He Sat Me by the Warming Racks, So I Pulled the Funding novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: A Yes With a Deadline

Lowell took a small velvet box out of his jacket pocket, and his hand was not steady.

"I've had this in a drawer since Tuesday," he said. "I kept moving it to a different drawer."

"Lowell."

"Let me say it badly, all the way through."

I let him.

"I'm fifty-four," he said. "I was married for twenty-six years to a woman who would have loved you at first sight. I thought that was the whole of my life."

He opened the box.

It was a plain gold band, narrow, with nothing set in it.

"I didn't buy a diamond," he said. "I thought you'd had enough people tell you what you were worth."

I started to laugh and had to put a hand over my mouth.

"I know I'm doing this in a corner behind a banner," he said. "I wanted it to be somewhere you couldn't leave without walking past three hundred people."

"That's coercion."

"It's romantic coercion. It's allowed."

His face went serious.

"Maureen. Will you marry me?"

The pavilion hummed behind the banner with the sound of a party.

I looked at the ring and at the man, with his crooked blue tie and his terrible hopeful face.

"Yes," I said. "After the semester."

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