Chapter Three
Aria
“Wow, Aria. That’s…shocking…utterly…surprising,” Nick mumbled while determinedly avoiding eye contact. I had just told him and Stacey the whole story with the very awkward situation at my mom’s house, followed by an even more awkward proposal.
“We couldn’t have guessed that Zayden would propose to you so quickly. At all,” Stacey added, also avoiding meeting my eyes. Something was obviously amiss.
“You guys already knew,” I concluded based on their joint reaction. “Both of you knew. I can’t believe this. How?”
“What are you talking about?” Stacey gasped accusingly. “How could I possibly? I mean how could we? We’ve barely seen you in a week!”
She had a point, but their reactions were certainly out of the ordinary. There was more going on here than I understood, and I hated not knowing things. But they hadn’t seen me in over a week, how could they? Unless…
“Well, there were two people in that bathroom that night. If you know about the proposal, it had to have come from the second source.”
Stacey burst out laughing in a mocking sort of a way. “Yes, because Zayden Sinclair told us. A rich, billionaire guy had absolutely nothing else in the world to do but gossip about his life plans with your sorry-ass roommates.”
“Don’t call yourselves that.” I frowned. “And don’t act like you haven’t been known to scheme with him regarding me in the past.”
“Scheme?” She gasped, trying to look horrified. “That’s a little much, Aria. At best we exchanged some polite emails and under totally different circumstances! It was just about dating him – or contracting him or working with him or whatever you were calling it back then – and I already knew you wanted to, so I just gave him a little nudge in the right direction. This is completely different.”
“Well, you haven’t yet once outright denied that you have been helping Zayden in some fashion.”
“The oven!” Stacey exclaimed and got off her chair. “Do you smell it? The cookies are done. For you, Aria. See how much I love you? Don’t question me.”
When she was back with the chocolate chip macadamia cookies, she had won. There was no way I was going to give her a hard time about anything after she bestowed me with the delicious crunchy, sugary goodness. If she was scheming with Zayden, let her. It almost made me feel kind of warm and fuzzy thinking of the two of them getting together to plan my proposal. When we got married – I meant, if we got married – Zayden would have to get along with Stacey anyway, so it only made sense for them to start now. That thought, along with the cookies, made me lighthearted. So much so that I didn’t really feel like discussing what I was about to mention. But I couldn’t put it off much longer. The divorce was sure to finalize soon enough and he would pop the question any minute. I definitely needed some advice as soon as I could get it.
“I don’t care what you guys know or how you know it, but the important thing I need to know is, what do you guys think I should do? Is this at all a good idea? Getting married to Zayden, I mean. I have only known him a few months.”
“You’re joking, right?” Nick raised his eyebrows at me. “You’re obviously not considering saying no?”
“Why not? I mean, it’s a big commitment. And I love Zayden! I do. There is no question about that anywhere in my mind. I have never felt like this about anybody in my life before. He makes me feel so smart and funny and beautiful and these past few months with him have been the most thrilling of my life. Like a roller coaster. So marrying him will kind of be like…uh, moving in to live at Six Flags.”
Stacey and Nick both chuckled. “I’ll be down for that move!” Nick said cheerfully.
“But seriously, Aria,” Stacey chimed. “If you don’t feel like you’re ready—”
“No, no! It’s not that I’m not ready,” I jumped in a little too quickly.
“There you go. A little hint of my advice going the other way and you were so quick to stop me. You obviously want to do this and you love each other. I don’t see why—”
“You’re right,” I said, finally accepting even to myself that the answer had been “yes” since the moment Zayden first asked the question. “But I’m only 20,” I added, just for argument’s sake.
“And you have the intelligence and maturity of a 50-year-old. To the point of boredom, some might say,” Stacey said. Upon meeting my reproachful look she hastily added, “Some might say, not me. In any case, stop looking for excuses. If you want to marry the guy, marry the fucking guy. It’s literally that simple.”
With a final misplaced frown, I surrendered. Even though I was pretty surprised by their eagerness to have me jump to get married to Zayden, deep inside, I had hopes that they would approve without a protest. Now that I was sure, with the blessings of two of my best friends, the only thing keeping Zayden and me from being engaged was his divorce…and his ability to plan a real proposal, of course.
---
Classes had lately become impossible to sit through, not because of certain inherent displeasing qualities in the classes themselves, but because of the state of mind I had been in. It was like a cheesy yet exciting romantic comedy was constantly playing in my head, featuring Zayden and I as the classic hero and heroine, destined to find each other against all odds and the harsh realities of life. My daydreams usually ended with him getting down on one knee at some exotic locale only suitable for movies of the highest budgets featuring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Either that, or some scenario where he made a public declaration of his love to me as I am about to go away forever – at an airport or a wedding – and I go crying, running into his arms.
As dramatic as it all sounded, thinking about the various ways in which our love story would find it’s worthy climax made it slightly easier to get through classes and count down to the time to go to work. Under the pretenses of doing my job, I could stare joyfully at Zayden for the rest of my day. Now that he had loudly professed his love to me in front of everybody at the bank, I was free to stare at him all day, answer his calls as his girlfriend, or flirt with him every time he came over to my desk. It still annoyed Mrs. Brian endlessly – as experienced by her constant disapproving sounds – but now that she knew Zayden took this seriously, she tried her best to keep her unsolicited opinions to herself. All in all, work had suddenly become my favorite place to go.
“Is everything alright, Aria?” I heard the professor, Mr. Weber, say, pulling me out of my thoughts.
“Uh…yes. Sorry, I am a little out of it today. Didn’t get much sleep last night, was working on your paper.”
“Of course you were!” he exclaimed happily. “Wouldn’t expect anything less of you. And don’t worry, we are all a little out of it sometimes. Plus, you’re the top graded student in this class.”
I heard some grunts around the room, but couldn’t help but feel really flattered and guilty at the same time. The guilt made me try hard to focus on the Public Finance lecture – but my mind kept trying to take me back to that day Mr. Weber had brought in Zayden as a guest speaker – what an incredibly dramatic ordeal it had been.
No, stop. Pay attention. He was saying something about mortgages and government loans. I looked at the time; it was halfway through class. One more quick lab later and I could run to work…I muffled a giggle, trying to pass it off as a cough, at the thought of being that person who actively looked forward to going to work.
Mr. Weber was discussing tax breaks and housing bubbles when there was a knock on the classroom door.
My heart leapt. I must have been imagining it this time. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. When I opened them again, Zayden was still standing by the door of my classroom, looking directly at me, with an enormous grin on his face.
“Oh hello, Mr. Sinclair!” Mr. Weber exclaimed delightedly. “What a wonderfully pleasant surprise! You should have mentioned you were paying us a visit! I would have made arrangements. Did you just want to sit in on my lecture? Or were you looking for something else?”
“Actually,” Zayden said, taking small strides into the classroom. “I was hoping I could talk to one of your students.”
“Oh, for some kind of a market research or something?” Mr. Weber asked curiously, as my heart started thumping so fast I could hear it beating. When I tried to move my legs they seemed to have given in to complete paralysis. I had no idea what was happening, but I felt like I knew where this was going…it had to be…but here? In front of my whole class? Would he really?
“I have a particular student in mind, Mr. Weber. And no, it’s not for research or survey. It’s…personal.”
The whole classroom went entirely silent, and Mr. Weber looked confused. Zayden walked towards me. I wasn’t sure whether I was imagining it, because the whole scenario was rather cinematic, but it felt like somebody had paused the live Zayden and set him in slow motion. He was walking insanely slow, not helping the situation of my heartbeat at all.
When he reached me, he fell down on one knee, rendering me completely incapable of feeling anything other than my own thumping heart, which seemed to have picked up a pace three times its usual. Shit, shit, shit. This was it.
Tears began welling up in my eyes as I became aware of the entire class staring at us, making no attempts to hide what they were looking at. The class had never been as silent as it was now, to Dr. Weber’s immense frustration, I didn’t doubt. At the thought of Dr. Weber, I flicked a quick sideways glance to see his reaction and he appeared to be embracing a coronary, while his face assumed an expression of utter confusion.
My momentary lapse in concentration from what was going on in front of me with Zayden literally down on one knee in the middle of a class was broken when I heard him say my name like he had never said it before.
“Aria,” I heard him say. I had to bring my attention back to his piercing blue eyes, staring into my own with so much intensity it felt like he could see right through me.
“Hey, what are you—”
“I love you, Aria Roberts,” he cut me off to the sound of gasps encapsulating the whole room. I could sense the whispers of my classmates on my skin, but somehow I couldn’t register any of the words they were speaking. It was as though a movie was playing a few rooms down the hall and we were privy to snippets of it traveling through the distance.
I love you, too. Those were the words meant to come out of my mouth. Or they would have if I had been at all capable of opening them or producing a sound. It was like words were now captured somewhere deep in my lungs, imprisoned forever.
“I love you and I never thought I would say these words to a woman and mean it,” Zayden said, his eyes still firmly on my own. “When you first came into my life – or into my bank, I should say,” he said with a grin. “I saw the most beautiful woman I had ever laid my eyes on. But I couldn’t have anticipated the whirlwind that became my life after. I have seen many beautiful girls. But Aria, Aria, Aria,” he repeated in slow rhythms matching my heartbeats. “You really did a number on me. It only took a few conversations with you for me to realize that your beauty was only your least impressive quality. Your mind, Aria, your brilliance, your confidence, the very way you walk and talk like the world marches to your drums until it starts doing exactly that! I have never met anyone like it. Twenty years old and you have more maturity than my mother does. I don’t think there is anyone quite like you, Aria. There is one and only one Aria Roberts, and I am the luckiest man in the world just for having your love. Make me luckier than the luckiest man in the world, Aria,” he said and reached into his pocket.
My eyes were probably swollen to twice their size by now, as I felt my whole face get drenched in my own tears, while an insufferably painful grin was plastered to my face that I couldn’t get rid of no matter how hard I tried. Zayden had said all those wonderful things about me. In my college. In front of my whole class. And my professor. The most sought-after man was down on his knee, telling me - little, useless Aria Roberts with a little apartment and a little life – that I made him the luckiest man in the whole world.
While everyone was watching.
When he pulled the ring out of his pocket, I gasped loud enough for the whole school to hear when I realized that it was, in fact an enormous piece of diamond on a ring. I felt heavy just from imagining the weight of it around my finger. All the time. For the rest of my life. Another gasp. Too much was happening too fast, and it was crazier than my wildest fantasies. None of my daydreams where Zayden proposed to me came close to living up to this very moment where the man I loved was about to ask me to be his forever.
But before I said anything…before this got real and we were together forever and I would be his and he would be mine, legally, emotionally physically…I had to make sure.
With all the might I could muster, I forced myself to produce a sound at last, “Zayden, but the divor—”
He cut me off with a kiss squarely across my lips, to spontaneous applause from the whole room. Through the corner of my eyes I could even see a confused Dr. Weber joining his hands together in continuous motions.
“Aria,” Zayden said, breaking off in almost a whisper. “It’s taken care of. The papers arrived. Just answer me now and stop torturing me. Aria Roberts, will you please marry me?”
I took the deepest breath of my entire life and said the most wonderful single word to have come out of my mouth: “Yes.”