“What are you doing?” I asked blearily.
It was 3 o’clock in the morning, and my boyfriend was crouching by the hotel room door, the light of his cell phone illuminating his face. We were staying in Los Angeles so I could cover the Season 8 American Idol finale for the website Examiner.com.
He looked up at me and froze for a second. “Nothing,” he said too quickly. “Go back to sleep.”
Weird, I thought as I rolled over to face the dark wall.
*
I typed furiously and sipped my strong Starbucks coffee. The Wi-Fi in our hotel was not stellar, and I wanted to be a good little journalist and get my coverage of the first finale night posted as soon as possible.
I was annoyed when my phone rang, but I answered it. My mom just wanted to check in, see how things were going. After a few minutes of, “Everything’s great, I’m great, yay,” she asked to speak to Jon.
I handed the phone over and watched a serious expression settle over his face. “No, I haven’t told her yet.” His voice was measured and somber. “I didn’t want to upset her…”
With that, he took off out of Starbucks.
Okay. Also weird. I paused my furious typing for a few minutes to contemplate the incident. What was he hiding from me that my mom knew about that would upset me…
When I was a high school senior, I traveled to college auditions to earn a spot as a musical theater major. My dad and I got stuck at the Tallahassee airport for eight hours on Superbowl Sunday, and I dreaded going to school exhausted the next day. He then delivered good news and bad news - good news, I wouldn’t be going to school the next day. Bad news - it was because my great aunt had passed away, and I would be attending her funeral instead. My parents hadn’t wanted to tell me prior to my audition in case it upset me too much. So now I thought perhaps my grandmother had passed away, but my parents wanted me to enjoy my time in California. I was sad, of course, but I put it out of my mind. I didn’t know for sure that this was the case, and I didn’t want to ruin my focus if it was.
*
As a seven-year American Idol super fan, getting to see a season finale in person was an honor. Not only did I get to see Ryan Seacrest announce that Kris Allen had beaten Adam Lambert for the reigning Idol title, I got to see living legends Carlos Santana, Cyndi Lauper, and the surviving members of Queen perform. For free. It was amazing.
But as soon as it ended, the pressure was on for me to get to the press room beneath the stage. Most of the journalists had been there all night and were already writing their articles. I had to run out of the theater as ahead of the crowd as I could, get my confiscated laptop and cell phone from security, and book it downstairs. Had to struggle through a metal detector and find an open table to start typing.
The press room that night was a thrill, with both Adam and Kris coming down to make statements about the experience. I took pictures and typed furiously. There was a lot of waiting - and not a lot of eating. Long stretches of time ticked by, and all I could consume were a gratis bag of Lay’s Potato Chips and a bottle of water.
I was starving by the time the press room emptied out, and my articles were not done. I felt a tremendous amount of pressure on top of hunger. I probably snapped at my boyfriend before we got in the car and headed to the only food we knew we could get quickly at that hour - Subway. Our supremely mediocre meal was accompanied by the anxiety of facing a crowd of homeless people outside the restaurant in the dark.
I wasn’t in the best state of mind when we got back to the hotel room.
Jon raced ahead of me to the bathroom when we got back. Eventually, he came out holding a giant red velvet cupcake. “Congratulations,” he said to me, presenting me with the cake. I was perplexed as to why he had taken it into the bathroom with him, but whatever. It was a lovely gesture. I put it aside in favor of a mediocre sub sandwich and a lot of typing.
*
When we got back to New Jersey, it became apparent that my grandmother was not dead, which was great. But I couldn’t figure out what that thing Jon hadn’t told me about for fear of upsetting me was, and it was driving me slightly crazy.
One day, while out for a walk around the neighborhood, I flat out asked him about it.
He hesitated. “I can’t tell you,” he said finally.
That did a lot to calm my nerves.
“Did you not get the teaching assistantship?” Jon was in graduate school, which was being funded by his TA status. While he hadn’t been told that he had lost that, he also hadn’t been told whether or not it had been renewed.
So even though that wasn’t the news he had been hiding from me, I now compounded his anxiety with my own. Whoops.
*
“Is it too much?” I asked as I came down the stairs. I was wearing a tank top that said “Cupcake” across the front, pink cupcake earrings, and a chocolate frosted cupcake necklace.
Jon’s eyes actually lit up. “It’s perfect.”
Um, that was weird. What 25 year old man wanted to be seen with a woman wearing that much cupcake gear? I guessed he was just used to my eccentricities after eight years together.
We were quiet on the train ride to NYC. Jon seemed more tense than usual, which is saying something. I spent most of the journey eyeing up the engagement rings of women around us. It was out of character for me. I was only 23, and even though I’d been dating Jon for a long time, we had decided we’d wait until I was 25 to get engaged. It seemed like a good age, and it would give us some time to get settled into adulthood. I wasn’t chomping at the bit to get married. I hadn’t spent my childhood planning my wedding like some little girls do. But on this particular day, my eyes were drawn to the shiny rocks on the hands of the women around me. It was entertaining, at least.
Jon had proposed a picnic in Central Park that day, followed by a trip to the Museum of Natural History. I could never say no to the dinosaurs. But it was a Saturday, and we weren’t used to being in the city on a weekend. We were in no way prepared for how long the subway would take with all the work that gets done on the weekends.
“Ugh!” I growled as our wait for the next train extended to nearly an hour.
My cries moved Jon to crouch and breathe heavily with anxiety. I wasn’t sure why he was taking it so hard. My frustration was always exaggerated, and I thought we both knew that. I took my emotions down a notch, hoping it would calm the mood.
We eventually made it to the Park. I was getting hungrier, but Jon led me on a wander for a while. What could he be looking for? Whatever it was, he finally settled on a spot under a shady tree for our lunch. I’m not sure what we ate, but I know the sun shone warmly on us.
When we finished eating, Jon tensed up again and took a deep, long breath. “You know how you’re my cupcake?” he asked, referencing a nickname he sometimes used for me.
“Yes,” I giggled. I mean, clearly I knew. I was decked out in all my cupcake regalia.
“Well, I was wondering…” He reached into the backpack he had brought our lunch in and pulled out a medium sized white box. Inside was a beautiful cupcake, iced with white buttercream and a pink frosting rose.
And in the middle of all that was a diamond ring.
“I was wondering if you’d be my cupcake forever.”
My heart jumped with being caught off guard. I’m surprised I didn’t sputter, “Wh..what?” Hadn’t we talked about this? Weren’t we supposed to be waiting for two more years before we got to this step?
But hadn’t we also already been together for six years? We had overcome distance and family losses, and we stood strong against living in tiny, too close quarters. What other tests for our relationship would we need?
And was there really anyone else I wanted to spend the rest of my life with?
So, caught up in all the internal confusion, I simply squealed, “Eeeh!” and jumped up and down. I picked the ring off the top of the cupcake, licked the icing off the back, and put it on. It was a little big, so I put the ring I already wore on my ring finger over the new, shiny engagement ring to hold it in place.
And now all the strange situations and nervousness clicked into place. Jon had purchased the ring that December when I was in Mexico with my friend. He had always planned to propose in Central Park, but when I got invited to the “Idol” finale, my mom talked him into bringing the ring with him and popping the question in LA.
Which meant that for two nights, he was running around downtown LA, not the safest area in the world, with an engagement ring in his pocket. My mom had texted and called to find out if he had done the deed yet. On the second night, he bought the big cupcake for proposal purposes, but I was so frustrated with all I had been through and having not had dinner that the mood was all wrong. He brought the cupcake with him when we had gone for a drive through the mountains, and that would have been a decent enough time to propose.
But he had always planned on the Park, and he couldn’t shake it from his head. Then there was a mishap with the first cupcake he bought getting squished. Then the horrible subway delays. The hangriness. He worried and worried…
… but I had still unknowingly come downstairs in my full cupcake outfit that morning. That’s how in sync we’ve always been.
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