This is a Little Love Story by Jacob.
Trying to surprise Christin with anything is just about impossible. She is constantly looking for anything out of the norm. In the month leading up to our engagement, I went from being a perfect boy who would never tell a lie to Pinocchio. Every day I had to come up with some story about what I had been doing. At times it was hard to keep all my stories straight. Let’s just say, she probably thought it was pretty strange how I was “washing my car” every couple of days.
I knew that I couldn’t take her out for a fancy dinner on the evening of my proposal because she would undoubtedly suspect it. Basically anything that appeared to have anything to do with her would be a reason for her to suspect something.
Thankfully, Christin has a tight-knit family that spends a lot of time together so I knew that I could use some family event as a disguise. A birthday party for her brother on the beach where we first held hands was the perfect scenario.
On the day of the proposal, time could not move fast enough. I knew it was pointless to go into work because I would get nothing done so I spent the morning at home getting the final details together. Around 10am I had everything done. Now it was time to sit and wait… for eight hours. All I could think about was the fact that everything needed to line up perfectly for this plan to work. Would her sister remember to call us on our drive up? How could I make sure none of her friends acted weird? Would her brother be too obvious when he asked us not to show up early? How would her roommate act, knowing today was the day? Would her sister-in-law remember to bring the dress and shoes I had picked out for her to change into after the proposal? There was too much that could go wrong.
When I picked her up, she wasn’t wearing anything fancy, which meant she wasn’t suspecting a thing. We got in the car and began to make the hour drive north. Luckily, Christin is a little chatter bug so making conversation for the entire drive wasn’t hard at all. She asked me about what I had done that day and I told my final lie: “I just went to work.”
As we got close to the beach, I had Christin call her brother to find out the gate code for the complex where the party was going to be. In perfect form, he let her know that we needed to kill time for a bit because they “weren’t ready for guests yet.” Little did she know that she was the guest they weren’t ready for.
After I forced my idea of taking a walk on the beach on Christin, we got out of the car and started the one hundred yard journey to the moment where she would see the signs I had made in the sand. Then she would know exactly what was happening. I had run out of things to talk about and was way too nervous to come up with new topics as we walked. Fortunately, Christin was totally focused on the ground making sure she didn’t trip on any of the rocks. I wondered if she had any clue what would be happening in a few moments. As we walked I realized she was completely clueless.
We kept walking until we were about just a few feet from the signs and she still had not looked up to see them. I stopped and looked at her. She looked at me and got the hint that she should look ahead. As soon as she saw the signs, she was so excited and so surprised. She said, “WHAT are you doing???” But I knew that she knew exactly what to do. She started picking up and reading each sign one by one. I couldn’t believe that it had all gone according to plan.
The moments following the proposal were sweet. We hugged and laughed and she couldn’t believe that I had actually surprised her. She had no idea that an even bigger surprise was in store for her. At the house where the “birthday party” was to be held, her entire family and our friends waited to congratulate us.
(She’s going to hate me for posting this picture because she thinks she looks like a hyena.)
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