NaNoWriMoDay 30- The Shoes of Baltimore

Mickey got permission to marry Jen from Lauren and her father. Her father just wanted Jen to be happy, which she at least seemed less on edge to her father. That was close enough to happiness he thought. For Lauren, she wasn’t thrilled his occupation revolved around physical activity. She told Jen that his body would eventually fail him, and that if he got in an accident or got hurt, that would derail his income. But she said if Jen was able to push him to make a lot of money now, he could use that for side ventures in the future. She also told Jen to push him into writing books because he could always earn money from his mind.

“He says this is too much right now, but I told him he needs to get it done.”

Lauren nodded approvingly at her daughter. “Yes, he needs to realize he needs several sources of income. He isn’t going to know what area is going to take off, so he just needs to fit everything in and get it done while he’s young. Just make sure he keeps up with going to the gym. We saw how he put on a few pounds when you to had your separation or whatever you want to call it. Keep him on track Jen. He can’t screw this up.”

Mickey planned out the proposal. At first, he decided it was going to be at this beautiful garden on top of a restaurant. He would invite all of his friends and would tell all of her friends to come for an end of the summer party. He would visit with her family the next day.

But as Mickey started to think about his plans, a scary thought crossed his mind. He started to worry if she would say no. They had been through a lot together, he thought, and he thought that they were better for it. Mickey thought they were able to get over bumps and hurdles early, which would mean they were going to be strong moving forward. And they did talk about kids constantly and raising a family and future plans. It seemed like she was ready to take the next step.

But Mickey was still worried that it might be too soon. No matter how long you counted their relationship, they still had dated for less than a year.

He wondered what saying no would really mean. Would it mean that it was a no for right now and she was willing to say yes down the road? Did it mean no forever and that they were going to break up? What exactly would a no mean? Before, he was 100% confident that she would say yes.

But now that he was thinking about it more, he started to place odds of 80/20 on it. As the day wore on, he placed those odds at 70/30.

As he began to doubt himself, Mickey also questioned the venue for the proposal. Jen didn’t have enough tact to say yes so as not to create an awkward scene and then say no in private later. Their friends knew all about the ups and downs, and this would be more than embarrassing if she said no in front of everyone.

Mickey then decided he would have to ask Jen to marry him in private. He booked the venue for a Saturday, so he was stuck with it. The invites were out and there was a cancellation fee if he tried to back out. So that part would have to stay intact.

He decided that he would take her to the top of Federal Hill at sunset on Friday and ask her to marry him.

But this proved tougher than he had imagined…

When he told her that he wanted to have dinner on Friday night, she was upset because there was a Fetty Wap concert she wanted to go to.

“Do you have tickets for it?”

“No,” she said. “But I was thinking about maybe going,” she whined.

“Babe, are you thinking about thinking about going, or are you really thinking about going?”

Jen started to get upset, feeling like Mickey was calling her out on her indecisiveness. “Well I’m thinking about going. I don’t know yet. Steven said he might be able to get two tickets.”

Yup. This Steven guy was still in the picture. And even though Mickey invited him to the summer party tomorrow, Steven was still trying to sleep with his girlfriend.

Would he still try to sleep with her when she was his fiancé? Mickey had to really start working to make more money so Jen could quit. He learned that Jen wasn’t going to stop talking to him, and Steven obviously wasn’t going to stop hitting on her. He thought that if he started to show the effort by working on his brand and starting a cookbook, that might be good enough for her to quit her job or at least scale back.

“Okay. I was just curious. You know I have a lot of busy sessions next week, and we probably aren’t going to see much of each other over the next two months because of all the new people we’ve been signing up. I am booked solid for a month which is great, but that also means this is one of the last weekends we will really get to hang out.

Jen still pouted. But Mickey had a point. He had spent more on online ads to attract people to his gym, and he was running promotions in his gym. He was also walking around neighborhoods and handing out flyers for a free consultation.

People get in shape for the summer, but they also need to get in shape again after the summer. They can start to lose their results after they hit the beach for one week and look like how they want to look.

She wasn’t going to enjoy being alone those next two weeks. She was still going to make Mickey promise that he spends at least three nights a week sleeping at her house. Jen figured she would just have Steven take her to lunch or dinner the other times when Mickey wasn’t around.

“Fine. What do you want to do Friday?”

“I would like to have a nice dinner.”

“But aren’t we doing that Saturday?”

“Yea,” Mickey said. “But what’s wrong with going out twice for dinner?”

“I don’t know. That could get boring.”

“Saturday is more like a party than anything. We will be with each other, but everyone else will be around as well. That means we won’t get a ton of alone time. So i thought it would just be nice if we had one night to ourselves.”

This made sense to Jen. And she thought it was thoughtful. But she didn’t want to seem like she was caving in or compromising. She still wanted Mickey to know that she was sacrificing something for him and that he owed her.

“Okay. But if Steven gets tickets at the last minute, I’m going to go. And if he doesn’t, you are taking me to the next closest place he plays. I don’t care if you have to work from 4 a.m. to 7 p.m. straight from now on. If he is playing in a city close to use, you are going to take me after you’re done working. And I don’t want you to ruin it by saying how tired you are. You are going to have to suck it up and get over it. I really want to see him live, and I’m not going to let you stop me.”

Mickey wasn’t trying to stop her at all. But he knew that if he said he wasn’t, it would just lead to a bigger issue.

“Okay babe. I promise that if he is close to us next time and you can’t get tickets for Friday, I will take you to see him. I won’t complain, and I’ll make sure I can get off work at a reasonable time so I can take you. We will go Friday and have a nice dinner. Does that sound like a decent plan right now?”

“Yes. That’s acceptable right now.”

Acceptable was Lauren’s favorite word, and Jen started to use it more when her and Mickey got back together.

They went to have dinner where Mickey took her for their first date. His palms were sweating and his knees were shaking before they even placed a drink order. Luckily, Jen saw someone she knew.

“Megan, how are you? Look at your hair! That is so cute!”

“Hey Jen! Thanks! I just tried something new! Figured I’d go for an orange/red kinda look and see how it goes.”

They explained a few more pleasantries and Megan went back to her table.

“Ugh. Did you see her hair? It looks terrible. That bitch is way too pale to pull off that color. Her hair stylist should have advised her against that. I feel sorry for her. She’s going to walk around like that, looking terrible, and no one is going to tell her she looks bad. It’s a shame.”

Mickey was worried how he was going to carry the conversation for the night being so nervous. But this gave him the perfect topic that would keep Jen busy for most of the night.

“Why do you think she did that? Is she trying to impress someone? How do you guys know each other?” Mickey knew the answers to those three questions would keep Jen busy for most of the night.

After dinner, which was earlier than Jen had wanted, Mickey took her hand and said they should watch the sunset at the hill.

Jen thought it was a warm but begrudgingly went. They didn’t speak as they were walking up. Mickey caught a few quick glances of her, the woman who would be his wife and make his world whole. He was so happy and he felt so lucky he had so many things in common with Jen. He thought she was going to make a great mother for his kids.