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The first time they noticed it was when they were sixteen. They had just started officially dating then, finally going out at everyone’s request. They thought it would be weird and awkward, but it wasn’t. It was the two of them, hanging out, like always. Only now they held hands and the lingering looks were finally noticed by the other. And they both completely fine with that.
But it was while they were on their date that another man proposed to his girlfriend. The girlfriend started crying and nodding enthusiastically. And that’s when John heard it from their waiter, “Oh congratulations! Your meal is on us!”
Three years later, John had an idea.
“Free food, Rose!” John yelled excited when the thought occurred to him. They had been going strong, and though they enjoyed their relationship, they weren’t thinking about moving forward in anyway. Right now there were John and Rose and that was perfect. “If I pretend to propose to you, we could get free food!”
“John—” Rose groaned, having heard so many of his wild ideas. And they usually ended in disaster.
“It’s perfect! We are both so horribly in debt that the only thing we can buy is noodles, and if we are lucky, McDonalds. But if I “propose””—He actually put quotation marks around the other “propose”—“to you in a restaurant, maybe they’ll give us our meal for free!”
“And if they don’t?”
Pause. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
The next night they got dressed up—John actually put on a suit and Rose had to stop her jaw from hitting the floor—and they went to a upscale restaurant, but one that was still (somewhat) in their price range. They ordered the cheapest things on the menu—just in case John’s plan didn’t pan out—and between their drinks being delivered and the food coming, John took a deep breath, got out of his chair, kneeled before Rose, and gave a I-can’t-believe-I’m-doing-this grin.
“Rose Tyler,” he said, trying to go for sincere, and hoping he made it. He heard a woman from the next table gasp, so he thought he got it. “I love you more than anything on this planet. You are everything to me.” Rose was laughing. She tried to make it look like she was crying from happiness, but he knew her uncontrollable laughter, and this was it. “Would you be my wife?"
He had a ring, but it was fake. It was actually Rose’s grandmother’s ring, something she bought cheap, but kept it in good condition. If you didn’t look too closely at it, it could look real.
Rose smiled and said yes, and they hugged and kissed briefly and everyone around started to clap. John slipped the ring on her finger and sat down—still holding her hand and covering the ring, in case anyone wanted to get a good look at it—when the waiter came by.
“Oh, I am so happy for you two! Congratulations!” They thanked him. “For this special occasion, the meal is on the house!”
John and Rose grinned at each other.
Perfect.
~*~
It had been six months since the first time John has “proposed” and at this point he has proposed about eleven times. Only once did the place not offer to pay for their meal, and though John was tempted to bail on it, Rose gave him the puppy dog eyes and the tilt of her head, and he forked over the money, wondering when it was that he just gave up refusing anything to her.
None of their friends knew about their adventures, and they kept it that way. Too many of them wouldn’t understand why exactly they were doing this, while at the same time wondering why they didn’t propose for real.
And that was something that John began wondering himself.
He knew from almost the moment he met Rose that he was head-over-heels in love with her. And the reason why he didn’t ask her out right then and there was because for the first time in his life, he was truly terrified of taking a risk. Rose meant so much to him, and if it didn’t work out…
He wasn’t willing to risk it.
It wasn’t peer pressure exactly that finally had him asking her out. It was more like he finally got the courage. Especially after all of his friends assured him (a thousand times) that Rose would definitely say yes.
But six months after they started their “proposing” John actually started looking for a ring. He wasn’t sure if they were really ready—though the words “forever” and “never going to leave you” had come up in more than one conversation—but he was sure of one thing: it was either Rose Tyler or no one. And it was that thought that made him go back to the jeweler’s every Tuesday morning while Rose was at work and before his morning class.
At eight months, Rose was getting tired of being faked proposed to, and John was sick of getting down on his knee. The restaurant offered their congratulations and paid for dessert, but they still had to pay the bill.
“Is it even worth it anymore?” Rose asked that night, head on his shoulder as they sat on a bench in a park. It was that time between winter and spring when the air if finally warming up, but it’s not that warm yet. Rose was wearing a light sweater, and John knew she was still cold. He wrapped his arm around her and she scooted closer. It was moments like this that made getting a ring a top priority.
“We’ll try it once more.” He had to do it for real. He had too.
She sighed. “Okay. That would be number fifteen.”
“I’ve proposed fourteen times!?”
“And I’ve said ‘yes’ fourteen times!” she giggled.
Number fifteen. That would be it.
~*~
John told Rose to wear the best outfit she had. It was deep purple and hugged her curves and John almost swallowed his tongue. He wore his best pinstripe suit—the one he knew Rose loved and has actually ended up on her floor more times than he can count—and made sure his hair looked perfect and the ring was in his breast pocket. The real ring. No more pretend.
The sat down at their table and John was shaking and his hands were sweaty and he knew that Rose knew something was wrong, but she thought he was sick. She kept insisting that they go home, but he told her he was fine. Nothing to worry about.
They ordered their drinks and food and the waiter left and Rose looked at John because this was usually when he slowly got up and knelt down before her. Except this time he didn’t. He couldn’t get down on his knee, because he did fourteen times already, and that wasn’t real. This was real.
He reached out and took her hand. “Rose Tyler,” he said. He loved saying her name, but he was sure Rose Noble would be better. “I don’t—You are my everything. I…” For a man who is known for talking, it would be nice if his mouth would actually work! “I love you. I have for a long time.” Rose’s usually uncontrollable smile started to fade. “And I just…I try to imagine what my life would be like without you in it, and I just see darkness. Because you bring so much light into my life and if you…I can’t imagine you not in my life, and you know what? I don’t want to. I want you, with me, forever and always. I want to cry with you and laugh with you, and I…I love you more than anything that could ever happen to us, and I want to show you that. I want to show you every single day of your life how happy you make me. And I want you make you just as happy.” He paused. Rose was looking at him a bit confused, because his proposals were never this long, nor this personal.
He reached into his pocket with his free hand and pulled out the box. The other fourteen times, he never had a box for the ring. Rose knitted her eyebrows together. He opened the box to reveal a beautiful diamond ring that almost blinged in the light.
“Rose Tyler, will you marry me?”
She looked at the ring before looking up at him. A smile bloomed across her face. “Yes! Yes, of course I will!”
He took the ring out of the box and slipped it onto her finger. They got up and hugged and kissed as the people around them clapped. She whispered to him, “This ring almost looks real.”
He pulled back, just a bit. “It is real.”
She grinned and gave a small giggle. "I know."