~hahahaha!! Awwww, none of u saw that coming, and it was great!! Thought that wld be the twist no1 wld get! Pretty inevitable they’d get 2gether, huh? but no1 expected Paul to say that- wahoooo! I like surprises, hehe. Neways, I suppose ur all gonna be wanting to know why he said that now, and where it all came from, and more importantly, what Lib is gonna say!! Haha! Well, shall not stop u- read on!! Thankies to every1 who reads, spesh my lovely Hay + Lou! Ur gonna be absolutely fine with ur results, I know it. Prob fine as ur reading this, haha. And yes, I did okay in mine, am not gonna say on here tho what I got, cos its not right, hehe. Ooooh and b4 I go, quick plug- go read mine and Clo’s fic we wrote together at the wknd!!! Hehehehe. It’s the one with the long title, haha. And is only tongue in cheek with ickle Benjie, cos we love him really. No, we do. Really. :P lotsa luv, Kate xxx~
Words, which even though she understood them, made no sense to her at all.
She looked back at him blankly, still feeling like she was on the top of a huge descent of a rollercoaster; her stomach was flipping over and her heart was making the noise of a drum.
Looking into his eyes, she could see how she belonged, how she was meant to be there… but she could also see how deadly serious he looked.
And this was all ludicrous… he was proposing to her.
She opened her mouth to utter a reaction, but nothing came out- she was completely stunned.
He gave her a comforting smile and squeezed her hand again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry this is a shock.”
A shock? A shock?!
She felt like she’d just stepped off an aeroplane. In the last few minutes she’d just snogged Paul… and now he was asking her… he was asking her to marry him.
To be his wife.
Had she heard this right? Maybe she’d misheard him say ‘that was a nice kiss’ or something…?
“What did you say?” She whispered, trying to get this all straight in her head.
Paul looked down, a little embarrassed. “I knew I shouldn’t have said it, then. It’s too soon.”
Too soon?! Just a little bit!!!
He looked up at her again, and saw how her face had frozen in its state of shock- that what he’d said had gone way over her head.
“Come on,” he said, taking a step into the house. “There’s a lot I have to tell you.”
He did, Elisabeth thought to herself. Why was he
randomly proposing to her? This had to be a joke. Or a dare, or something like that.
He can’t honestly mean it… he was just her friend…
She dumbly let him lead her into the house, still feeling as though her whole voice had drained away in utter shock. She couldn’t say anything at all; she felt completely speechless.
Maybe this was a dream, she suggested in her head. You do have odd dreams, Elisabeth. Maybe this is one of them.
He led her into the lounge again, which was all dimly lit to give a now magical atmosphere, and picking up her glass of orange juice he led her over to the fire and they sat down in front of it. Elisabeth let the fiery embers warm her body, but she still felt like her whole insides were swimming.
“Here, have a drink,” Paul said kindly, handing it to her, and she took it gratefully; letting the liquid down her throat and hoping it would restore her voice.
Paul looked at her fondly, as she gripped the glass tightly, finding herself shaking, and it wasn’t because she was cold.
“Are you okay?” He asked her, and she let out a nervous laugh.
“Not exactly!”
He smiled sympathetically and took the glass from her, and put it on the floor next to them. Then he took her hands up in his own, and she looked down at how tanned they were, and how soft they felt. Then she remembered how soft his lips had been against hers as he’d kissed her, locked them up into a little embrace… ohhhhh, she felt her whole head sway.
“You have no idea how surreal this is all to me at the moment, either,” he chuckled softly at her. “I can’t believe I’m actually doing this after all this time.”
“I feel funny,” Elisabeth whispered slowly, and it was true; she didn’t herself at all.
Paul crept up closer to her and then pulled her to him, and she could wrap her arms around his body and rest her head against his chest whilst he rested his head on hers. “I’m sorry,” he apologised again, hugging her tight. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do it all like this. I really messed my timing up.”
His timing? None of this made sense to Elisabeth, she felt like no-one had given her the full picture.
“Am I missing something here?” She whispered to him, causing him to laugh.
“Ohhhh Lib, you have no idea how beautiful you are!” He said, making her shiver all over. He was calling her beautiful? Paul thought she was beautiful?
“There’s a lot you don’t know. So much I haven’t told you- I’ve had to wait so long for this moment and then I totally spoilt it by freaking you out even more!” He laughed to himself.
Elisabeth still didn’t understand- what didn’t she know?
What’s he been waiting for? And why the hell had he just proposed to her a
few moments ago?
“You… you asked me to marry you,” she said, stuttering, feeling her head sway again at how unrealistic that sounded.
He laughed. “I’m sorry! Yeah… I did.”
“Did you mean that?”
“Lib,” he said, and she felt him put his arms around her in a more sensuous way, running his fingers all across her body, and she twitched at how good it felt. “I’m gonna tell you everything now… and if you start to go giddy again, just hold on tight to me, until it all soaks in.”
She nodded, wondering what she was going to hear- hopefully the answers to all of her questions.
Paul took a deep breath, and began to speak; hesitantly at first, before gaining confidence and speaking passionately from the heart. “God… I don’t even know where to start… this past fortnight’s been like the longest time of my life! I’ve had to see you go through so much these last few weeks, with Steve, and sometimes it’s absolutely killed me! I knew what he was after, I knew he was using you like he does everyone else, but… I didn’t know what to say to you! I tried to gently warn you, but I knew you weren’t really going to listen. You just thought Steve was wonderful like everyone else- I knew this would happen- I knew you’d get drawn into his whole little game… and how much you’d fall for him… that really hurt.”
“Why did it hurt?” She asked, still not really understanding any of this- she knew it had upset Paul, but why?
He took a deep breath. “Okay… I always told you that it upset me when you were with Steve because you were my friend, and that I hated you being treated like that… but, truth is, there was more to it than that.”
She knew that had to be the case; this went deeper than just friendship.
“Do you remember the first time we met?” He asked her.
Elisabeth cast her mind back to a few weeks ago, when she’d met him and Steve for the first time, and how Paul had freaked her half to death. How she thought he was this crazy guy who was into drugs, and late night clubs, and how he’d sent this electric charge through her, made her heart beat faster and then the eyes… the first time they’d ever looked at each other…
“I remember,” she said, shifting uncomfortably.
“Do you remember… in fact, you asked me about this the other week,” he said thoughtfully. “About- about when… how I knew all about you as soon as I saw you?”
Ughhhh, she remembered that- he’d looked right inside her as well as just at her- that had freaked her out no end.
She nodded.
“Well… God, I don’t know how to explain this! I might as well just come out and say it.”
“Say what?” She asked cautiously.
“I love you,” he said, looking down at her. “I loved you from the moment I saw you.”
She felt a little shiver run through her body when he said that; it frightened her so much, but it also seemed to warm her up inside… no-one had ever said that to her before and the fact that it was coming from Paul and not from Steve… Steve had never said that to her. Never ever.
“I’m really sorry if this is coming as a shock to you, but I’ve been in love with you ever since I saw you, but I’ve never been able to tell you and I’ve waited so long and seen you be with Steve, and I-I just had to tell you, I’m sorry if the timing was all wrong. I was going to tell you tonight, I’d planned it all… but then… when you started going on about how you didn’t believe in love and all of this stuff, that completely threw me, and I lost all my confidence, I didn’t even know if I could say it anymore! But then when I was walking out… I just said ‘go for it, you have to do it now or you’ll never get the courage to do it again’- so… I’m really sorry.”
She laughed a little, his words beginning to connect with her, she began to fully let everything sink in… and he was making her feel so lovely, she was slowly being lifted with everything he said.
“You were scared to tell me?” She said.
“Yeah! I was… well, it was never the right time. It took me so long to gain your friendship, and your trust- how the hell could I tell you that I loved you?!”
Those words flowed through her again, and she shuddered. This was surreal; really, really… like a dream, a complete… fairytale?
“Besides, you were with Steve,” he added.
The whole prospect of being with Steve compared to being with Paul was like such a massive extremity- something she’d never even considered before. But she knew that being with Steve was wrong; she understood that now.
But Paul?
Paul was just a friend!
“When… when I first saw you, I thought you were beautiful,” Paul continued. “You’re just… like naturally the most gorgeous thing I have ever seen in my life! And then when we were picking up those letters that you’d knocked off the table, and I looked into your eyes… wow Lib- wow.”
She laughed, a little embarrassed. “So you did see what I thought you saw,” she said softly.
“What did you think I saw?” Paul asked, intrigued.
“Everything!” She laughed. “It was like you scanned everything I had and it freaked me out so much I had to get away!”
“So you weren’t really ill?” He grinned.
“No! I… you were too much, I had to get away from you.”
“Welllll,” he said, wrapping his arms around her tighter and cuddling her more, “ I did see all of you. I don’t know how, I just met your eyes and… there it all was! I saw how naïve and vulnerable you were by looking into your eyes, and I’ve never, ever had that with anyone before! I knew then you were something special, and that I’d fallen in love with you.”
She blushed, really touched by his words, but still not believing they were real.
Paul had been in love with her for the last 3 weeks?! Why had he never said anything, indicated anything?
She’d never seen it coming.
“And then…” He sighed. “Steve happened.”
Elisabeth could see it all now: now she knew the truth about Paul’s feelings for her, she knew why the Steve thing had affected him so much.
“When he said he was ‘seeing you’- it was awful; for so many reasons. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about you since that night. And I knew you were… well; I knew you weren’t comfortable around me, and that bothered me a lot. And I knew how shy you were, and just knowing what Steve is like, I knew you weren’t his type, that he was going to damage you so much. And I couldn’t bear that. And then the fact that you were with him… it was just awful.”
Like when I saw Becky and Steve together, Elisabeth thought. It was awful seeing them together. That’s how Paul must have felt everytime I spoke about Steve… and he’d kept it to himself!
“Why didn’t you say anything?!” She said to him, hardly believing he’d put himself through so much heartache.
He laughed. “Lib- what the hell would that have done?! You probably would have been more freaked out if I’d told you before I got to know you than if I told you now!”
True. She probably would have had a heart attack.
She looked into the fire and could feel the heat of it on her face, making her feel like she was being burned slightly. Which she supposed she was; this- all this news, was affecting her so much in heart and mind… it felt good, but she still couldn’t fathom any of it.
“Is that why you came over- you know, the first time?” She asked him.
“I was worried sick about you!” He admitted. “I wondered how you were coping! I just couldn’t sit back there and do nothing while my ‘best’ friend was abusing the girl I loved.”
She smiled happily when he said that, and felt herself cuddle into him even more. He cared… loved… her so much. The more he said it, the more right it sounded.
“And then… I couldn’t do anything, ‘cept be there for you. I had to stand by and listen to how much you liked him, and it hurt more than you will ever, ever know. All that kept me going was that you were beginning to be more friendly towards me. and then you had that incident with Steve, and when I came over all that Sunday…”
Elisabeth remembered, and now, after all that had happened and been said tonight, she could only remember one part in particular.
“When we were in Becky’s bedroom,” she said immediately.
“Yeah, then.” She could visualise him looking down at her, but she just clung tightly onto him, needing the support. “I nearly kissed you then,” he said.
“I know,” she said quietly.
They had been so close; she’d been taken into his spell. She’d got lost in his eyes again, and the electricity between them had drawn her closer until…
“You pulled away,” she finished her thought.
“Yeah,” he said simply, and that’s when she chose to look up at him.
He was looking down at her, and she looked back into his eyes. They made her go all funny inside; just seeing his face she saw him kissing her again, felt what it was like to touch him and for him to touch her… the emotion was just overwhelming.
“Why did you stop?” She asked him.
“Because I was scared,” he replied. “I was scared to make the first move. I didn’t know what you felt towards me… whether you’d resent me kissing you or not- whether you’d welcome it. And we’d just become friends! I couldn’t take that chance.”
He’s nothing like Steve, she thought in her head. Steve would have just seen the chance and seized it, because it was convenient at the time for him. Paul hadn’t been that selfish; he’d thought about her… and he’d waited.
“And so you’re taking a chance now?” She said, looking at him still.
He smiled a faint smile at her. “A huge one. Steve was gone; and the only thing that was in my way was… was…”
“You,” she grinned. “But you finally made the first move.”
“I didn’t mean to scare you!” Paul appealed again.
She laughed and gave him a little cuddle. She felt so secure in his arms like this; she’d been so afraid of getting this close to him before… but now that she was here, if felt like she’d found what she hadn’t been looking for. “You didn’t scare me,” she assured him. “You just took me by surprise, that’s all. You were suddenly kissing me!”
“I knew if I’d looked at you before, I’d have lost my bottle again,” he explained. “So I just… dived in!”
She laughed again, at how worried he’d been about kissing her- how much he’d been thinking about it!
And then she realised something, and she said it.
“I was glad you kissed me.”
“You were?” He said, utterly surprised.
She smiled. “Yeah. You were being distant with me, I wasn’t sure what was wrong. I was just willing anything to happen to make it better again… you know, you had this mistiness in your eyes…”
He arched his eyebrows up at her. “I did?!”
“Yeah,” she grinned. “Right there.” And she gently moved her finger to just shy of touching his eyelash, and then took it away again. “After you’d kissed me, it was gone. And I knew things were better.”
“And then I said something really dumb,” he laughed awkwardly, and looked away from her eyes.
Ohhhh yes. The thing which had surprised her completely, much more than when he’d kissed her- she could just about accept that, and even that he’d been in love with her all this time; even that, though it was still soaking in, she took it aboard. But the other…
“It wasn’t dumb,” she comforted him.
“Yeah it was,” he laughed. “That was even worse timing than just kissing you!”
“But did you mean it?” She said, looking at him seriously. She had to know if he meant it or not- you don’t joke about asking someone to marry you, you just don’t. There were so many emotions involved. Yet, she wasn’t sure…
“It doesn’t matter,” he said looking back at her, “whether I meant it or not. I definitely didn’t plan to say it, if that’s what you mean. It was completely off the top of my head…”
“But did you mean it?” She asked again, more forcefully.
He looked deep into her eyes, so fast that she felt something inside of her almost reach out for him, something that wasn’t internal, more spiritual… like he’d just looked into her very soul.
“Yes,” he said. “I meant it.”
He really wanted to marry her. Oh my God.
“But you don’t feel the same,” he added, looking away, and before he had, the hurt in his eyes had already been there.
But- the truth was, she’d never really thought about her feelings for Paul in that way before. All she associated with Paul was the fact that right from the beginning he’d been different. He’d scared her, especially as he seemed to have so much influence over her. but now that she knew what he felt was love, and when she looked into his eyes now all she saw was where she wanted to be. Now it was all changed.
She thought back to how they’d kissed, what she’d felt when he’d been that intimate with her, and how he made her feel now, just being with her, and she knew it wasn’t just the fire making her feel all hot and flustered… it was his presence.
“That was some kiss,” she said to him, and he looked back at her, as if quietly proud.
“It was amazing!”
“I want to do it again,” she said, and she hesitantly leaned up and closed her eyes as she felt the contact with his lips again, how it sent little electric charges through her body- not of fright, but of undiscovered excitement, and maybe even desire. He kissed her softly back, appreciating she’d been the first to kiss this time, and also feeling good that she wanted to.
What did this mean? Did she like him?
Elisabeth finished her little gesture off, and then pulled back to look into his eyes again. They were shimmering with light; gold light, and she knew he experienced the same thing as she did when they kissed.
It was heaven on earth being with him. And he was offering her more… it was like a dream come true, a fairytale.
“Say it again,” she said to him, still holding his eyes with her own.
“Say what?”
“Ask me to marry you.”
“Ohhhh Lib,” he said, letting out a little laugh. “It’s crazy, just forget it! We barely know each other and it’s way too fast, it’s not fair on you-”
“Paul,” she cut in, making him stop. “Say it!”
He looked at her, and felt all his desired intentions come back to him. “Lib, will you marry me?” He said seriously.
“Yes,” she answered, and cupped his face in her hands to kiss him, so she could feel heaven once again.