Page 19 of For Flag's Sake
I roll my eyes. “A bit late for that. Proposals are meant to happenbeforethe wedding.”
He waves a hand through the air, narrowly avoiding his open laptop with the flippant swipe. “Not a wedding proposal. A courtship proposal.”
“A courtship proposal,” I repeat. “Like in the 1800s?”
“I do hope that we can modernize the idea a bit,” he replies with nary an amused tilt of his lip.
He’s serious.
Deadserious.
Flabbergasted, I ask, “You want tocourtme?”
“Yes.” Clear. Decisive.
He wants to court me. Genuinely and truly, my husband wishes to start a courtship with me, his wife.
At a loss, I look behind Ivy to where Etta and Mary unabashedly eavesdrop from the lobby counter. I’m hoping they’ll offer me… I don’t know. Help, maybe? Though I’m unsure what they could actually do for me right now. It’s not like they have any power over Iverson’s mental health, which clearly needs an overhaul.
I make eye contact with Etta, who raises an eyebrow. Mary bites her lip and shrugs.
Right.
I’m in this mess alone.
I refocus on Ivy. He doesn’t rush me. He sits, watching me with a calmness that unnerves me, broken only by a casual swipe of his finger across the mousepad every time his laptop brightness dims to indicate it might fall asleep soon. I eye the machine warily. Whatever’s on his screen is important to him—to this conversation.
I do not think I want to find out what it is. However, the last time I gleefully skipped about in ignorance of his plans, he took me to my surprise wedding. So I’m not sure I can afford to not want to find out what it is.
Which is worse, I ponder, the knowing or the not?
In the end, it isn’t really a question.
“I’m listening,” I say. Under duress, and unwillingness, and other synonyms that express how very much I wish I did not have to listen for the sake of avoiding thewhat ifs that Iverson could hold within his secrets.
The sneaky, schemey man straightens, and the snake on his neck jumps with his pulse. “The problem,” he starts quickly, before I can change my mind, “is that I do not believe our current situation would be amenable to a regular sort of courtship. Hence the modernizing. I believe that in order for you to have the autonomy you desire,youwould have to courtme.”
A pit opens in my stomach. “I have towhat?”
“Court me,” he repeats. “I’ve thought about it a lot, and it would never work with me leading. You wouldn’t have as much control. You’d be in a defensive position, protecting yourself against any advances I might try to make, and you’d be constantly unsure of what might come next. Withyouin charge, these issues erase themselves. Plus, it gives me the opportunity to put myself in your hands, just like when I pose for you. I could bare myself to you, to your whims and desires. Iwantto bare myself to you. I want to prove to you that I can. I want to prove to you that a life of love with me doesn’t mean giving up yourself oryour rights to make your own choices, despite what our wedding might imply.”
I stare, wide-eyed, at my husband.
All of those words were… remarkably intelligent. Particularly in the specific order he put them in. Goodness.Remarkablyintelligent. A perfect solution. If we just ignore how absolutely I do not want to do it.
How am I supposed to “court” a man that I barely want to interact with at all right now? Not to mention! I agreed to let him woo me. I didn’t agree tomewooinghim.
An excellent point, actually, and I relay it to him with haste.
He dismisses my excellent point. “I’ll still be doing plenty of wooing. Don’t worry about that. You’ll just be deciding the situations in which my wooing will take place. Think of it like the theater. You set the stage, and I make the love story come to life within it.”
“I set the stage,” I repeat weakly. I’ve done stage setting before. I’ve built the sets. I’ve painted the landscapes. I’ve worked hours and hours to make a beautiful backdrop for a beautiful love story. You know what I learned from it?
I learned that the people who set the stage get rewarded with little recognition and a lot of back pain.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he declares, green eyes shining with something akin to amusement. “And it won’t be like that at all. Part of the joy of this is that yes, you set the stage, but you also get to decide how much or how little is on that stage, and you have full rights to pass the job to me at any moment, or snatch it back afterward. This plan isforyou, not against you.”
I find it supremely annoying that not only did he know what I was thinking, but he had a pretty good rebuttal for it. “Stop being logical and agreeable when I’m upset with you,” I order.
