Chapter 88
She felt Bethany shrug under her. “At this point, I don’t care if she does or not. I want to do it for us. For me.”
Gently Dana unwrapped her arms from Bethany’s shoulders, then pulled out the chair beside her lover to sit down. Reaching into her pocket, she extracted the ring she’d deposited there earlier. She had left the box in the bedroom, so she held the ring between her forefinger and thumb with the heart-shaped diamond displayed towards Bethany.
Bethany gasped when she saw the ring. “Dana,” she sighed, her voice filling with tears. “Where did you…?”
“Bethy, I know this isn’t much,” Dana told her. “It’s an old ring of mine, but it’s a real diamond.”
“It’s gorgeous.” Bethany held her breath as she stared at it.
Dana waited.
When Bethany finally raised her gaze to meet Dana’s, Dana asked, “I know it means so much to you, and I would be honored if you would marry me.”
Bethany surged to her feet and pulled Dana into a tight embrace. “Oh, yes!” she crowed. “A million times yes! Let’s leave tonight.”
Dana laughed, surprised. “Tonight?” She took a step back and saw the look on Bethany’s face. “Wait. Are you serious?”
“Why not?” Bethany asked.
Because Dana didn’t have an answer to that, she laughed again. Yeah, why the hell not?
* * * *
While reading about the first gay marriages online, Bethany had learned Massachusetts had a three day waiting period between filling out the marriage application and obtaining a license. So she thought they should pack enough for a short stay. “No more than a week,” she reasoned. “We’ll take the train up tonight, apply in the morning—”
“Wait in line with every other gay couple in America,” Dana scoffed. “Boston will look like the largest pride parade in the world in a few days. You do know that, right?”
Bethany shot her a sardonic look. “We live in Manhattan, hello? There’s no wayit’s going to be more crowded than the L at rush hour. Nothingis.”
“Does Boston even have a subway?” Dana asked. “How are we going to get from the train station to the courthouse?”
But Bethany shrugged off the question. “I’ll rent a car if I have to. We’ll get a hotel room, wait in line all day tomorrow if that’s what it takes to fill out the application, and then spend the weekend seeing the sights. No, I’ll definitely get a car—I’ve never been to Boston.”
“Me, either.” Dana had to admit the thought of a weekend getaway was more than a little exciting. She’d already called her boss at the bookstore to say she needed to take an unexpected trip out of town. “So is the waiting period business days, or will the weekend count?”
Shrugging, Bethany admitted, “I don’t know, we’ll figure it out. We’ll stay a few extra days as a honeymoon—it won’t be anything glamorous, I’m afraid, since there’s a staff meeting next Thursday I absolutely can’t miss, but after graduation, we’ll schedule something better. Something decadent.” She took Dana’s hand in hers and smiled seductively. “What do you say? Ready to do this?”
“Are we going to use your last name or mine?” Dana asked.
“How about both?” Bethany countered. “Bartlett-Kelly sounds pretty good. Or Kelly-Bartlett.”
Dana wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, no, let’s go with the first one. Maybe it’s the library nerd in me, but there’s just something sexy about alphabetical order.”
“There’s something sexy about you,” Bethany teased, giving her a lingering kiss, “and once we get to Boston, I plan on showing you exactly what it is.”
“What happened to no sex before the wedding?” Dana joked.
Bethany laughed. “Too late now. You should’ve thought of that years ago.”
* * * *
It took about five hours to get from Manhattan to Boston from train, including the subway ride from their apartment to the train station, and the cab ride from the station in Boston to a hotel. By the time they settled in for the night, it was almost midnight and both Dana and Bethany were too exhausted to even unpack. They simply crashed on the bed, fully clothed, and were asleep within minutes.
So much for premarital sex.
In the morning, they looked through tourist brochures as they ate breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant and found a few things they wanted to do before leaving the city. Then Bethany had the manager at the front desk call Enterprise to deliver a rental car. By the time it arrived, they were dressed and ready to head downtown to City Hall.