Page 48 of Wishes at Water's Edge
The conversation shifted toward remembering all of the good things that people in their close-knit community had done, and Dean’s attention wandered away again. Before long, he was staring down at the tablecloth with a frown, even his delectable slice of chicken pot pie forgotten.
“Dean?”
He looked up, startled. From the perplexed expression on his mother’s face, it was clear that she’d called to him more than once.
“Yes? Sorry.”
“Is there something on your mind, honey?” Vivian asked. “You’re just sitting there staring at the tablecloth.”
“There’s definitely something on his mind,” Hazel piped up with an impish grin on her face. “He’s thinking about his multiple failed attempts to propose to Noelle, I’m sure of it. That’s what’s ailing you, right, Dean?”
Dean picked up his napkin and pretended to throw it across the table at Hazel, even though he was laughing.
“You’re going to propose to Noelle?” Samantha squealed.
“Yes.” Dean shook his head, groaning. “That’s the plan. But Hazel is right. I’ve tried twice now, but I had no idea it would be so challenging for me.”
“I wasn’t going to tell anyone until you did,” Hazel said, chuckling at him. “But I’ve decided it’s time for a familyintervention. You need more womanly advice than I can give you, Dean.”
He made a face at her, even though he agreed with what she was saying.
“You just need to be romantic, Uncle Dean,” Samantha said, as if it were perfectly simple. “Do something special for her and then get down on one knee and say, ‘Will you marry me?’” She dropped her voice, apparently imitating Dean’s baritone, and everyone laughed.
“I wish it were that easy, Sam.” Dean sighed. “First of all, I’m not good at coming up with romantic ideas. And second of all, I just—I keep getting tangled up in knots. I get too nervous or I feel like I’m not starting out right. She’s probably wondering why I keep starting these longs speeches about how much I love her. It’s because I keep trying to start a proposal speech, but then I feel like it’s going badly and I give up.”
Vivian laughed affectionately. “You know, you could just drop down on one knee and say the words. She already knows how much you love her.”
“And you’ve already done a bunch of romantic stuff for her, so it’s not like she thinks you’re not willing to put in the effort,” Alexis pointed out.
“I know, I—” Dean sighed. “I just love her so much that I want everything to be perfect.”
“But nothing’s ever perfect,” Vivian reminded him gently. “We’ll never be content with our lives if we want everything to be just so. Life is messy and that’s okay. It’s very often beautiful at the same time.”
“Mom’s right,” Julia said, nodding as she poured herself a glass of wine. “I had quite the vision for what I wanted my wedding to be like when I was a kid, and even now. I want it all to look just so and be perfect. But Cooper reminded me that things don’t have to be perfect for it to be beautiful. It’s beautifulbecause Cooper and I love each other, and we’re vowing to stay true to that. That could make any place look beautiful to us. And the same is true for your proposal to Noelle. No matter what happens, she’s going to feel like it’s beautiful and romantic because it’s a proposal. That’s romantic and beautiful in and of itself.”
“So true.” Alexis got a dreamy look in her eyes. “I remember when Grayson proposed to me. We were just walking along the beach together in L.A.—nothing all that fancy. I mean, it was a beautiful night, but there were people shouting and being obnoxious while having a party on the beach, and we could hear the traffic, but I never think about that. I wasn’t paying attention to it. All I was thinking about was that the man I loved had asked me to be his wife. It was one of the most romantic moments of my life, and I think it would have been even if he’d proposed to me in a shoebox.”
“I don’t think Noelle would fit in a shoebox,” Dean said, delivering his joke with a deadpan expression. Julia playfully punched him in the shoulder.
“What we’re trying to say is, maybe you should stop waiting for the perfect moment and simply tell her how you feel,” Hazel said, smiling fondly at her twin. “Don’t worry about making the perfect speech. Just get down on one knee and get out the four words that really matter.”
“Which are, ‘I have a stomachache’?” Dean joked with a groan.
“You won’t have a stomachache once she vaults into your arms after saying yes,” Alexis pointed out with a grin. “Come on, Dean. You can do this. All you have to do is keep it simple. You want to be engaged to Noelle, don’t you? Sooner rather than later?”
“It’s obviously causing you stress, Dean,” Vivian pointed out. “You only frown like that when you have a problem that you feel like you can’t fix.”
“Just take the pressure off yourself,” Hazel urged him gently. “Just keep it simple. I promise you she’ll be over the moon.”
Dean thought about it for a moment. At the back of his mind, he still felt nervous that Noelle might say “no” or “not yet” after all, but he had to admit that a romantic proposal was unlikely to change her answer. Noelle was an independent woman who spoke her mind under all circumstances, even though she usually phrased her answers with delicate kindness.
“I have a feeling you’re right,” he finally admitted. He smiled, his mood suddenly lifted considerably. Proposing to Noelle seemed achievable, now that his family had talked him into keeping it simple.
“I think it was meant to just be us tonight,” Julia said. “This way we had the privacy to have this conversation with Dean without anyone but the family here.”
Dean chuckled, having to agree with her. He would have felt even more embarrassed if Cooper or Grayson had been there, since they’d successfully proposed to their partners and might have found his plight silly—and of course, they couldn’t have talked about it if Noelle had been there.
“Thank you all.” He smiled fondly at the women sitting around him. “I think this was the jolt that I needed for me to see sense about all this. I’ll find some way to propose to Noelle without overthinking it or wanting everything to be perfect.”
