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He reaches over to the dresser and grabs the box He hands it to ht"

He lowers hi toMrs Asa Jackson?"

Seriously? This has to be the worst proposal in history If you don’t count the one he gave this ht after he had his hand around rins and slips the ring on ht I didn’t know hell had so much sparkle

Asa stands up and walks over to the closet He pulls off the blue shirt he’s wearing and begins to choose a different one "We should ht," he says "Black shirt, black dress" He pulls out a shirt and then throws a dress in my direction I catch it "I’ll be so relieved e have our own place soon Separate closets"

My hands fist around the dress "Our own place?"

He laughs "You don’t think I’ to marry you and keep you in this house, do you?"

"Keep hing to hi it up "I had lunch with Carter today," he says casually, sitting on the bed

Lunch? What? Our class together ended at lunchtis I felt, and then went directly to lunch with Asa?

Why?

I sit on the opposite end of the bed and atte on a pair of socks "He’s not so bad I kind of like hi"

He’s already planning the wedding?

Asa slips on his shoes and stands up, turning toward the ht about who you’ll ask to be your bridesmaids? You don’t really have any friends, do you?"

You make it kind of difficult for ," I say to him "Then I had class all day I haven’t really had ti"

"You could ask Jess to be a brides Jess hates irl hasn’t looked my direction in six months, no matter how much I try and reach out "Yeah," I say "I could ask Jess"

Asa opens the bedroohtly in et ready I want you dolled up tonight for the big announcement"

The door closes behind hi

This hole I’ deeper and deeper If I don’t figure out how to cli to fill it with ceht I know this, because there have been a couple of times I’ve put some curl in it and he’s asked ht after we started dating, when he was introducing me to Jon and Jess for the first time And once on our first anniversary ent to dinner at a restaurant I reserved myself The anniversary dinner I had to remind him about three times

He said his mother had curly hair and he prefers forabout his family, other than he doesn’t have one And that one sentence about his mother’s hair is the only time he’s ever mentioned her in the years that I’ve known hi in front of thecurls to my hair Si at my hair sometimes when I put curl in it Like he wishes he could touch it-slide his whole hand through h he’ll be on the opposite end of the rooht, I curl my hair For him

Not for my fiancé

The music is loud, the house is full of people, and I’ve been inready Of course an hour of that was probably spent staring at oton all the bad decisions I’ve o see my brother on Sunday Now that his care is private pay, I no longer n his annual forms But I think I’ll schedule an appointure out what I can do to get his benefits back in place without Asa finding out