"I...wanted to do laundry," she says, her eyes huge with shock.
She found the box in the inner pocket of my jacket, which I recklessly left hanging on the chair in our dining room.
"You weren't supposed to be here; you were going to attend the childbirth at the hospital," I say as if justifying myself, even though it will change nothing.
"Mrs. Deneris had false contractions," she explains, still motionless.
"Open it," I offer, coming closer.
She shakes her head. "No, if you wanted to give it to me later, then..."
"Yeah, tomorrow," I interrupt, standing against her. "Please don't freak out, princess."
"But I..." Her voice is trembling, and her hands are shaking. "I haven’t even finished my internship. I haven’t opened my practice; I’m not ready to become a mother."
I smile. "Nobody is asking you to get pregnant right away," I say, taking the box from her hands.
When discussing marriage, we always talked about a beautiful house in Orange County, as far away from noisy Los Angeles as possible. We both want a golden retriever and two beautiful children, maybe three if we're lucky. Mia wanted to finish her internship first and then open her own practice as a reproductive OBGYN, helping women to get pregnant. And I support her in everything.
Even though I got into the main football league, I always find time to come home for dinner. Mia is the busiest person in our home, and I respect that. But I want the whole world to know that she's mine.
I open the box and get on one knee in front of her.
"I love you more than anything, princess," I say, and my voice is unexpectedly calm. I thought I'd be nervous, but I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. "If you want to wait until the wedding, it's okay, let's wait. If you think we should postpone having kids, I'll support you one hundred percent. And even if you tell me that you don't want to have children at all, I'll be mad at first, probably, but then I'll get used to it. Because you are the love of my life, princess."
Mia's eyes are wet as she looks down at me.
"Will you make me the happiest man on earth and agree to become my wife?"
She doesn't even let me finish the sentence when she falls into my arms and cries out, "Yes, yes, of course."
We lie like that on the floor for the next two and a half hours, planning our future together. Everything doesn’t turn out exactly as we intended: Mia will get pregnant later than we planned, but her willpower and her own reproductive clinic will help us to have twins. I will have an injury in seven years that will make me leave professional sports, but only to become a coach in one of those expensive private schools, just like the one we attended but closer to home.
Yeah, not everything turns out exactly the way we planned, but it’s still good. And we didn't know how it would turn out, lying on the floor in the middle of the dining room that day. We didn't care if wasn’t exactly as we planned; we kept making plans anyway. Because we were happy. We still are.
