Page 111 of Extracurricular
“Do you remember,” she says as they wave to a pair of hikers on their way down, “the day we met, when you asked me if we could talk in your office? And I was wondering why you didn’t have your students call you doctor?”
His gaze turns soft. “I remember everything.”
“You asked if I was thinking of getting a PhD, and I totally brushed you off.”
“I believe your exact words were, ‘Sure. Why not.’ ”
“How badly did you want to throttle me?”
“I wanted to do a lot of things,” he says. “Most of which were extremely inappropriate for a soon-to-be-tenured professor.”
“Okay, ego,” she says with a laugh, but he knows how proud she is. It was almost a year ago that he was granted tenure, and she never gets sick of hearing about his classes or his research. “What do you think those versions of us would say about us now?”
“They would probably lose their minds.” He goes quiet for a moment, considering it. “Mostly…I think they’d be in a bit of shock that they could be this happy.”
“Nick.” Ramona has so much affection for those two lost souls who managed to find each other in a college classroom. She’s kept the anxiety at bay for most of the hike, but now she stops walking, the nerves stronger than the burning in her legs. “I was going to wait until we got to the summit, but I’m not sure if I can.”
“Is something wrong?”
She shakes her head. Reaches for his hand, threads their fingers together. “No, I just—you know how much I love you. And I love our life together. You’re my favorite person in the world, and nothing’s missing, except…I really want to be your wife.”
The awe on his face—she’s never seen anything lovelier. Bright-eyed and hopeful andhers.
“Are you asking me to marry you? Because”—he breaks off with a wild, disbelieving grin—“I was planning to propose at the end of the trip. There’s a ring in my suitcase back at the hotel, and now I’m wishing I had it with me—”
“I don’t care about a ring,” she says, and then he’s pressing closer, yanking off her baseball cap so he can properly kiss her. He tells heryesover and over against her mouth, and she says it back with a smile against his skin.
Incredible, she thinks, to feel like she’s home when she’s thousands of miles away from it.
They must set a record for how long it takes them to reach thepeak, but it’s worth it when they finally get there—cloudless and sprawling, an infinite blue sky and staggering hills of green. They marvel, and they kiss, and they take teary-eyed photos. Nick slings an arm around her shoulders like the two of them on top of this mountain is the most natural thing in the world.
Maybe it is.
“So. Tell me what the ring looks like,” Ramona says, and he laughs and holds her tighter.
She wanted a life like this when she stepped out of the spotlight, but she never dreamed it could truly happen. And with this man, who buries his face in the back of her neck every night, and then every day proves to her that love is a tender, honest thing.
“You know,” he says. “Taking emotional selfies with your fiancé isverynormal.”
Andoh, she loves that word. She vows to use it as much as she can—at least, until she can call him her husband instead.
“Well,” she says with her hand in his shirt, pulling him close yet again, “I had a pretty fantastic teacher.”
