Page 73 of The Bad Weather Friend

“Hardly.”

“Sugarfoot.”

“Enough with sugar.”

“Creampuff.”

“You’re terrible at this.”

“Fluffy, Floppy, Fuzzy, Frappé, Cottonball—”

“You won’t be naming our children.”

“—Cottontail, Honeybunny, Blanch. Wait. What did you say?”

“You know what I said.”

Spike chimed in. “You know what she said.”

Disconcerted, Benny said, “Well, gee, I mean, we sort of met cute, like in the movies, and I like you, and I sort of thought you liked me, but it’s not as though we grew up together or like we’ve been dating for years and years. I haven’t, you know, proposed. And yet you’re planning a family?”

“Don’t be old-fashioned,” Harper said. “You don’t need to propose. I just did.”

“Is that what that was—a proposal?”

“Well?” she said.

“Well what?”

“I won’t ask again,” she said.

Spike said, “Don’t be a dumb Benny.”

“What’s that mean?” Benny asked.

“You know what it means.”

Benny said, “How can we talk about this when I might be dead before the night is out?”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Spike protested. “Twice in eighteen hundred years is not a pattern. We already settled that.”

Harper sighed. “I’d rather you were my dead fiancé and not just my dead friend. My almost husband. That would give me something to hold fast to in my grief. But you’re going to live because I won’t have it any other way.”

Although a warm, fuzzy feeling came over Benny, he said, “For God’s sake, we only met earlier today. How can we know we’re right for each other when we haven’t known each other an entire day?”

“We met yesterday in Papa Bear’s when I served you breakfast.”

“Oh, that’s right. We’ve known each other a whole day and a half. Why aren’t we already on our honeymoon?”

“It’s marriage first with me, mister. You know, I would never have imagined that I’d propose to a man who ordered beer with his breakfast. However, now that we’ve been hanging out a little and I see how crazy your life is, I understand why you have a problem with stress now and then.”

“Benjamin,” Spike said, “you should know by now that I’m all about making your life as happy as it can be. That’s my mission. My reason to exist. So hear me now when I tell you, Harper and you were made for each other. I knew it from the moment I first saw the two of you, when you came into your living room after I’d just smashed that hideous Swedish chair.”

“I’ll count to three,” Harper said.

Benny said, “This is a huge decision, the biggest decision of our lives.”

“One.”

---