Don't own them.  If I did I'd take better care of them than certain people did last night.

Yep. Still bitter.

xoxoxo

He lied.

When he had been giving Michael advice on inter-office romance he pretty much lied through his teeth.  Because sometimes?  Love is just like that.  It's a punch in your gut that leaves you stammering and planning ten years into the future just because she smiles.

Of course, today hadn't been the first time he thought of proposing.  No, that would actually be the day he first met her, if he was honest with himself.  There had been a fleeting thought when his eyes first met hers that maybe she might be the one.

And when she laughed at something he'd said over lunch he'd been slightly surer than before.

Through the years the calendar became both his enemy and his friend.  One day it felt as if he'd blinked and suddenly it had been three years of knowing she was still waiting for another guy to step up, three years spent trying to find something about her that would make him change his mind.

Because if he was right about what this thing was, he couldn't sit by and let it slip away.

The moments began to pile up, the times he thought he must be crazy to even be thinking of her in that way were fewer and farther between.  Each prank, each glance, each second he shared with her began to mean much more than it should.

They were just friends - after all.

And then there was the night that she had lied, which almost changed everything.

This job sometimes (most times) numbed his mind.  He knew he could do it in his sleep, sometimes felt as if he did.  But as hard as he tried to deny it, he belonged here.  This job was the thing that kept him close to her, helped him get the distance he thought he'd wanted; this job gave him the chance to move on. 

And when he'd realized his mistake, it also gave him a chance to come back.

When he sat across from her that first night, with his hair too short and his tie too tight, feeling a bit uncomfortable in his own skin he'd wanted to ask her.  More than that - he knew that he just might have if he'd had the presence of mind to stop at a jeweler on his way back from New York.

A week later he made sure he'd never have that excuse again.

He'd begun to tease her about it, because, well, that's what they do.  It had been fun - at first.  But recently he'd begun to notice that every time her name escaped his lips she was waiting for him to continue.   Every time he'd pretend to ask he became that much more confident of her answer.

Being so sure made him cocky.  The way things were now, sometimes it was easy to forget the way they used to be.

She had this way of making him feel invincible, it's how he was able to close the sale, stick it to Ryan, and make sure their plans for the future wouldn't be thwarted.   But as the fireworks filled the sky, her chin rested on his shoulder and Andy's voice rang in his ears he knew that he'd done the one thing he'd sworn he'd never do. 

He'd taken it all for granted.

As they'd said their goodbyes (to Toby and to everyone else) and made their way to his car her hand slipped into his.  He'd squeezed her fingers gently and glanced at her sideways when he'd realized she didn't squeeze back.  The box in his pocket sat like a stone, dragging them both down lower with each step they took.

So it had been then that he'd made her stop and turn to face him and it had been then that he saw the disappointment in her eyes.  It had been then that he decided he had waited long enough.

In the end he realized there'd been no need for fireworks, or grand plans.   In the end he'd found out he didn't really even need the ring (though the look on her face as he slipped it on her finger said otherwise).   As her arms closed around him and her lips sought his he'd been reminded of what he'd always known.

In the end - all he'd needed was the truth.