French Twist Truth: The Proposal (Part I)

         As it is well known at this point that French Twist is based on the true story of how I met and married my husband in a rather, um, short period of time, I am often asked about the illustrious proposal scene.  Unfortunately, in this case I cannot simply tell you truth or dare. :)  The scene in which Sydney proposes to Louis is a multifaceted collection of both truths and lies.  We will have to take our time on this one.  

Since this week I am revealing something true, I will reveal all true elements of the proposal.  Are you ready?  Here they are:

1) My husband did suggest going to Vegas for the weekend to get married, but never actually asked me to marry him.

2) I proposed to my husband after knowing him for five weeks. (Yes, I know I wrote six in the book, but close enough!)

3) I did give him a costume engagement ring to put on my finger after he accepted.

4) He did look at it in amazement and tell me that we might have to buy something a bit smaller. 

The whole scene pretty much played out like this:

I had planned this whole beautiful speech about how much I loved him, how special he made me feel, how sure I felt about his feelings for me - with or without the crazy - and that he had come along at a time when I thought that I would be alone for the rest of my life.  As these thoughts swirled around in my mind, I looked at him and realized two things.  One, I would never get through all of that without either crying or saying something stupid.  And two...he already knew all of that.  Louis was a man that did not need to hear all of these things again.  There was just one thing that he needed to hear.

I took both of his hands in mine, gazed into those achingly beautiful blue eyes that I loved so much and whispered, “Will you marry me?”

The look of shock on his face spooked me for a minute, but his face quickly morphed into the hugest smile I have ever seen on a person’s face.  He picked me up, squeezed me within an inch of my life and twirled me around for what seemed like ten minutes. 

When he finally put me down, he held my face in his hands and kissed me gently on the lips.  He then leaned his forehead against mine and ran his hands down my back.

“You have made me the happiest man in the entire world.”  He was breathless and could not stop smiling.  It was absolutely adorable.

“Well, are you going to answer my question?”  I grinned at him.

He laughed.  “Yes! Yes! Yes!  I will marry you.”  He picked me up and twirled me around again.

When he put me down, I reached into my bag and pulled out the ring.  “OK, then.  You will need to put this on my finger to make it official.”

He took the ring from me and looked at it.  He then cocked his head to the side and looked at me.  I laughed nervously.  “It is just a prototype.  I wanted to have something on hand for this evening.”  Maybe this was a stupid idea...

“A prototype?”

“You know, just a model of a ring that I might like....” I trailed off, wondering if I had totally ruined this.

He looked at me again.  “It’s fairly large.  Is this what you want me to buy for you?”

My hands flew to my face.  “I’m so sorry!  There isn’t a lot of choice when it comes to costume engagement rings.  All of the ones that I found were about this size.  I just chose the shape and general style that I liked.”

He laughed and pulled my hands down from my face.  “Syd, I was just kidding.  Though I think that we will have to go a bit smaller than this.  French companies don’t pay as much as American companies.”

I smiled and looked up at him.  “I don’t care how big it is.  I am just happy that you said yes.”  So that was MOSTLY true.  We could always upgrade later....

(Excerpt from French Twist by Glynis Astie, Copyright 2013.)

As for the elements of the proposal that were fictitious, tune in next week for further details!