The engagement

I would propose on November 15, a year after our first date. That's fairly romantic, right? Eve didn't know where or how, but she knew when. Or so she thought.

But I thought it would be even more romantic if I popped the question the same day I asked her out, which was 9 days earlier on November 6, 2007. Eve very cutely saves certain voice messages and texts, and I knew she had the first voice message I had left a few days after we met. My plan was to steal her phone, access her voice mail, and change the message in which I asked her out to a message in which I ask her to marry me.

Then on November 6, 2008 I would make dinner and casually suggest that we listen to that old message together for fun. It would start the same way of course, then it would become a marriage proposal, and by the time she figured out what was going on, I'd have the ring out and we'd both be crying and calling people and using the word "fiancee" for the first time. "I'll have the Cabernet, and my fiancee will have the Pinot."

I believe it was John Grisham who said "The best laid plans often suck." It didn't go quite as smoothly as I hoped. That Wednesday night (the night before the proposal) I took Eve's phone outside with me under the guise of having "left something in my car" that I had to go get. I struggled with passwords galore, but just couldn't get into Eve's voice mail. And by this time, Eve had discovered that her phone was missing and became understandably concerned. Since our phones look alike, I was able to convince her that I took hers by mistake, but now there were mysterious numbers dialed, which alarmed her even more.

So then I'm thinking "Do I tell her? Do I not tell her?" Disregarding all the other possible ways I could have salvaged my proposal, I told her the whole thing and proposed right then live in person. Eve said yes. And I still made dinner the next night.