Good Friday has a special meaning to me. Not for any of the reasons it may hold for others though. Good Friday will forever be the day Dave proposed. It truly was a 'good Friday' for me! Now I'm not one to remember any anniversaries besides our wedding, but this one's kinda easy, and it's a good story :)
Let me recap the proposal, in case any of you have not had the pleasure of hearing it.
It was a typical date night. I went to Dave's parents in Orange where we met and were going to go to Ruby's on the HB Pier. The day wasn't a date of any special kind. Ruby's bore no important significance to our relationship, in fact, quite the opposite, we had never been to that location together before. He didn't pick me up. I wasn't dressed up for a fancy night on the town. He hadn't washed his car (big Dave deal). We were going to look at rings (again) the next day. This night, according to Dave, was supposed to appear so "typical" that I wouldn't have the slightest idea of what was coming.
Except for two things.
1. He was wearing new shoes. For Dave, that was just a tad odd. He hated new shoes.
2. He wore cologne. I could smell it when we hugged. He never wears cologne.
We went to Rubys. He ordered a burger, plain, fries, and a coke. I wanted an appetizer, so I ordered mozzarella sticks. The rest of the meal I don't recall. I do recall that Dave went upstairs to use the restroom, and was gone for what seemed awhile. He paid, we left. We walked back down the pier, heading to the car.
We didn't have any special plans, nothing to do after, nowhere to go. As we reached the end of the pier, Dave paused and we looked at the waves. It was dark, so we couldn't see much, so I turned to keep walking. Dave paused again, and said something that came out really cheesy and not like Dave, saying we should stay a minute longer and look at the pretty ocean. I looked at him, laughed, and said "let's go". Then he just stopped, and stared. He didn't do anything, just stood there looking at me, in a weird way, with a weird smirk. Finally, I think I said, this is weird, can we go now?! Not yet, he said, and started to pull a little box out of his pocket. I think I had known it was coming, but got so freaked out that it was happening. He pulled the box out of his pocket, reached towards me, and suddenly he fumbled the ring, and I watched it fall, as in slow motion, over the pier and land on a tiny ledge beyond the railing. My eyes went wide, and he went to carefully grab it. Except, his foot quickly slid near it, and nudged it over the edge and into the dark. I watched the box, open, fall into the night, and I could see the ring sparkle as it fell. Dave stood there, saying nothing. I took one look at him, and declared that this wasn't funny, and that I wanted to go home.
He started nervously laughing and said "Wait, I have the real one right here". He reached into his inner jacket pocket and pulled out a white box, and opened it up. Inside was the exact ring we had looked at the week before, the exact ring I had said I liked, and how I would turn it from a diamond band into a wedding ring. He had been tricky, he had been sneaky, he had been simple (and he had apparently thrown up when he went to the bathroom) all in an attempt to fool me, and it almost worked :) There was no one kneed proposal, and I don't remember anything after those moments other than saying yes (that, and that it was Good Friday). And that's pretty much all that matters.
Because I can't find our "freshly engaged" photo, this will have to do. Circa May 2007.
