LOVE AT FIRST DATE

Chapter 24: His Mission Accomplished

"Oh, my goodness!" she breathlessly squealed, bringing her hands up to tent her nose and mouth as her eyes darted around in amazement.

She hardly knew what to focus on first: Large white, bowl-shaped planters, overflowing with explosions of daisies, sat at either ends of the counter, with another between the two sinks; the tub was filled, though not with bubbles, but some kind of white flowers floating on the surface, interspersed among his Bismark battleship, submarine, and an impressive aircraft carrier she'd never even seen before. A Persian rug had been dragged in from the guest room, taking up most of the bathroom's expansive floor space, with pillows from the beds and linen closets heaped in a pile across from him, there for her to obviously recline against should she ever eventually be able to move her paralyzed body. A wicker basket sat in the center of the rug, stuffed with a variety of berries, cheeses, and other small finger food-sized things.

And then there was the john, which had been transformed into a veritable shrine: an altar, completely covered, from the lid of the tank on down, with cascading white linen that crumpled into a delicate heap of excess fabric at the floor. Centered was an ice-filled wine bucket, chilling a bottle of champagne and two inverted crystal flutes. The two-by-two framed picture he had earlier stolen from her apartment, plus an unframed Polaroid of the two of them standing on Francoise's altar, were propped up against the bucket.

Down at the other end, propped up against the tub in a comfortable slump was him, clad in nothing but white cotton boxers, with a few bed pillows wedged between his bare back and the cold porcelain.

"What's all this?" she gasped through her fingers, still barely able to access her voice as her eyes further leapt around the room, this time drawn to the buttery color of thick satin ribbons festively tied beneath the rims of the daisy planters, wine bucket, and wicker basket.

"I thought you said you liked picnics," he lightly mumbled, his mind seemingly occupied with whatever he was typing into the laptop balancing on his thighs. "Here. Go make yourself beautiful," he said, pausing long enough to produce a white, rectangular gift box from the floor beside him, crisscrossed with yet another yellow satin ribbon.

"For me?" she sputtered, still thoroughly aghast at the lengths he had gone to surprise her.

He gave the gift box a slight shake in the direction of the bedroom to get her moving, instantly kicking her inner need-to-know mechanism into activation.

"Don't take forever," he grumbled as she bolted through the door. "I've been starving for hours waiting for you," he exaggerated somewhat, having steadily fed for the past ten minutes from a separate dish of Maria's hors d' oevres, which he had prepared for his own personal consumption and parked on the floor beside him.

Placing the box on the bed and quickly untying the satiny ribbon, Michelle's hands trembled as she excitedly wrenched the lid off and pushed aside the soft sheets of tissue paper. Her eyes instantly pooled up as they fell upon the white, long-sleeved CUBS t-shirt he had given her to wear the day before.

"Is this really for me? To keep?" she called out to double-check, her cheeks aching from the broad smile that had implanted itself in her face.

"Yeah, but I get to wear it whenever I want," he clearly specified, "so take good care of it."

"Oh, I will, honey," she vowed, hurriedly sliding out of her Delivery Room ensemble and into the supreme sacrifice he had made for her.

"Don't shrink it in the dryer, or anything," he sternly added, despite knowing that a student of Frau FrankenNazi would rather commit suicide than go through life with having made such a rookie mistake.

"I won't," Michelle assured him, reaching for her tapestry bag on the floor and noticing it was empty. Her eyes quickly turned to behold the sight of her clothes dispersed throughout his closet, compelling her heart to hasten its pace. She was almost afraid to think what she was thinking, but nevertheless reeled with breathless excitement at the prospect that he might actually be planning to—

She quickly stopped herself and vanquished the thought from her mind, refusing to permit her heart to run away with her better sense, despite the rapidly growing evidence that he'd never said "carry meat" at all.

"You're snooping, Michelle," his soft voice wafted out from the bathroom upon hearing the squeak of the dresser drawer.

"I'm not," she called back, flustered with excitement as she grabbed a pair of those black silk panties he liked so much, fighting the urge to neatly fold the other things he'd simply jammed inside the drawer.

"All right, then," he mock-grumbled as she reentered and sank to her knees beside him, cranking his head away from his laptop to press a warm, grateful kiss against his lips. "This was so sweeeeet of you, honey. I can't believe you did all this," she cooed against his cheek, struggling to suppress her laughter at the thought of a picnic in a bathroom, of all places. Leave it to a man to give deep thought to the perfect picnic setting and come up with a bathroom as the final decision. But she immediately understood the significance that particular room held for him. It was, after all, where they'd celebrated their very first anniversary.

"I live to make you happy," he reminded her, lest she had forgotten — or he had forgotten to tell her.

"What's that?" she asked, nodding toward the printout coming through the small portable printer at his side.

"Your copy," he said with a chin-shooing motion in the direction of the heap of pillows, taking a minute to fold the paper five ways, accordian-style, concealing all but the first question before passing it over to her.

"My copy of what?" she lightly inquired, about to stuff a handful of raspberries into her mouth, with the hopes that the swallowing action might help dislodge the heart in her throat, but suddenly losing her appetite from the thought of consuming food only feet away from the john.

"It's a compatibility test I found online," he casually lied, having spent an hour meticulously honing each of the five questions himself while Olivia had scrubbed and decorated the bathroom for him. "Go on," he said, only to be promptly placed on hold by Work-Michelle, as he might have expected, who silently scanned the question first.

"'How torn up would you be,'" she began to recite, "'if you were to… lose your housekeeper?'"

Her eyes immediately shot up and cast a wary glance his way. "Where did you say you found this test?" she suspiciously queried.

"Online somewhere. It looked like fun," he responded.

Oh, and by the way, I'm lying, she mentally completed his statement for him, simultaneously sighing with relief that the document appeared to be just another of his pop quizzes, and not what she had initially feared: a prenuptial agreement — the world's most unromantic prelude to a marriage proposal. But no sooner had thoughts of nuptials re-entered her mind did she diligently push them away, reminding herself not to jump any guns. Just because he'd gone to such extremes to prepare a romantic environment did not necessarily mean he had anything more in mind than a romantic evening.

"So?" he anxiously prodded.

"Define 'lose,'" she answered. "Do you mean, like, losing her in a crowd, or—"

"Losing her, like… if she were to quit, or something," he elaborated, cagily feigning a best-guesstimate of what the anonymous author most probably had in mind.

"Or 'something'?" Michelle repeated with another small, suspicious frown, testing the strength of his angelic veneer.

"It's an easy enough question," he innocently remarked, dismissing the notion that she could possibly be on to him already. Not after only one lone and highly amorphous question. She'd have to be one of those psychic people, like he'd seen in that TV documentary about the CIA's efforts in the late 1960's to telepathically spy on the Russians.

Watching her studiously mull the question, he felt his palms begin to grow moist. He wondered if maybe this approach hadn't been such a good idea after all. Not the picnic part — he distinctly remembered her having said something about liking picnics, and the bathroom was where he had officially fallen in love with her, holding her hair back as she'd heaved into the john, which Olivia had done such a nice job transforming into a shrine for him. A picnic was also as close as he could get to a romantic restaurant setting, as the men's magazines were constantly preaching, without actually going out to one, which he definitely didn't want to do. It was risky enough asking her to marry him in the middle of their first date. If he was going to get shot down, or placed on hold, he wanted to at least be rendered devastated in the comfort of his own home.

The quiz part was giving him second thoughts, however. But these were important questions that he needed to get her feelings on, which there hadn't been time to broach before. And there were some things a man was entitled to know before taking so huge and life-altering a step as wedlock, after all. He'd waited long enough for his "ten" to come along, and a nerve-racking proposal wasn't something he ever intended to do over again. Almeida men's hearts weren't built for do-overs. Almeidas were old-fashioned, one-woman men who handed their hearts over for life.

"Well?" he nudged after a small eternity, placing his rapidly growing anxiety on momentary hold while his brain photographed the sight of the baby cheeks he adored.

"Well… it would depend a lot on the circumstances under which I had 'lost' her," she logically concluded. "Can you give me an example?"

"This isn't a multiple choice," he kindly informed her. "It's a straight-out yes or no: 'Would you be upset if your housekeeper didn't work for you anymore,'" he repeated, entering the modified phraseology into his document.

"Well, just wait a second, now, dear. I mean, she's been with me for seven years, after all. Can't you just give me an example of the circumstances?" she persevered to his dismay.

"Say the circumstances were just fine," he impatiently hypothesized, his finger already hovering above the "X" key. "Say she got two weeks severance — and a bonus, which she didn't even deserve — and was perfectly happy about it all, 'cause she was planning on going back to the homeland anyway… to take care of a sick—cow, or whatever."

Michelle cocked her head and sternly glared through squinted eyes, signaling disapproval of both his loosely veiled insult and the proud smirk adorning his face.

"Well?" he asked after generously allowing her even more time to stare at the ceiling.

"Would I have another housekeeper right away? Or would there be downtime in between, where I'd have to take care of the cleaning myself?" she needed to know. "That's difficult with the long hours we keep."

He gazed off to the side for a stupefied moment. "You'd have another housekeeper right away," he confirmed.

"A good one?" she checked.

"Well, if by 'good' you mean psychotic, like the one you have now, no," he made clear. "She wouldn't be 'good,' she'd be sane. Sane and competent—like Mrs. Sanchez, for instance."

She pondered his not-so-hypothetical question for a few moments longer, ignoring the repeated times he checked his watch, like a man in front of a firing squad waiting for his rescuers to show.

"Well?" he gently prodded again.

"I'm thinking, honey," she said. "You can't just ask a pertinent question, like 'losing your housekeeper,' and expect a person to answer in a flash. I need time to consider a few things," she explained.

"You're supposed to answer right away… off the top of your head," he reiterated the rules, the patience in his voice beginning to noticeably wane. "This is supposed to be spontaneous."

"Where does it say that?" she asked, tilting her chin upward, as if contemplating leaning in and peering over the monitor's edge.

"Just—let's just move on to the next one, okay? Geeziz," he replied, shooing her eyes with one hand while assigning a failing "X" with the other.

"Do I get to come back to that one?" she queried, feeling it only fair.

He ignored her.

"Question two: men's boxers,'" he grumbled, recalling his stiff tuxedo shirt collar and feeling his neck itch all over again.

"'Do men's boxers get starch,'" she quietly read aloud, her brow slowly furling into a studious frown. "Why would that matter to the woman if the man had a housekeeper?" she asked. "I mean, if the woman had a housekeeper, the man would likely have one, too, since couples tend to seek out mates within their own socioeconomic circles," she intellectually surmised. "Correct?"

He stared in disbelief.

"So, wouldn't starch be a matter for the man to work out with his housekeeper?" she logically concluded. "Hmm?"

"Say the housekeeper wasn't around and the decision was yours," he clarified the obvious, his eyes widening to the point of pain at the sight of bare legs and sexy black silk crawling over to the champagne bucket.

"Well, I guess I would just simply ask the man, in that case," she logically deduced.

"And what if the guy wasn't around, either?" he prodded.

"I'd, umm… Well, I'd probably call him on his cell. Certainly a man who could afford a housekeeper would be carrying a cell ph—"

"You're missing the spirit of the question, Michelle," he impatiently pointed out, dutifully uncorking the bottle she'd just delivered with a one-handed crawl. "Say… Just say the guy was being held prisoner and couldn't be reached, okay?"

"It's a moot point, because I wouldn't be doing laundry at a time like that," she pragmatically stated.

He shook his head in bewilderment, filling the glasses and sending her back to her pillow perch before assigning another "X" and keying up to the next question.

"How am I doing?" she asked.

"Not well," he professorially assured her.

"Shouldn't you be answering these questions, too?" she airily asked, her inquiry promptly met with a vacant stare.

"It's a one-way questionnaire," he artfully dodged. "Ya come across them a lot in the men's magazines."

"Uh-huh," she responded, wondering how long ago he figured she had fallen off the turnip truck.

"Do ya think we can just stay on point here, please?" he conspicuously deflected. "You're supposed to be taking this seriously, Michelle."

"I thought it was supposed to be fun," she reminded him of his own words, compelling yet another blank stare, followed by a subtle grimace.

"Question three," he muttered, radiating the enthusiasm normally reserved for his budget meetings with Homeland's accountants.

"Did I get that one right?" she asked. "How does the scoring work?"

"Never mind," he muttered.

"Is there a prize for this?"

"Not at the rate you're going," he confidently reassured her, unconscious of his hand briefly sliding behind his back to ensure that the satin ribbon-tied bandaid box was still where he had handily stashed it, inside the waistband of his boxers.

"But there is a prize to be had, you're saying," she asked, despite having already uploaded its location into her memory banks.

"You could call it that, I suppose," he cryptically replied with a manufactured Cheshire-like grin, contrasting sharply with the hellish jitters slowly percolating deep inside his gut; which was not to mention the thin layer of sweat coating him, from brow to toe, on the outside.

He didn't know why he should even be nervous, much less sweating it out like a freshman pledge on the precipice of Hell Night. It's not like the picnic thing hadn't gone over like a smash hit, or he hadn't invested proper time in planning out how to pull this damned thing off. He'd even come up with the perfect segue out of the quiz and into the conversation, which had struck him, out of nowhere, like an engagement gift from the testosterone gods in the form of an epiphanous lightening bolt.

If anything, he shouldn't be nervous, but aggravated, which he also was, over how fundamentally unfair it was for the guy to have to be the one to do the asking. Michelle was so much better suited for this kind of thing. If she were the one doing this, they'd be in bed by now; the task that Frau SauerPuss had rudely interrupted would've already been completed; and they'd have half of the rest of their lives mapped out.

"Don't you want to know about the babies?" Michelle temptingly interrupted.

"Two boys, fraternal. Seven pounds, two ounces and five pounds, ten ounces," he unceremoniously rattled off, his Mom having phoned in the statistics likely before Petey had even been apprised. "Can we get back to answering the questions, now? ... Please? This one coming up is important."

"Don't you even want to know how well I did?" she asked.

"Later, baby," he mildly pleaded. "After we're done here, okay? Go on… Question three…"

"'How would you feel," she dutifully complied, "if your husband wanted to get a pool table?'"

He awaited her answer with bated breath, having always envisioned himself with his own regulation-sized pool table. He would've already owned one by now — that, and one of those industrial stainless steel Viking stoves — had only his apartment been able to accommodate their girth.

"Well, I'm… I'm not married," she pragmatically pointed out, without even choking on the word, "so the question doesn't really apply."

"Just—just say that you were," he anxiously pressed.

"Well, I… I think I would be fine with that, just as long as it wasn't located in the living room," she answered, recognizing the ripe opportunity to recoup a few lost points from her starched-boxers answer. "Did I get that one?" she checked.

"Let's just keep going, shall we?" he pleasantly suggested, wondering if his ears were deceiving him or if his voice had just gone up an octave. The sweat machine was chugging along nicely, too, he thought. Even his fingertips felt clammy against the keys, now. He made a mental note to consult Max about the inordinate amount of moisture his glands seemed capable of producing. This couldn't be normal; there had to be some kind of medical explanation for this. He'd gone through boot camp generating less sweat, for cryssake.

Michelle found her throat tightening in anticipation of vocalizing the words her eyes had just absorbed: "'If somebody were to ask you to marry him," she nonetheless managed to smoothly enunciate, "would you say 'yes' right away, or would you 'need time to think'?"

She needed time to clear her throat of the salivia she'd unwittingly vacuumed in. A few moments to find her breath, and gather her wits, wouldn't hurt any, either. Granted, from the very first "housekeeper" question, it had been brutally obvious that he had written the quiz. And she had even suspected, from as far back as the bedroom, that he might actually be planning to propose tonight. But not until she had heard herself read that last question aloud did it hit her, like a runaway diesel, that a proposal was not only conceivably possible, but likely waiting in the wings, perched to present itself at any time now.

She felt his eyes trying to bore through her forehead and into her thoughts, and thanked God that he couldn't see the home movie playing inside her head: a deluge of memories of her Bud doll — the equivalent of Ken — vicariously proposing to her through Tammy — the equivalent of Barbie, which her aunts wouldn't let her have because they felt that the doll was too sexy looking. It occurred to her, now, that she must have rehearsed for The Big Moment at least a million times with Bud, concocting all sorts of pithy, confidently delivered responses to his ceaseless begging; her retorts always flawlessly delivered in a perfectly "cool, calm, and collected" manner, as Katherine Hepburn would always say—or was it Barbara Stanwyck? No, no, it was someone with darker hair, like maybe Sophia Lor — good God, it was Katie Winters, from those old Secret Deodorant commercials! Here she stood at the threshold of arguably the most romantic moment of her entire female existence — having invested literally countless hours preparing a veritable plethora of pithy retorts, just so she could have a selection on hand for The Big Moment — only to now find herself mere minutes away, with nothing in her memory banks but dialogue from an old deodorant commerc—

"Well?" he asked, his soft voice coming through like the William Tell Overture inside her head.

"Well… umm…" she stalled for another eons-long second, forgetting the question's precise phraseology and needing to quickly scan it again. "That would, umm… depend, I suppose," she numbly replied, conscious of a berry she had been playing with and, apparently, squished in her hand at some point, and wondering how to discreetly dispose of it now.

"Depend on… like, what?" he audibly croaked, emitting sweat at a rate of speed capable of landing him in a hospital bed, if it kept up very much longer.

"On, umm… Well, I guess it would depend on who was doing the asking," she calmly said.

"That's fair," he heard himself nonchalantly reply over the deafening roar of his heart madly pumping blood to his vital organs.

He busied his eyes on the screen, wishing he could busy his hands at the keyboard, too, but finding them somewhat paralyzed again; like the way they were in the vestibule of the little Italian couple's shop, when he'd told her he loved her for the first time — or the third, if one wanted to get technical about it.

"Which one are we up to now? Hmm?" he asked, cajoling her on with a calm, laid-back attitude, though feeling borderline nauseous from the mini-somersaults his stomach was now performing, in anticipation of the last, critical question coming up.

"Number five," Michelle replied, nervously unfolding the final accordian flap: "If some guy were to… propose to you," she calmly recited, despite the sensation of eyes locked solidly upon her again, "only without getting down on one knee, due to a war injury," she continued, without even laughing, "would it have any affect upon your answer?"

Tense silence ensued, his palms moistening to greenhouse levels.

"Well?" he asked.

The unusual pitch and tremor in his voice compelled her eyes to glance up and zero in on the familiar deer-in-the-headlights look in his eyes, and a few stray locks against his brow, which could only be described as soaked. It surprised her, at first, to see how genuinely rattled he was, but it oddly comforted her, as well, to know that she wasn't the only one who sweating it out; that he, in fact, seemed to have her beat, hands-down, in that department.

Even more surprising than the "proposal" part of his question, however, was her jarring reaction to the latter part. It was as though someone had taken hold of her reins and yanked hard, halting her angst dead in its tracks and redirecting her focus, instead, onto a picture that was only just now becoming clear to her: Looming ominously over his head — and ten times worse than the nerve-racking task, itself, of having to do the asking — was that dorky one-knee routine that men, for whatever unfathomable reason, were commonly known to execute, but which simply just wasn't his style at all. It fit him like an itchy wool suit three sizes too small. It was a gesture that maybe worked for the uber-pretentious Valentino types, with a flair for the melodramatic; or the follower types, who marched to the beat of whatever the uber-pretentious felt was cool. But not for the Tony Almeidas; the Captain Greggs; the meat-carriers. These were not men who were meant to propose to a woman Amy Vanderbilt-style; they did things on their own terms, their own way. These were the men of Navarone. The men who held anniversary celebrations and picnics in bathrooms, should it so happen to strike their fancy.

"No," she confidently stated, and meant it. She'd never even made Bud get down on one knee, knowing even way back then that it would only make her laugh. "Outside of a 1930's movie, that's always struck me as a little silly looking, don't you think? ... A little too mushy and over the top, for my taste."

His eyes flickered from the ensuing surge of love that engulfed both body and soul. That was exactly how he'd always felt, dreading the thought of having to put himself through that idiotic gesture. He was fully prepared to do it, of course. If her answer had given him even the slightest inkling that she wanted or expected a guy to perform that dopey ritual, he would bite the bullet and hit the deck. He would do whatever she wanted of him. But her firm response made it abundantly clear, now, that he was totally and officially off the hook. If a doubt had even existed as to whether she was indeed his 'it,' all vestiges would've immediately vanished based upon that one answer alone.

"Okay, then," he nonchalantly replied, his elation rapidly replaced with the gnawing realization that this was it.

"Do I get the prize now?" she coyly inquired, deciding to gift him with a perfectly smooth and seamless segue directly into the ring-presentation phase, therein enabling him to skip the preamble phase entirely. She felt it was the least she could do, to help ease some of his burden. So all he really needed to do now, she figured, was reach behind his back and—

"We'll see," he cluelessly muttered, pretending to tally her points, which bought him time to quickly run through his segue one last time, to ensure he had it straight in his head and that the bridges and logic-flow were sound.

He paused to mentally command his paralyzed hand to swipe the sweat from above his lip. He had no idea this would be so hard. The mens' magazines had always made it sound like men would be at perfect ease, and in total control, if only they followed the recommendations laid out by the authors. He silently cursed himself, now, for the decades he'd spent only skimming the highlights, never taking any of it too seriously.

The lid of his laptop snapped shut.

His eyes shot up.

She had somehow managed to creep up on him without his sensing her approach. His razor-sharp instincts had been rendered defunct. With nothing more than two warm lips and a champagne tongue, she had neatly and fully divested him of every skill he had honed in the field.

"I want my prize," she purred a warning into his mouth, easing him downward into the pillows, in what might've been a more comfortable position had his body not long since transmuted into a tree-like state of rigidity.

"You're looking at it," he nonetheless glibly replied, her second perfect, foolproof segue-on-a-silver-platter zooming right over his head. She could hardly believe it; he wouldn't have even needed to speak. All he would've had to do was simply allow her to snatch the "prize," open it up, gasp in shock — bing, bang, boom.

"I already have you. I want the one you hid," she tried again, mischievously sliding her hand beneath him. But no sooner had her fingertips made contact with something metal-like when his own hand had come out of nowhere and captured her wrist.

"Uhh… I don't recall declaring a winner," he wryly reminded her, shifting her onto the floor beside him and clearing some pillow space for head to join his, nose-to-nose.

He could't take this sweating a minute more. It was time to get this insufferable torture over and done with, he lambasted himself. Another minute of languishing in this debilitating mental state and he'd be on the streets in his bare feet and boxers, wielding a Magnum.

And how the hell had he even managed to get himself into this state? This was not rocket surgery. Buck up, give her the ring, and let's get this life back on the road, for cryssake.

"Look, umm… I know we haven't been seeing each other for very long, or anything, but we have known each other for almost a year now," he began, phase-one of his segue now neatly out of the way: No need for dating if you already know each other really well, correct?

"I know," she gently responded in that soft, soothing way of hers.

"Well, umm… So, I was thinking about some stuff, like… y'know, like, that contingency plan you wanted us to have, in case ya slipped up and called me 'honey,' or something, at work, and I, uhh… So I was just thinking that, y'know…we, umm…"

A painfully long, uncomfortable moment of sweaty silence ensued. His mind had gone cloudy for a brief moment, and then it went blank all together. Not "blank" in a way that meant he couldn't remember his name or his license plate number. Just blank in the way that meant his segue was gone. Not "gone" in a way that necessarily meant it was gone forever. Just gone at the moment — the precise moment he needed it, of course.

And what better timing, too, when ya stop to think about it. After all, the front half of his proposal had been perfectly disastrous, with all his sweating and stressing throughout. So why not have the back half turn into a disaster, as well?

"And since we've known each other for so long," Work-Michelle gently chimed in, hoping a quick review might kick his memory back into gear, "and we don't want to slip up at work, as you were saying…"

He stared at her. He had no idea what she was trying to get at — and with his own segue, no less. Nothing like this had ever happened before. He'd never even known it was possible for a human mind to evacuate itself like that.

"…Because, well…" Michelle trudged onward, watching his fingertips making mincemeat of his brow, "… after all, two single people calling each other 'honey' in the middle of an office…"

"Uh-huh," he agreed, not knowing what else to do but nod and agee and stare — oh, and sweat. That he had no trouble doing. That he was a champion at.

Still nothing. Nothing but the sound of his inner voice lambasting himself for not jotting his segue onto his hand, which even the average moron would've thought to do, but hey…

"Of course, married people don't have to worry about such things," Michelle persevered, laying a path of segues for him with a sledge hammer at this point, "but single people… Well… you know how people in the office love to talk…"

"Yeah, umm…"

His mouth had been open all this time, he just now realized. Closing it, he turned his eyes upward, for just a flash, loving to know where the hell the testosterone gods were in his hour of need. Was no one available to shut this sweat shop down, for starters? Was not one deceased men's magazine author available to tear himself away from his celestial typewriter long enough to jam his segue back in his head?

He began to seethe. This was not right. No man should have to go through this kind of hell. And who's the guy who started this ritual in the first place, he'd like to know, condemning every man thereafter to follow suit? Which genius invented the one-knee maneuver? He wanted names.

"So, umm… like I was saying," he continued, not knowing what else to say. But he couldn't just go on staring at her, for cryssake. Her eyes were already beginning to show signs of concern; how far behind could "pity" be? No, he had to say something. Anything. And now. Anything was better than nothing, at this stage of the game. He cursed himself for having said "like I was saying," of all things. There was no seguing out of "like I was saying" for a man who was lucky he could still remember his own license plate num…

"Geeziz!" he exploded, at the end of his rope, bolting upright and yanking the bandaid box from its mooring, angrily muttering something about preferring "to go through that first-time-"I-love-you" nightmare a thousand times over" than to have to "suffer another second of this living hell." No one should have to endure this torture, he shared, loudly reminding her that he'd "tracked ticking warheads under less stress than this, for cryssake."

"Here, this is for you," he grouchily announced, pushing the box firmly into her palm.

Punching his pillows into shape, he resettled himself with a thud and heaved a deep sigh of relief; about ten times deeper, if even possible, than after she'd liberated him of that damned tampon box.

She hardly even heard a word of what he was ranting about. Her heart was beating too loudly in her throat. Though mildly shocked when he'd first exploded, she found herself absorbed with amazement, now, at how saturated one side of the ribbon was: the side that had pressed against his skin all this time, apparently. The other side was completely dry.

"Y'know, before—when you said that you thought I should carry meat," she breathlessly mentioned, gingerly pulling the strand on the bow and watching the ribbon fall away. "That's not what you really said… was it."

"Just… I'm getting a headache, Michelle," he sternly informed her, wishing she could even begin to appreciate the abject hell he had just gone through — and all for her sake, too. She should only know how much careful planning had gone into trying to make this damned proposal a moment she'd always remember — which he supposed he had accomplished. Shoving the ring at her like that was something she'd always remember, along with the entire rest of the family, to be sure.

"I would've done the whole down-on-bended-knee thing, too, if it weren't for an injury I sustained in Desert Storm," he just wanted to clearly state for the record, therein formally enabling himself to remind everyone of that part, at their twentieth anniversary party, where he'd be hearing the story told for only about the eight-hundreth time by then.

"I understand, honey," she gently assured him, mentally adding Oh, and by the way, I'm lying to the tail of his utterly untrue claim. She had promptly cracked into his medical file directly following their first interview, when she'd fallen in love with him. He hadn't received any injury to his knee. Just who in the world did he think he was kidding.

"And besides, you said yourself that you thought the whole one-knee routine was a bit much," he grumbled, turning onto his side to see her expression as she gingerly creaked the lid of the box open. "I, umm… Here, gimme," he mumbled when he noticed her hands trembling a little.

As he pulled the bunched-up cloth out, a small smile — his first throughout this entire hellish affair — settled into the corners of his mouth in response to her eyes igniting with excitement, and her skin radiating a glow that looked like someone had blown a handful of angel dust onto her face.

His own heart leapt a little, too, to see how much more dazzling the sparkle was under the bathroom lights. It had stunned him enough in his Dad's office, but nothing compared to the mini fireworks display it was performing now.

"I, umm… Here, I should really…" he softly murmured, clasping the ring in his fingertips and holding it out to her shaky hand. "I'm not really sure you've even earned this, y'know," he softly chided. "You didn't exactly pass that quiz with flying colors."

He wasn't certain she had heard him. She seemed so genuinely stunned, and at a complete loss for words, to his extreme delight. He didn't know how he'd managed to stupefy her into speechlessness, but it made his chest expand a little. The sweat machine had even begun to wind down, he noticed.

"So, I, umm… I was thinking that if you were to agree to marry me, ya see… we wouldn't be needing that contingency plan, since engaged people would be, y'know… expected to slip up like that, from time to time," he quietly mentioned, his segue having flooded back as suddenly as it had fled through door. "Hmm?" he said, having to gently shake the tip of her sparkling finger to remind her that it was her turn to talk.

She stared at him blankly, shocked, herself, by how overwhelmed the moment had rendered her.

"You're… You want me to marry you, you're saying?" she all but whispered, feeling the need to double-check, for whatever bizarre reason.

"If ya think you can stand to put up with me… Hmm?" he offered in a low and surprisingly serious tone, captivated by how soft and brown and bottomless her eyes were capable of becoming.

"Okay," was all that her absence of breath would allow her to say.

She'd barely heard what he'd said after that — something about taking this in stride; or perhaps he had said "Let's take this inside," considering he was on his feet and carrying her in his arms, now. From there, she found herself in his bed — their bed — clinging tightly to each other in stunned silence. At some point, their clothes had disappeared. At another point, he kissed her teeth.

Throughout the night, they would go on to make deeply passionate, intimate love, sleeping for short periods in between until one would awaken the other for more. Between slow, tender kisses, he had finally told her his fantasy, which he'd died a thousand deaths detailing for her. But baring his soul like that had made him feel closer to her, if that were even cosmically possible. It had also put him in even more awe of the courage she'd shown, sharing such intimate things with him right out of the gate.

She told him of another fantasy she'd been working on, compelling him to reiterate his original fear of dying at her hand of a heart attack someday.

She made him promise never to wear a t-shirt to bed so that she could always see and feel his chest. He made her promise to wear dresses for him as often as possible, so he could look at her legs.

They held hands and talked excitedly, like kids on Christmas eve, taking turns feeling the ring on her finger, and holding her hand up to the single stream of moonlight filtering into the room, to see how much they could get it sparkle in the dark.

They discussed which style of houses they were most partial to, and which neighborhood they should explore first. She asked if he liked the look of an all-stainless steel kitchen, like the one in her apartment, and he said yes, but that she couldn't have one because she was too clean. She could have a Viking stove, but that was it.

He asked if keeping the cat was a definite, and she told him yes, and that double-checking every couple of minutes wasn't going to change that any.

Realizing that their annual incomes would effectively double overnight, he dashed off a quick list for her, of the frivolous things he planned to spend her money on.

She agreed to the pool table when he'd raised the subject again, reiterating the living room provision. She wondered if he would mind, in turn, assuming the task of writing out the bills each month, explaining that she'd always found it boring and annoying. He readily agreed, recognizing the ripe opportunity to have something to complain about, like her credit card expenditures, on an ongoing, lifelong basis.

Knowing that his "housekeeper" question was tantamount to a kiss of death for Mrs. Goebels, she made it clear that she wasn't certain she wanted to lose her; that she'd still need some time to think about that.

It seemed like forever before it had even dawned on them that a honeymoon would also be part of the deal. He whispered sweet nothings about the wonders of Cooperstown, New York: home of the Baseball Hall of Fame. She suggested a hut on the beaches of Antigua, commenting on how she had always liked the way that word sounded. He offered to meet her half way, putting Niagara Falls on the table, neatly neglecting to mention that it was only a couple of hours drive-time away from Cooperstown. Unfortunately, she was good at geography and broke him down with one small, disappointed frown, like it would break her heart if they couldn't at least hold the Antigua option open. He secretly buckled on Cooperstown there on the spot, already knowing he was going to take her wherever she wanted to go, anyway.

As she explored her favorite parts of him, it reminded her of how she'd always wanted to explore the Inca ruins of Peru. Amid labored breaths, he reminded her of the political uprising threatening Lima, detailed in Division's latest weekly update. Between long wet kisses and light bites to his lips, she reluctantly agreed to move Peru to the bottom of her list. But as he switched positions and pressed his body against her, he offered to check with the Peruvian consulate about gun permits for law enforcement friendlies, moving it up to the top again, at least for now.

She brushed his thick, matted curls from his forehead while confessing her lack of talents in the kitchen, wondering if that might be a problem for him down the road. He didn't think so, unaware of how grossly his gift of foresight was failing him at that moment.

He shared his vision of the perfect wife — a woman whom, when angry with him, would throw him out of the house with his golf clubs, warning him not to return for at least four hours.

To her, the image of a perfect husband was one who changed diapers and didn't have to be pushed out of bed for 2:00 AM feedings. Her words were gifts of gold to him. He hadn't expected the subject to even come up. He immediately told her about her baby cheeks and his hesitancy to mention them before, which evoked an expression on her face so soft and tender that he cursed himself for not keeping a night-vision camera handy.

He told her that he didn't want to wait too long to get married; that the usual year-long thing was completely out of the question; that he'd go the City Hall route, if it came to that. She said he didn't need to worry; that she had heard of this incredibly talented woman, Amanda Almeida, well-known for pulling a magnificent affair together in no time flat. As if it were even possible, his heart tripled with love for her, there on the spot. His Mom had immediately come to mind when he'd decided that he wanted them married in a matter of weeks, not months. But since Michelle would probably want to, naturally, plan her own wedding, he'd decided not to bring it up.

He wondered if she had any idea how beautiful she was, which made her blush, even in the dark. She wondered if he knew how excited she'd become when she'd seen him in his tuxedo. He hadn't known that, making a mental note to wear it to bed some night.

He was about to ask her to promise never to break his heart when it occurred to him how many times he had already made her promise that, over the past few days.

She'd begun to fret about explaining her overnight engagement to her aunts, but he told her not worry; that they'd figure out all that family stuff tomorrow.

They exchanged personal vows with each other — the ones that don't get exchanged at the altar — his first vow being that he would always take the garbage out if she, in return, would vow not to make him exchange any vows on the altar. He hated that. It always struck him as too contrived, and either the bride or the groom, or both, would always end up crying, like you-know-who had done that very afternoon. She agreed, feeling no need to mention that she knew his real fear was not for her but for himself.

He vowed to take her out every Friday night unless they got held over at the office, or if extraordinary, unforeseen circumstances should arise; like, being taken hostage, in which case he would take her out the first evening following his release.

He awoke from another hour-long power snooze, and was about to nuzzle her, but didn't have the heart when he saw how peacefully she was sleeping. He studied her features for awhile instead, finding himself having to blink a few times, just to make sure this was all really happening. With a quick glance upwards, he remembered to thank Pop for the ring, and the overlords, too, for allowing him to keep Michelle, despite her many egregious offenses.

He gently played with the ring on her finger, relieved to know how far it would go in safeguarding her from office gawkers, come tomorrow. Fiancés tended to be viewed a lot differently. Colleagues generally didn't have the nerve to stare at fiancés in quite the same way as fraternizing lovers. There was a dignity and legitimacy about a woman who was promised to a man — particularly when the man was also the boss — and he'd wanted Michelle to be treated with the proper respect. It was one thing to gawk at Nina, but a whole other story when it came to Michelle.

Exhaustion had finally arrived on the scene. He set the alarm to go off a little on the early side, ensuring himself enough time to attack her in the shower before having to drag themselves into their clothes and car and office and reality.

Tucking her closer into his body, he closed his eyes and wallowed for a moment in a wave of joy and relief. It occurred to him that the hard part was finally over; that the only thing left was the damned wedding now, but that she would, thereafter, officially and forever belong to him: Anthony Almeida, better known and loved as Tony Almeida. The chief. The CTU Director. The Sperminator. The fiancé.

THE END.

This story continues in "LAFD EPILOGUE"! Thank you so much for your reviews! xxxooo