Proposal

by Meg Cabot

  “But Jesse,” I said, when I finally found my voice. “I thought we’d agreed we were going to wait until we were both finished with our education, and then get married, because of your nineteenth-­century macho man bullshit idea that you have to support me. Which of course is ridiculous since I fully intend to support myself. And you.”

  “Yes,” he said, with forced patience. He hated it when I brought up the part about how I was going to support him, which is why I brought it up as often as possible. It’s important to keep your romantic partner on their toes. “But we could still get engaged.”

  “Engaged?” My voice broke on the word. “Jesse, no one our age gets engaged. They live together first, to see how things are going to work out, then—­”

  “We already did that, Susannah,” he reminded me matter-­of-­factly. “And I think you’ll agree that things ‘worked out’ beneficially for both of us.”

  “Yes, but . . .” I struggled to put into words what I was feeling. The difficulty was that I didn’t know what I was feeling.

  Of course Jesse and I had discussed the fact that we were going to get married someday. We didn’t have one of those dumb relationships you read about in books where they can’t talk about having a future together because one person can’t commit due to his abusive past. Jesse had had the most abusive past you could imagine, and all he wanted to do now was move forward from it. We’d both nearly died for one another. We’d both given each other up so the other could live. I’d definitely known this was coming.

  I just didn’t think this would be coming now. Tonight.

  And that I’d have ruined it by pulling the ring out of my boyfriend’s pants moments before, ruining the surprise.

  “Can we just pretend that didn’t happen?” I asked. “I mean the thing where I pulled that out of your pocket?”

  “Gladly,” he said, tersely. “But ­people our age do get engaged, Susannah. You just told me that this Mark fellow—­”

  “He was in the twelfth grade, and look what happened to him!”

  “What about your stepbrother?” Jesse demanded. “He’s your age, and he’s married.”

  “If you mean Brad, who impregnated his girlfriend with triplets soon after high school graduation because they neglected to use birth control, I don’t know that they’re the best example.”

  I’d never really had high expectations for my stepbrother Brad, to whom I’d always mentally referred as Dopey.

  But I’d never in a million years thought I’d live to see him pushing around a stroller with three angel-­faced toddler girls in it, calling him Daddy (and me Auntie Suze).

  Yet that had not only happened, it happened regularly. Weirder still, Brad was now one of the happiest individuals I knew, and almost bearable to be around. It was too bad about his sourpuss troll of a wife.

  “We’re not Brad and Debbie,” Jesse said from between gritted teeth.

  “Uh, no, we are not,” I said. “I’ve been on the pill for four years just in case you ever break that abstinence-­until-­marriage vow of yours because I don’t want babies—­let alone triplets—­until I’ve at least got my master’s degree.”

  “And I appreciate that,” Jesse said. “But I’m also not like this spirit of yours, who you think was only trying to trap his girlfriend into staying true to him while she was away at school.”

  “Well,” I said, “that’s a relief. But then, I never thought you were—­”

  “But I am a man, Susannah,” he went on, pulling me toward him with one hand while extracting the ring box from his pocket with another.

  “Well, that is abundantly clear.” I had a front row seat to the button fly of his jeans, and now that his pockets were empty, I could tell that he was, indeed, still glad to see me. “Abundantly.”

  “And I’m not going to be told what to do.”

  “When have I ever told you what to—­?”

  “Every minute of every day since the moment I met you. Even now, you’re telling me not to ask you to marry me.”

  “Well, I just think the timing is wrong. Asking a girl to marry you on Valentine’s Day is very clichéd. And asking her in her dorm room in the Virgin Vault is even worse.”

  “Well, I would have done it at sunset on the beach,” he said, with a crooked smile, “if you hadn’t been off causing a freak paranormal weather phenomenon.”

  “Oh, right. Blame it on me. It’s all my fault. It didn’t have anything to do with that kid in the cemetery.”

  “That’s exactly my point. If two high school kids can get engaged, Susannah, why can’t—­”

  I flung my hands over my ears. I knew I was acting like a freak, but then again, I am a freak. A bona fide biological freak who can see ghosts and was getting proposed to—­only not, because I’d ruined it, in the way I ruin everything—­by a former one.

  “Stop talking about them,” I said, my hands still over my ears. “And where did you even get that?” I nodded toward the hand that was holding the ring. He’d flipped open the lid to give me close-­up view of what I was missing. It was yellow gold—­not my style, but still very pretty—­with filigree along either side of a not-­unsizable center diamond. Very retro, but probably worth a fortune.

  Not that its cost had anything to do with the fact that I suddenly wanted to throw up.

  “You don’t have any money,” I went on. Then I lowered my hands with a gasp. “Jesse! You didn’t spend all your fellowship money on a ring for me, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t,” he said. “Because I’m not stupid. This ring has been in my family for generations. It was my mother’s. And before that, my grandmother’s. Now I’m hoping it will be yours . . . if you’d act like a lady for five seconds and let me propose properly, and put it on your finger.”

  I stared at him. How could he have his mother’s ring? I knew everything about him, but I’d never known this.

  Well, not everything, of course. Not the things I most wanted to know, like what he looked like naked, or even what he looked like sleeping—­unconscious, maybe, but not asleep. After I’d saved him from ever having been murdered in the first place (long story, and another one of our secrets), Father Dominic had forged a few records to help accelerate Jesse’s educational process, and he’d managed to skip four years of college. When you’ve got nothing to do for nearly two hundred years but haunt the room you’d died in during a previous life, you end up reading a lot of books. Most of the books Jesse read were medical journals. He passed the MCATs with one of the highest scores in California state history, and had schools falling all over themselves, offering him scholarships.

  And now he was offering me his mother’s ring, and I was offering him attitude.

  What was wrong with me?

  “Not now, all right?” I said, breaking free of his embrace. “Right now we have more important things to do. We have to go keep one ghost from turning a kid into another ghost, remember? And possibly me, too. So let’s go do it, and talk about this later.”

  He frowned as I began to buzz around the room, gathering my ghost-­busting material. “Susannah, did I do something wrong?”

  “You? What could you possibly have done wrong?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you. Querida, are you blushing?”

  “Of course not.” My cheeks were hot as fire. But I couldn’t tell him why, because I didn’t know why. “Well, okay, maybe I am. I just can’t deal with this right now.”

  “Can’t deal with what right now? The man who loves you asking you to spend the rest of your life with him?”

  “Not that. That part’s a given. I mean, I’d kill you if you didn’t.”

  “Is this about your mother?” he asked, flipping the ring box closed as I shoved my cell phone into a bowl of uncooked rice I keep on my bookshelf for just such emergencies. “Is this about how she wanted us to date other ­people w
hile we were at different schools? Are you regretting that you didn’t take her advice? Or—­” His voice grew oddly still. “Did you take her advice? Is that where you really were tonight?”

  “God, Jesse, of course not!” I exploded. “What do you think, that I made up this elaborate story about the kid in the cemetery so you wouldn’t find out I’m cheating on you with some dumb frat boy? Are you kidding me?”

  Jesse looked thoughtful. “I was thinking of a teaching assistant. I couldn’t see you with a fraternity boy. You’d probably only scare them.”

  I grabbed my messenger bag. “Thanks for the compliment. Now we should probably go. Is your phone charged? I need you to check and see if there’s a local address listed for a family under the name of Farhat. Please, God, there can’t be more than one.”

  “Or do you think I’m trying to trap you the way the dead boy did his girlfriend because I don’t know where I’m going to be for my residency next year?” he mused. “We could be even farther apart than we are now. But I swear that’s not what this is about. I’m confident that wherever I end up, we’ll work it out.”

  “Oh, my God, Jesse, I know.” I reached for the vodka and cranberry Lauren had given me. Now that Jesse was here, he could drive. He’s a better driver than I am—­which is disturbing, considering I’ve had a license longer than he had—­and I needed the liquid courage. For what we were about to do, and, well, for other things.

  “Then is it nerves about telling your mother and stepfather our plans?” he asked. “If this was the 1850s—­and I’m glad it’s not, because I’m grateful for vaccines and antibiotics—­I’d be asking Andy’s permission to marry you.” He ignored the choking sound I made, which had nothing to do with the drink I was chugging. “I’m not going to, not only because I understand that would be—­what did it you call it again? Oh, yes—­ ridiculously chauvinistic, but because you obviously seem to have some kind of issue about the idea of our getting engaged right now. That’s fine. I can wait. But I do think we should consider telling your parents the truth about how we met and who I really am and how you can actually see the undead. It’s a bad idea to start a marriage with a lie —­”

  “Oh, my God, no!” I burst out—­though not loudly enough to draw the attention of my suite mates, who for all I knew were listening at the door. I wouldn’t put it past them. Some of them had never been on dates before, and so were extremely curious about them. “Are you insane? I can’t tell my mom any of that stuff, let alone Andy. It would blow their tiny little minds. They’ll think we were in a cult, or something.”

  “Having the gift of second sight is hardly the same as being in a cult, Susannah.”

  “You know my mother. She’s a reporter. And now she’s the executive producer of Andy’s show. She only believes in facts she can see.”

  Jesse thrust out a hand, the one holding the ring box. “Does this look factual enough to you, Susannah?”

  I knew he was talking about the ring, but it was difficult not to notice how hard and muscular his hand looked, especially attached to that long, equally muscular arm. That was a fact my mother wouldn’t be able to ignore, either. It was hard to believe that such a vibrantly masculine, stunningly attractive person, whose dark eyes practically flashed with intelligence and life, had ever been dead. Any residency program that didn’t take him was insane. I was probably a fool not to have said, Yes, Jesse, I will be Mrs. de Silva, and slid that ring on my finger the moment I found it, so tantalizingly warm from the heat of his body.

  But something still didn’t feel right. Probably it was me. I didn’t feel right.

  “Um, yes,” I said, swallowing. “But that isn’t the point. My mom and Andy have enough to worry about with Brad and the babies and now Jake starting his own, ahem, business.”

  My oldest stepbrother, Jake—­whose only career aspiration upon high school graduation appeared to be a full-­time pizza delivery position—­had surprised us all by parlaying his pizza delivery earnings not into the Camaro of which he’d always dreamed, but into the purchase of a plot of land in Salinas.

  A short while later, he opened a storefront in Carmel Valley that dispensed not pizza, but another item of which college students in particular are fond of imbibing late at night. Only one needed a medical prescription to purchase this particular item in the state of California.

  I found this business venture of Jake’s highly entrepreneurial, yet at the same time ironic, considering I’d privately nicknamed him Sleepy, since he’d seemed to go through life with his eyes half closed. If only I’d known the real reason why.

  Well, we all know now.

  Jake’s medical marijuana dispensary—­the only one in the tri-­county region—­did amazing business, and he was rapidly becoming one of the wealthiest business owners in the area. He’d bought a cool little house in the Valley and, whether out of generosity of spirit or because he genuinely liked him, convinced Jesse to move into the spare bedroom, so he’d have a place to stay when he came home from school on breaks.

  “You can’t keep stayin’ with that old dude when you’re here, man,” was how Jake put it. By “old dude,” he meant Father Dominic. “No one should live in a monastery, unless they’re a priest. And you’re no priest, man. I’ve seen the way you look at my sister. No offense.”

  I hadn’t expected Jesse to accept, especially after an invitation couched quite like that.

  But either living with Father Dominic really had become more than even a believer as faithful as Jesse could stand, or he was finally ready to step into the twenty-­first century, because Jesse does stay with Jake every time he’s in town.

  Between Jake’s marijuana business venture and Brad’s teenage parenthood, I would have become my parents’ golden child if my youngest stepbrother, David, hadn’t gotten accepted early decision to Harvard and been assigned to live in (where else?) Kirkland House.

  Keeping my “gift” a secret is really hard sometimes, but the alternative—­having a cheesy reality show on the Lifetime Network where I go around telling ­people that their dead relative is in heaven now, smiling down at them—­seems way worse.

  Jesse dropped his hand and frowned at me. “Susannah, I would think our getting engaged would be good news, something everyone in your family would appreciate, and even celebrate. What is it that’s so upsetting you about my trying to propose?”

  “Nothing,” I said, and grabbed my coat. “I told you. I just can’t deal with it right now. Did you find the address of the probably already dead boy?”

  He put the ring away and swiftly typed into his phone. For someone who despised modern technology, he was extremely good at using it. “No. It says their number and address is unlisted. These things are hopeless.”

  “Nothing is hopeless,” I said. “You of all ­people should know that by now.” Then I flung open the door to my dorm room.

  I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that all six of my suite mates were crouched outside it.

  Siete

  “THE FARHATS ARE Persian,” said my suite mate Parisa. She was the one who was dating a guy in a motorcycle gang. If her parents found out, they’d kill her, she cheerfully informed us.

  “Not literally,” she explained to Jesse, who looked a little alarmed. “I’m Persian, too, you see. My mom wants me to find a nice medical student like you.” She batted her thick eyelash extensions at him. “And if I could find one as cute as you, I would. But he’d have to be Persian, of course.”

  “I’m Spanish,” Jesse said hastily. I think he was a little anxious about being surrounded by so many gorgeous women—­at least, I think they’re gorgeous. I know I am—­one of whom was Persian, and all of whom had overheard our argument in my room.

  He didn’t have anything to be concerned about, however. My girls had his back. And mine.

  “That’s okay,” Parisa assured him. “With hair and eyebrows like that, you
could pass.”

  “He’s taken, Par,” I reminded her.

  “Yeah, but maybe I could just borrow him to take home for the holidays,” Parisa purred. “My mom would be so happy.”

  “Or you could just quit dating a gangbanger who sexually abuses women, deals drugs, and traffics stolen goods,” suggested Valentina, the lesbian women’s studies major. “Or would that interfere with your plan to get back at your dad for not buying you that BMW you wanted for high school graduation?”

  Parisa smiled and shrugged her slinky shoulders. “It was a Porsche. And Ray’s not as bad as his friends. Besides, he’s got a really big”—­she glanced at Jesse, saw my warning glance, and smiled harder—­“motorcycle.”

  Valentina rolled her eyes and poured herself another V and C. We’d all agreed this is the best cocktail, because it not only tastes good, but the cranberry juice allegedly helps ward off urinary tract infections.

  “Getting back to the subject at hand,” I said, with a cough. “You say the Farhats live over in Carmel?”

  “Right. There’s a really big Persian community there.” Parisa handed me the address on a piece of her Pomeranian puppy–shaped notepad paper. “Well, not as big as in Los Angeles, but, like, big enough.” She explained to Jesse, as if he were a child, “Most ­people think of carpets or kittens when they hear the word Persian, but we’re actually an ethnic group from north of the Persian Gulf.”

  Jesse smiled at her politely. “Yes, I know. Thank you for clarifying that, though.”

  “Oh,” she gushed. “Not a problem.”

  I tapped her on the shoulder. “So do you know what the deal is with this Zack kid?”

  “Yeah, totally. It’s Zakaria, not Zack. I mean, his Westernized name is Zack, but in Persian it’s Zakaria. His parents are friends with my parents, and I’ve been to their house a few times. That kid is so spoiled—­I mean, that’s true of a lot Persian kids, but he’s even more spoiled than most because he’s the youngest, and his family is, like, mega rich. His dad’s a heart surgeon. And they’re super good friends with the Ahmadis, the parents of that girl who died last month. I think they were even distantly related—­second cousins, or something. I was at the funeral, and Zakaria’s mom was bawling her eyes out. Well, we all were, because it was so sad. Jasmin was just a kid, and some guy killed her. How does that even happen?”