I Heart Forever. Lindsey Kelk

      I held my breath as, very slowly, a huge smile broke out underneath his beard. He looked at me, and I realized there were tears in his big manly eyes. ‘This is it, this is the ring. It’s Jenny’s ring.’

      As soon as he said it, I began to well up.

      ‘Oh,’ I sniffed, scratching my cheek with an enormous sapphire as I wiped away my own tears. ‘Mason, she’s going to be so happy.’

      ‘Thank you,’ he said, draping his arm around my shoulders. Given his ridiculous lumberjack build, he had to reach down quite far to give me a half hug but I wrapped my arm around his waist as the assistant gave us one happy nod and silently disappeared to fetch a ring box. ‘Part of me can’t believe I’m actually going to do it, but as soon as I saw the ring, I knew it was right. I want to ask her right now, I don’t even want to wait.’

      ‘Don’t wait!’ I agreed, tears streaming down my cheeks at the thought of the proposal. ‘Do it right now!’

      ‘I’m going to call her.’ Mason wiped his eyes with the back of his ringless hand and pulled his phone out of his pocket. ‘Maybe she can meet me for dinner, she’s probably still at work.’

      ‘No, I know where she is!’ I reached up to snatch the phone out of his hand. ‘She’s right next door, we were having a drink at the King Cole bar before I met you.’

      Mason looked at me, confused. ‘I thought you said you were at work?’

      ‘I did but I lied,’ I said happily. ‘I forgot I was meeting you and I went to meet her but then I told her I had to go to work and – and none of this matters! Let’s go and do it now, her hair looks nice and she’s just had a manicure. She’ll be ecstatic.’

      ‘OK.’ Mason ran both of his hands through his sandy hair then threw his arms out wide. ‘I’m doing this! I’m going to propose to my girlfriend!’

      Before I could object, he grabbed me around the waist and hoisted me off my feet, twirling me around in a circle.

      ‘Oh, steady on,’ I said, grabbing his shoulder with one hand and clapping the other over my mouth. ‘I’ve been feeling a bit gippy all day.’

      Slowly, everyone on the shop floor began to clap.

      ‘Whoo!’ yelped one overly enthusiastic man in a backwards baseball cap across the way. ‘Congratulations!’

      ‘Oh no,’ I said, mortified. Whether it was sheer embarrassment or the fact a man was wearing a backwards baseball cap in Tiffany, I couldn’t be sure. ‘Oh, Mason, put me down.’

      ‘Yeah, Mason, put her down.’

      Still holding me hoisted three and a half feet up off the floor, Mason turned to reveal a decidedly unecstatic-looking Jenny Lopez.

      ‘What the fuck is going on?’

      ‘Jenny, I—’ Mason, startled, seemed to have completely forgotten what he was doing in the most famous engagement ring shop in the entire history of the world. ‘What are you doing here?’

      ‘Duuuuude, busted.’

      Backwards Baseball Cap Man gasped on the other side of the store and I realized everyone in Tiffany & Co. was watching us.

      ‘What am I doing here? What are you doing here?’ Jenny demanded. Her face was almost the same shade of red as her nails and her hair was wild. She was furious. ‘Angie left her phone on the bar so I was going to take it to the office but when I followed her out, she didn’t go to her office. She came here. To meet you.’

      ‘You followed me from the bar?’ I scrunched my eyebrows together, perplexed. ‘How did it take you this long to find us?’

      ‘Because I had to pee on my way up here, OK?’ she yelled, hurling my phone at me. ‘Someone left an entire martini on the bar and I paid seventy-five dollars for three drinks. I knew you were lying to me – tell me what the hell is going on!’

      ‘Jenny …’ Mason dropped me like a bag of hot dog shit and I stumbled forward into the glass counter. Before she could say anything else, he dropped to one knee and everyone in the shop held their collective breath. ‘I have something I want to ask you.’

      Behind him I gestured wildly for her to come closer but she didn’t move. The fury in her eyes began to shift into wide-eyed shock and her red cheeks faded to white.

      ‘I’ve been thinking about this for the longest time,’ Mason went on, inching closer to his girlfriend, still on one knee. Even kneeling he was almost as tall as I was. He really would be a handy person to have around if you needed something getting down off the top of the wardrobe. She had done well. ‘Since I met you, my life has changed completely. You make the bad days better and you make the good days fantastic – and I need you to know how much I love you.’

      ‘Oh.’

      Jenny looked up at me as she realized what was happening. From my spot at the counter behind Mason, I gave a nod so big I thought my head might drop off.

      ‘This isn’t exactly how I’d envisioned it,’ Mason said, ‘but you are the most exceptional, intelligent, ridiculous, beautiful and incredible woman I have ever met and I want to spend the rest of my life beside you.’

      He really was very good, I thought, tearing up again as I trained my phone’s camera on Jenny’s face. Impressive proposals were one of the upsides to dating a professional writer.

      ‘Jenny?’ he reached out and fumbled on the counter for the ring. ‘Will you …’

      ‘Yes?’ she said, manically combing out her hair with one eye on my phone.

      Mason opened his mouth to seal the deal but instead of saying ‘Will you marry me?’ he barked like a wounded sea lion and keeled over, huge, rolling sobs shaking his giant shoulders. Jenny looked at me with fear in her dry eyes. There was a chance this wasn’t exactly how she’d imagined this going down.

      ‘Mason?’ I said, poking him with my toe. ‘You all right there?’

      ‘I’m just so happy,’ he choked out each word in between a fresh wail. ‘Jenny, I want to ask you, will you … will you?’

      Just as I thought he was going to get through the sentence, he rolled over again, tears streaming down his face and getting lost in his beard before they pooled into a stain on the front of his plaid shirt. For the want of a comprehensible sentence, he held out the ring and squealed.

      ‘I will,’ I mouthed at Jenny over the top of his prone, checked form.

      ‘I will!’ she said, rushing towards him and skidding to the floor on her knees to plant a kiss on his lips and, most importantly, get the ring on her finger.

      ‘Congratulations!’ I shouted, circling around them with my phone, still recording the perfectish moment while all the staff and customers breathed a group sigh of relief and began a round of thunderous applause. It was like something out of a very expensive, slightly odd, fairy tale.

      ‘Dude!’ yelled Backwards Baseball Cap Man. ‘Sweeeeet.’

      ‘Yes, congratulations,’ the assistant added, while Jenny and Mason continued their celebratory make-out session on the floor of Tiffany & Co. ‘Will sir be paying with cash or credit?’

      ‘Oh, it’s credit,’ I said, handing him the credit card Mason had left on the counter before slowly removing all my borrowed baubles. Who walked around New York with thousands of dollars in cash on them? And were they currently in the store and looking for a new British friend? ‘Thank you so much for your help.’

      ‘Not at all,’ he replied, smiling at the newly engaged couple. ‘It looks perfect on her. I’m so glad he decided to go with the one-carat ring, so much more impactful than the half carat.’

      I bit down on my lip as my eyes opened up, saucer-wide at the sight of the half-carat ring still on the counter.