Blue Plaid

Naked

In which Stella bares all.

//

I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping that when they reopened, I would realize this was all a dream. Because surely Tyson, who less than a year ago couldn't stand to be in the same room as me, wasn't planning on proposing.

That would be insane.

We'd said our 'I love yous', sure, but we'd technically only been dating for about three months, so it was definitely too soon to be thinking about marriage. At least, it was for me, but apparently Tyson had different ideas. Because here I was, in the world's most surreal situation, standing in a hotel suite in Paris in hand stitched lingerie, staring at a diamond engagement ring while my boyfriend put our son to sleep in the adjacent room.

It was a sucky situation all around, really, because there wasn't any way to get out of this gracefully. The mature thing to do would be to nip it in the bud immediately and tell Tyson, when he came into the room in a few minutes, that I thought it was much too soon for us to be getting married. It would be much too cruel to let it play out and hope it didn't happen, only to have to turn him down after he undoubtedly performed some sort of grand romantic gesture.

The trouble was that no matter how I went about addressing the issue, the only way I could see this ending was with my and Tyson's relationship being irrevocably changed. Maybe he would break up with me immediately, or maybe we could get past it. It might be awkward for a while, dating someone said they weren't ready to marry you, but eventually things would go back to normal and we would forget about the incident, but Tyson would forever be cautious about revealing his feelings around me.

Neither scenario sounded particularly appealing. Because I did love Tyson, but I didn't want things to change between us, not yet. I wasn't ready for more than what we had right now. This was the first adult relationship I'd ever been in and I felt like we were both kind of figuring it out as we went along.

Maybe I should have seen this coming. We were in Paris for Valentine's Day, after all. This was like the epitome of romantic gestures. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised that Tyson had planned to propose.

I was left with very little time to contemplate how to handle the situation, because the door opened to indicate Tyson had successfully put Cooper to sleep, so I shut the ring box and turned quickly to face him, holding it behind my back and doing my best to look as though I hadn't just been caught in the act of finding something I wasn't supposed to find.

His lips parted to say something, but he stopped short when he took in my attire, or lack thereof, his eyes darkening and his words coming out in a husky whisper. "Damn, babe. You're gorgeous."

"Thanks," I whispered, appreciating the sentiment but knowing that there was no way I could proceed as usual after making such a startling discovery. I needed time to think and processes. "Um, can we talk?"

"Talk?" he lifted his eyebrows in surprise as he shut the door behind him and took a step towards me, obviously confused by the mood of the situation, which was understandable, considering I had never used talking as a seduction technique before, but there was no way in hell I was going to be able to enjoy any sort of sexy time if I was too busy thinking about that damn ring.

"Yeah, do you mind?" I asked, still nervously clutching the ring box between my fingers behind my back.

The uncertainty in my tone must have alerted him that something was wrong, because he immediately stiffened, his eyebrows furrowing in concern as all thoughts of physical activity wiped from his brain and he tilted his head to the side questioningly as he spoke. "Of course not. What's wrong?"