person who actively looked forward to going to work.
Mr. Weber was discussing tax breaks and housing bubbles when there was a knock on the classroom door.
My heart leapt. I must have been imagining it this time. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. When I opened them again, Zayden was still standing by the door of my classroom, looking directly at me, with an enormous grin on his face.
“Oh hello, Mr. Sinclair!” Mr. Weber exclaimed delightedly. “What a wonderfully pleasant surprise! You should have mentioned you were paying us a visit! I would have made arrangements. Did you just want to sit in on my lecture? Or were you looking for something else?”
“Actually,” Zayden said, taking small strides into the classroom. “I was hoping I could talk to one of your students.”
“Oh, for some kind of a market research or something?” Mr. Weber asked curiously, as my heart started thumping so fast I could hear it beating. When I tried to move my legs they seemed to have given in to complete paralysis. I had no idea what was happening, but I felt like I knew where this was going…it had to be…but here? In front of my whole class? Would he really?
“I have a particular student in mind, Mr. Weber. And no, it’s not for research or survey. It’s…personal.”
The whole classroom went entirely silent and Mr. Weber looked confused. Zayden walked towards me. I wasn’t sure whether I was imagining it because the whole scenario was rather cinematic, but it felt like somebody had paused the live Zayden and set him in slow-motion. He was walking insanely slow, not helping the situation of my heartbeat at all.
When he reached me, he fell down on one knee, rendering me completely incapable of feeling anything other than my own thumping heart which seemed to have picked up a pace three times its usual. Shit, shit, shit. This was it.
Tears began welling up in my eyes as I became aware of the entire class staring at us, making no attempts to hide what they were looking at. The class had never been as silent as it was now, to Dr. Weber’s immense frustration I didn’t doubt. At the thought of Dr. Weber, I flicked a quick sideways glance to see his reaction and he appeared to be embracing a coronary, while his face assumed an expression of utter confusion.
My momentary lapse in concentration from what was going on in front of me with Zayden literally down on one knee in the middle of a class was broken when I heard him say my name like he had never said it before.
“Aria,” I heard him say. I had to bring my attention back to his piercing blue eyes, staring into my own with so much intensity it felt like he could see right through me.
“Hey, what are you—”
“I love you, Aria Roberts,” he cut me off to the sound of gasps encapsulating the whole room. I could sense the whispers of my classmates on my skin, but somehow I couldn’t register any of the words they were speaking. It was as though a movie was playing a few rooms down the hall and we were privy to snippets of it traveling through the distance.
I love you, too. Those were the words meant to come out of my mouth. Or they would have if I had been at all capable of opening them or producing a sound. It was like words were now captured somewhere deep in my lungs, imprisoned forever.
“I love you and I never thought I would say these words to a woman and mean it,” Zayden said, his eyes still firmly on my own. “When you first came into my life – or into my bank I should say,” he said with a grin. “I saw the most beautiful woman I had ever laid my eyes on. But I couldn’t have anticipated the whirlwind that became my life after. I have seen many beautiful girls. But Aria, Aria, Aria,” he repeated in slow rhythms matching my heartbeats. “You really did a number on me. It only took a few conversations with you for me to realize that your beauty was only your least impressive quality. Your mind, Aria, your brilliance, your confidence, the very way you walk and talk like the world marches to your drums until it starts doing exactly that! I have never met anyone like it. Twenty years old and you have more maturity than my mother does. I don’t think there is anyone quite like you, Aria. There is one and only one Aria Roberts and I am the luckiest man in the world just for having your love. Make me luckier than the luckiest man in the world Aria,” he said and reached into his pocket.
My eyes were probably swollen to twice their size by now, as I felt my whole face get drenched in my own tears, while an insufferably painful grin was plastered to my face that I couldn’t get rid of no matter how hard I tried. Zayden had said all those wonderful things about me. In my college. In front of my whole class. And my professor. The most sought-after man was down on his knee, telling me - little, useless Aria Roberts with a little apartment and a little life – that I made him the luckiest man in the whole world.
While everyone was watching.
When he pulled the ring out of his pocket, I gasped loud enough for the whole school to hear when I realized that it was, in fact an enormous piece of diamond on a ring. I felt heavy just from imagining the weight of it around my finger. All the time. For the rest of my life. Another gasp. Too much was happening too fast and it was crazier than my wildest fantasies. None of my daydreams where Zayden proposed to me came close to living up to this very moment where the man I loved was about to ask me to be his forever.
But before I said anything…before this got real and we were together forever and I would be his and he would be mine, legally, emotionally physically…I had to make sure.
With all the might I could muster, I forced myself to produce a sound at last, “Zayden, but the divor—”
He cut me off with a kiss squarely across my lips, to a spontaneous applause from the whole room
. Through the corner of my eyes I could even see a confused Dr. Weber joining his hands together in continuous motions.
“Aria,” Zayden said, breaking off in almost a whisper. “It’s taken care of. The papers arrived. Just answer me now and stop torturing me. Aria Roberts, will you please marry me?”
I took the deepest breath of my entire life and said the most wonderful single word to have come out of my mouth: “Yes.”
Chapter 4
Zayden
I went into the bank feeling good. The curious gazes of all my employees upon my arrival did not bother me at all; rather it gave me a sense of pride: they were looking at me because they knew. They knew that I had managed to get the most amazing woman in the world to agree to marry me. Whether they were jealous or judgmental or just plain curious, none of their whispers and gasps bothered me in the slightest. In fact, it was probably their lucky day because I was suddenly in the mood to issue an office wide bonus. Grinning wildly, I approached Aria’s desk.
“Hi,” she said, beaming.
Instead of responding to her greeting, I leaned in and kissed her in front of the whole office. Aria broke off first, perhaps feeling uncomfortable by my show of affection in the workplace. But the smile on her face continued to be radiant.
“My office, fifteen minutes,” I said. Then I added loudly, “I love you.”
Aria’s face went completely red as she mumbled something that sounded like, “I love you too.”
Exactly fifteen minutes later, my fiancée was sitting across from me in my office, her huge ring flashing the bond that now tied us together.
“I don’t want to wait, Aria,” I said simply.
“What do you mean?” She looked confused. “I already said yes, I don’t know if you remember. I mean, maybe I remember it incorrectly too. It was all happening so fast it’s hard to hold on to the memory exactly as it transpired. That doesn’t of course, explain the ring,” she added cheerfully, surveying her hand. “This is too big, Zayden. I hope you didn’t pay a fortune it’s not worth it.”
“Don’t you dare ever tell me you’re not worth something again. You deserve the very best of everything in the world and I’ll make sure you have all of it. But I can’t wait, Aria, to get married to you. To make you mine irreversibly forever.”
She grinned. She was obviously in a playful mood. “I’m not too sure about the irreversible part. People get divorced all the time—”
“Don’t ever say that again, either,” I snapped.
“I was,” Aria said, screwing up her mouth. “You know I was joking.”
“Me too. Just wanted to make sure you knew it was permanent.”
“Permanent isn’t a long enough time to be with you,” she said and winked.
I needed to get to the point.
“Three weeks. I want to get married in three weeks. Does that sound okay?” I asked gently. I didn’t want to make her feel inundated in case she needed more time. At the same time, I also couldn’t bear to think of not being married to her any longer.
She opened her mouth wide in shock. “Three weeks? But…planning…and invites…I don’t even have an idea of what to do about my wedding dress.”
I reached over and covered her hands with my own, flashing a reassuring smile. “Aria,” I said lovingly. “It’ll all be taken care of. I already booked Fiona Davis to be your wedding planner and she will be contacting you shortly about all your needs. Fiona usually has a waiting list of about two years. She is the most sought-after wedding planner in the country.”
She gasped. “Stacey knows all about her. She will kill me.”
“We will book Fiona for your friends’ wedding too then, but since they don’t plan to have the ceremony for another year, we can surely worry about that later.”
“Wait,” she said suspiciously. “How do you know when they plan to get married?”
“Your friend Stacey may or may not have gone with me to purchase your ring.”
She gasped loudly, looking amused. “You aren’t telling me she approved of this magnificent gazillion dollar ring are you?”
“Yes, but it’s no big deal.”
“Whatever you say,” she said, grinning.
“Fiona will be in touch with you shortly. She has already booked the Plaza for three weeks from tomorrow. They are usually pre-booked years in advance but between my influence and Fiona’s, getting that date was a piece of cake.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Aria said holding up her hand and looking utterly confused. “The Plaza. That’s where all the celebrities get married. It is also in New York. Did you actually think this through?”
“Oh, right,” I said with a content smirk. “I forgot to mention, we are getting married in New York.”
The effect of those words on Aria was exactly what I had hoped. She gasped so loudly a few people came and poked their head in to see if everything was okay. Her eyes started drowning in tears of happiness once we were alone again.
“You said you had never been to New York.” I shrugged. “Obviously we had to change that. And what better opportunity to do so than during the most special day of both of our lives?”
“But Zayden,” she spoke in stutters. “All my family and friends and everyone I know are here and they can’t exactly afford to take a trip to—”
“I will take care of everything. You have to learn to stop worrying about money. I want you to have the wedding of your dreams. Pick out the best wedding gown, the best décor; pick out an invitation embellished in gold and platinum if you wish. I will pay for absolutely everything. We will put all your friends and family up in five star hotels. Everything you need will be taken care of. Don’t worry about how or when; just decide what you want and it’s yours. You might as well start getting used to it because this is not just about the wedding either. That’s basically how things will go from now on for the rest of your life.”
She was crying into her hands now, unable to process all of this. It made me feel a little weary because I did not like seeing her in tears, not even those of joy. Her tears were more precious to me than anything money could ever buy and they were not worth wasting.
I stood up from my chair and went over to take Aria into my arms. She was so small and fit so perfectly against my chest.
“Aria, I love you so much. More than you will ever realize. More than the world will ever have accurate measures to quantify. When I decided I wanted to marry you, I also decided that from that moment on, nothing in the world mattered as much as your happiness. If you really think about it, I’m being selfish by giving you the wedding of your dreams. I can only be happy when you are happy. So in the end, I am doing this for me. Okay?”
I hugged her tighter, intending to never let me go.
“I love you so much too, Zay,” she mumbled into my chest. “I can’t wait to be your wife…”
We sat like that in each other’s embrace for the longest time, with the whole office watching through my office windows. When we finally broke apart, I remembered the other thing I had to discuss with her.
“One more thing,” I said, wiping the last of her tears from her face. “There is absolutely no reason for you and me to be apart for another second from now on. I hired some movers. They will be at your apartment tomorrow to get all your things. You don’t worry about a single thing. They will pack all your things and carry everything to my place. Is that okay?”
I felt like it was important to phrase everything as a question. Aria would not be okay with being told what to do, which was one of the many reasons I loved her so much.
“Of course,” she said to my utter relief. “I can’t wait to move in with you either. The thought of being apart from you is tormenting sometimes. I’ll miss my roommates of course, but I’ll have one last night with them tonight.”
“They will be happy for you,” I said, stroking her hair.
“I’m sure you have a good command on exactly how they will feel, given that they have been sneakily planning things wi
th you behind my back,” she said with a smirk.
“It’s because they love you. How can they not? How can anyone not?” I leaned over to plant a kiss on her lips. “You are so damn loveable.”
“So are you,” she said, kissing me back. “Thanks so much for arranging everything with the move. And for Fiona, the Plaza and everything else. I can’t believe I get to marry you in three weeks.”
“You can have the rest of the day off,” I said, looking at the time. “I have some business to tend to and you have to go talk to your roommates and plan for your move. You can come in to work whenever you feel like it for the next three weeks or not at all if you don’t want to. You won’t be stationed at the teller’s booth—”
“No!” she gasped again. “No, Zayden. I haven’t earned a promotion. You know how I feel about making my own way to the top.”
“Well, that complicates matters. Considering you will soon be part owner of the company. I mean if you prefer to run half of this office while sitting where the tellers do, that’s up to you, but I would suggest that it’s not the best business move.”
“I didn’t earn this,” she whispered again.
“Yes you did. I have seen your mind, Aria, and fallen in love with it. Remember when I asked you if you would work for me long before I even realized I was in love with you? Even when I had no plans but to seduce you, I was already blown away by your brilliance and your ideas. My company needs young ambitious assets just like you and this would be the fact of the matter regardless of whether or not we were getting married in three weeks.”
“But that’s not how everyone else will see it,” she protested. “They will all just think it’s some kind of nepotism or something.”
“Well, give me a list of everyone who thinks that way and I will fire every last one of them.”
She sighed. “That won’t be necessary. Fine, no more teller duties. Where do I sit then?”
“I am having them build you a new office right across from mine. So let me know what you want in that space. Meanwhile, you can just take that desk over there. I don’t think – well I hope – that you won’t be engaging in much other work than planning your dream wedding for the next three weeks so that shouldn’t be a problem. By the time we are married your office should also be ready and you will have your own space to come up with brilliant ideas that I don’t doubt will bring my company heaps of money.”