Chapter 29

The natural consequences of watching the raw video of ‘Stealing my roomie’s boyfriend 32‘ meant that, after we’d put the dogs out in the yard for their bedtime routine, and gotten to bed ourselves, we didn’t actually get off to sleep for some time.

It was probably already Wednesday morning before we turned out the lights and pulled the sheets over us. I lay awake for a few minutes longer, happily listening to the soft breathing of the warm body spooned into me as she slept.

Sure beat Max’s doggie snoring in the old days when he used to crash on the rug beside my bed. Yeah, a definite improvement, one I sure could live with.

Maybe the feeling was mutual. Max probably reckoned that Kara and Tara were better roomies than I was. Marsha had claimed that I snored, wriggled and talked in my sleep occasionally; Max had never complained. Nor had Mel. Yet.

I dozed off, still smiling at the look of horror on the boyfriend’s face when his girlfriend suggested another session; Mel’s editing had captured it beautifully, and frozen it as the credits started rolling over it. It had been a clever twist of Judy’s; a little humor to finish off the story. Karma. How was he gonna explain to her that he couldn’t get it up until he’d had a little more time to recover from screwing her roomie? He’d been screwed, was he now totally screwed?

I thought of suggesting to Mel that there could be a sequel, where the girlfriend ‘fessed up that she and her horny roomie had planned this all along, and was he interested in a threesome with benefits?

Nothing to do with my being interested in seeing those two honeys get together and totally destroy the guy, no Sir. Not at all.

Six o’clock, as I toweled my freshly-shaven face dry, I looked myself in the eyes. Clear and confident stared back at me, and I instinctively grinned at my reflection. Yeah, today seemed like a pretty good day to do it. Splashing on a little cologne, I went into the bedroom to get dressed while Mel took her shower.

As we eating our breakfast, I oh-so-casually asked Mel what she was doing for lunch, if she was maybe able to meet up with me?

She smiled. “I’m sure I can get away; the editing is awaiting approval so I’m only doing some script reading today. I’d love to have lunch with you, honey. Where do you have in mind? Do I need to dress up?”

I tried to act totally nonchalant. “Oh, nothing special. I’ll grab us each a sandwich on the way and we can eat in the car; I don’t think jewelry stores appreciate you grazing while you browse.”

She dropped her fork. “What did you just say?”

“Oh, I thought we could maybe go look at some diamond rings?”

I quickly got up from my chair, went and knelt down on the floor beside her. Took both her hands in mine. “Melanie Jorgensen, will you marry me?”

Her face went pale; I thought she was about to cry.

She did manage to say yes before she used the napkin on her eyes and I got to my feet to hold her. Our meal got kinda forgotten; we were stood against the kitchen counter for a while, hugging and kissing. The dogs knew something had happened; they were whining and pawing our shins until we told them everything was okay.

Then it was time to talk practicalities.

Mel didn’t want to go down the ‘Pretty Woman’ Rodeo Drive jeweler route, though I told her I was willing to risk their prices for an engagement ring that was worthy of her.

Her argument was, why pay those crazy prices when we could get an equally impressive stone elsewhere and still have enough left over from our budget for a few other pieces of jewelry? I fought for a while, saying that I never wanted her to even think for one moment that I was a cheapskate as far as she was concerned. Then she put in her killer argument. “There are always paparazzi photographers hanging around Rodeo Drive just in case a celeb turns up. These days some of them use facial recognition software, and, if I’m on the library, which is possible, I’d almost certainly be identified. Honey, I want to make a totally new life with you. Let’s not make it any easier for them to connect the dots?”

She was using exactly the same argument on me that I’d used on her as to why I wouldn’t shoot a porn scene with her, no matter how warm their assurances that nobody would ever know. And after the debacle of my suggesting I buy her a vanity plate, my position was a tad weak.

I sighed. “Mel, sweetheart, don’t you ever doubt that I’m the proudest man on earth, having you on my arm. I’m not ashamed of your past, you reached the top in your career, but you’re right, yet again. It won’t do us any good to have it dragged up and rehashed in the scandal blogs or celebrity chat shows.”

We finally agreed on the Los Angeles Jewelry District, you know, the area between 5^th and 8^th Streets. Plenty of choice, plenty of competition to keep prices keen, and hopefully plenty of anonymity.

We were both late getting to work. I was instantly forgiven by my secretary when I explained the reason, and mentioned that I might also be a little late back from lunch that day. Helga was absolutely jubilant at the news, and took my engagement as a personal triumph. I guess in a way it was. We both laughed when she blushed and brought out a tissue to remove traces of her lip gloss from my mouth...

I didn’t get a whole lot done that morning – well, other than call my card issuer to ensure that my credit limit would cover my purchase. The lady on the other end of the line purred approvingly as I asked for an extra ten grand, and wished me and my fiancée well.

Telling me that arriving late on this occasion would be an especially bad move, Helga threw me out of the office so early I had to wait ten minutes for Mel to arrive; and she got to the corner of Hill Street eighteen minutes before the agreed time.

We looked at rings at five jewelry stores; Mel wanted a simple single diamond on a slim white gold or platinum band, a practical one she could wear all the time and not worry about. In the end we went back to the first store and pulled out the second ring we’d looked at; it fitted the bill. Platinum. Honest, elegant and tasteful. They even had it in the correct size, (long, slim, slender graceful fingers, size 6) so I pulled out the credit card and we took it.

Naturally, I did the kneeling on the floor routine again as I slipped the ring onto her finger; the store staff gave us a round of applause. I guessed that they’d done that more than a few times before, but it seemed sincere.

The assistant was totally discreet about my payment, leaving it up to me to tell or not tell my fiancée what it had cost. While the card machine was processing it, I mused that it was the equivalent of only one year’s college tuition for our eldest child, and I had nineteen years to earn it back. A little more than the traditional ‘one month’s salary’, but so worth it.

Mel was determined to wear her new ring out of the shop. They happily gave us the empty box in a bag with the receipt and certificate of authenticity for the diamond.

Then we sat in my car and ate the sandwiches I’d picked up from the concession in the hospital foyer. Mel claimed to be too excited to eat, but I noticed that there were only a couple of crumbs left in her bag.

And it was back to work for both of us. Kinda lame after such an important event. I did get to walk her back to her little SUV and kiss her before saying, “See you at home, fiancée!”

She waved her left hand out of the window all the way until she was out of my sight. The stone flashed happily in the sunlight, and I hoped it was well-fixed in the setting.

Memo to self: call the insurance company. Today.

Helga gave me one of those scornful ‘Typical Man’ looks when I couldn’t instantly show her a photo of the ring on my phone; she simply called Mel and asked to see one. She did warm up again once Mel sent it through; she liked the design too.

I wasn’t exactly on top of my game that afternoon either; even after having taken the step of proposing, there was still the outstanding problem to be solved of the best way of breaking the news to my family. Mom would insist on meeting Mel at the very earliest opportunity; I wouldn’t have put it past her to persuade Dad to fly them across from Atlanta for the weekend, maybe sooner if they could get a flight. The solution was obvious; we would go there.

If Mel would be happy doing that.

Oh, and there were a couple of other points we needed to agree on before we had that discussion with Mom. To me, there’s no huge shame these days to admitting having used a dating site, but maybe we might just say we’d first met while out walking our dogs.

And, while I was aware that my sister Katelyn had accepted James’ proposal while naked in his bed, that wasn’t exactly the story that she’d told Mom and Dad. I was okay with them knowing that I’d proposed over the breakfast table; they well knew that we were spending most of our time together, but, again, was my fiancée okay with that?