The Proposal

"Our parents fucked up," he says as he tosses a pebble into the still, dark lake.
She searches for a good spot around her feet and eases herself down on to the patchy, damp grass.

"Yea, it baffles me that people still want to have children. Everyone I know who has a child is doing a shit job of it. You only have to meet some random stranger who walks into you and doesn't even bother to apologise to see that the world is filled with fucked up people who had fucked up parents."

"That's a little harsh, no?" He plops down beside her.

"Is it?" She challenges him. "Look at us, we're..."

"Fucking amazing." he cuts in.

She smiles and leans in to him.

"Let's make it our new project." He says. "Let's have and raise the most unfucked up child the world has ever seen. The shinning light for all children there on to follow."

"I think Jesus beat us to it."

"Yes well, we'll have one for our generation. How do we know Jesus even actually lived and wasn't a figment of an over active imagination? This is real. We should do it."

She looks out over the lake as the moon's reflection rests on it's surface and nods slowly, thoughtfully until her neck hairs tickle.

He is watching her intently, expectantly. 

"Oh are you serious? You really want us to have a baby?"

"Yeah, why not? I think we'd be great at it because we see exactly what we have to do."

She's staring at him now, wide-eyed and incredulous but can't say anything.

"Oh, of course we don't want him or her to be a bastard so yeah,let's get married too."

She finds her voice. "Are you kidding me right now?"

But he isn't. She can see it; feel it.

"This is your proposal? How fucking romantic." She picks herself up from the grass and starts to walk away slowly. She's not mad, she's not sure what she's feeling.

He follows her. "What did I do wrong, I thought you weren't one for romantic gestures."

"NO, I'm not one for GRAND romantic gestures, No calling out my name in the middle of a crowded station and shouting 'I love you' at the top of your lungs. See you don't even know that, how can we get married. We know nothing about each other." she throws her hands up for emphasis.

"We're not even in a romantic relationship! WE don't know everything there is to know about each other."

"That's what marriage is for. We have the rest of our lives to figure this out," He says quietly. He is deliberately keeping his pace a step behind her.

A chill runs up her spine and she suddenly knows exactly what she is feeling. Fear. Pure, unadulterated, fight or flight fear. "The rest of our lives? That's a long ass time." She's sober. Flight sounds good right now.

"Not really, just 30 or 40 years more, 50 max." He catches up to her and turns her to face him.
"I've known you for 8 years. I know a lot about you because I learned you. I don't know everything but that's what I look forward to; getting to know you inside out. You know me too but you're going to learn the rest. We'll take this one day at a time. If you say you will do this with me, we'll go as slow as you want to, I'm a patient man and I don't intend to go anywhere. So don't even give me an answer now if you want. We can do this the conventional way and start a romantic relationship first."

She shrugs his hands off her shoulders and takes a deep breath, eyeing him. He slips his hand into his pocket and takes a deep breath, waiting, expectant.

She opens her mouth to speak.