The reason why it has taken months to write about one of my tiny life’s important adventures is because I’m afraid of readers’ reactions. I’ve been taught that, when responding to a marriage proposal, the “yes” should be instant. My “yes” was not, and I’m afraid that readers—mentors and my parents’ friends, primarily; people who know what it means to be married—may think a drawn out “yes” should have been a “no.” I don’t want to be the subject of pity or concern, and given the joy and peace I’ve felt since, shouldn’t be.

I was not expecting Robby to sink to one knee when he did, and my reaction was humorous at best and worrisome at worst. But looking back, the story of our proposal is rooted in stark honesty. And honesty, the gloriously painful kind, is what has kept us together. This honest story starts at the top of a mountain.

“Let’s take a picture,” Robby said.

“We hate pictures,” I said.

“This place is beautiful, and we need more of them,” he said.

“Okay.”

He propped his iPhone against a short rock and gathered our dog on to our laps. The sky behind us was blue enough to be from a dream. Robby used his Apple watch to snap a few shots. We stood back up. I stepped on to the rock where I had been sitting and stared down at Lake Susan, glinting at the center of Montreat like a pocket watch or pendant—something I could hold. Robby took a breath.

“Montreat,” he said. “This is where we first fell in love.”

“Yeah,” I said. The view was spectacular.

He tried again. “I love you so much, Hannah.”

“I love you, too,” I muttered absentmindedly. Winter trees provided less color, but more visibility. There were cabins and houses throughout the town that I hadn’t noticed before.

“I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” he said.

I looked at him.

“You’re freaking me out,” I told him.

He removed his hat. His eyes brightened.

“Robby.”

He inhaled until his chest fully expanded. I watched it slowly collapse.

“Hannah Caroline Bridges,” he said.

“What are you doing.”

He reached into his pocket. Something shiny emerged.

“Put that away.”

His knee bent. He was smiling.

“I’m not ready to get married.”

He sunk toward the ground.

Jesus Christ.

He breathed again.

I’m going to kill him.

“Will you marry me?”

Once, my car spun across the highway. I was driving from Roanoke to Charlotte after finishing my sophomore year of college. I hadn’t slept well. My sheets were too hot. I drank ZzzQuil and woke up early, my hair in knots.

Robby hugged me before I left. We had been dating for a few months, and agreed to stay together over the summer. The day before, when he asked whether we could keep dating, hope plucked at his vocal cords like strings on a bass. A few minutes passed while I looked out the window into the evening gray. I told him yes.

I-81 stretched languidly toward the horizon. I fell asleep in the left lane. When the shoulder buzzed beneath the tires, my eyes snapped open. I yanked the wheel. The ancient Jetta dove back into the lanes, then began to spin. My body smashed against the window. Looking back, I see it from up high. The car looks like a swirling koi fish.

A photograph entered my mind as I spun. It was a small rectangle that my mother keeps tucked in the frame of her dresser mirror. In the family picture, I’m five years old. My dress is white, or maybe blue. But in the memory of it, as my car whipped across the highway, I only saw my mother’s face. She wore a plain purple dress that seemed to be a staple of the late 90’s. Her smile was calm, but strained. She never liked being photographed. The cloudy blue backdrop made her eyes look soft.

My car whipped around once, then halfway again. I remember screaming as the trees blurred. It finished perpendicular to the lanes. I stomped the clutch over and over to the background of horns coming from an approaching wave of traffic. An old couple swerved around me into the grass. I jerked the car into gear and slammed the accelerator, then chugged to the nearest exit.

I called Robby. I didn’t tell him how, just before my car stopped on the highway, he entered my mind. I don’t remember the details of the thought: whether I contemplated his face, or his sadness when he would learn of my death, or my relief that I agreed to stay with him before I died. Maybe I just pictured the five letters of his name, lined like cars in front of my eyes. But during the microsecond that I was positive would be my last, I felt him.

I don’t revisit those five seconds very often, and certainly didn’t consider them when Robby asked me to marry him. Instead, I cataloged every reason why marriage didn’t make sense. I was twenty-three, for starters. Way too young. Also, he was the first person I ever truly dated—that was some sort of red flag, surely. And I hadn’t planned for this. Months before, I had given him specific instructions not to propose any time soon. I believed that, one day, I would receive a holy epiphany that told me in bold lettering I was ready to get married. I would share the epiphany immediately, and then Robby would plan a proposal.

I hadn’t been given my epiphany yet. All I had were four years with him.

Standing on the tip of the mountain, I contemplated the times I had looked at Robby and thought, “I’m gonna marry him.” Sometimes, I said it out loud: “Robby Horn, I’m gonna marry you.” It usually happened when he was doing something normal and sweet, like picking through a container of berries or talking about what our dogs would be like if they were people. Ultimately, I would shrug the thought away; I would be ready when I had my epiphany.

I spent several minutes hyperventilating at the mountains. Robby spent this time looking up at me from the ground, smiling. His knee was digging into icy rock. At one point, I told him to stand up so I could hug him. Then, I told him to sit down beside me. Then, Orion got stuck in a bush. Robby went to free him and I ate some snow.

I sighed. We were approaching the ten minute mark, and I became aware that Robby’s phone was recording the entire spectacle. I vowed to never watch the video.

When he returned, I stood and faced him, took another deep breath, held his hands, and shouted, “Yes.” I held out my left hand and he slid the ring on. It was the size of a quarter and fell right off.

“Put it on my thumb,” I said. He did, and it slid off again.

“Put it in your pocket,” I said, and we left.

On the way down, I slid on the December ice in a weird sort of high. Robby seemed light, but generally the same. I felt mostly normal, too.

“I feel like nothing has changed,” I said.

“That’s because it hasn’t,” said Robby. “We love each other. We’ll just keep doing that forever.”

On hard days, I think back to the moment before my car stopped spinning, when something in my brain or soul reached for Robby. I hold it before myself as evidence for why it’s all worth it: that we’re destined to be together, that there’s a supernatural reason tattooed beneath the ring on my finger.

There isn’t, though. There is no epiphany. There are days of trying to be kind and nights of deciding to stay up and argue instead of going to bed angry. We have trinkets we’ve brought each other from adventures and words we shouldn’t have said and the most colorful days of our short lives and all the forgiveness we can muster. And that’s it. Nothing holy, everything sacred. I said yes to it all.

Image Credits

October Dawn on Lookout, SummitPost

Lake Susan, Derek Olsen

Open Road, Entrepreneur