I see abandoned puppies every day, but this one was different. As soon as I saw that beautiful ball of black fur, I knew he was the one. What kind of monster puts a tiny Labrador puppy in a shoe box, throws him in a skip, and leaves him there to die? The vet said he was no more than six weeks old, and the rage I felt was all-consuming. I know what it is like to be abandoned by someone who is supposed to love you. There is nothing worse.
I wanted to bring the puppy home the next day, but you said no, and I was heartbroken for the first time since we met. I thought I still had time to persuade you, but the following afternoon, one of the receptionists at Battersea came into my office and said that someone had come to adopt the dog. It’s my job to assess all would-be pet owners, so as I walked down the corridor to meet them, I secretly hoped they would be unsuitable. Nobody goes to a home where they won’t really be loved on my watch.
The first thing I saw when I stepped into the waiting room was the puppy. All alone, sitting in the middle of the cold stone floor. He was such a tiny smudge of a thing. Then I noticed the little red collar he was wearing, and the silver, bone-shaped name tag. It didn’t make sense. I hadn’t even met the prospective owners yet, so they had no business behaving as though the dog was theirs already. I scooped the puppy up off the floor to take a closer look at the inscription on the shiny metal:
WILL YOU MARRY ME?
I nearly dropped him.
I don’t know what my face did when you stepped out from behind the door. I know I cried. I remember half my team seemed to be watching us through the observation window. They had tears in their eyes too, and big smiles on their faces. Everyone was in on it apart from me! Who knew you were so good at keeping secrets?
I’m sorry I didn’t say yes straight away. I think I went into shock when you went down on one knee. When I saw the sapphire engagement ring – which I knew had been your mother’s – I was overcome with a wave of emotions that I couldn’t quite process. And with everyone staring at us, I felt completely overwhelmed.
‘I think it’s best to make all important life decisions with a game of rock paper scissors,’ I teased, because I believe in your writing just as much as I believe in us, and I don’t think we should ever give up on either.
You smiled. ‘So, just to clarify, if I lose, it’s a yes?’
I nodded and formed a fist.
My scissors cut your paper, just like they always do when we play that game, so it wasn’t really that much of a gamble. Whenever I win at anything you always like to think you let me.
For the first few months of our relationship, I mocked you for using too many long words, and you teased me back for not knowing what they meant.
‘I don’t know whether this is limerence or love,’ is what you said after kissing me for the first time. I had to look it up when I got home. The odd things you sometimes came out with, along with the disparity in our vocabulary, started our tradition of ‘word of the day’ before bedtime. Yours are often better than mine because I let you win too sometimes. Perhaps we could start having a ‘word of the year’？ This year’s should be limerence, I still have a soft spot for that one.
I know you think words are important – which makes sense given your chosen career – but I have realised recently that words are just words, a series of letters, arranged in a certain order, most likely in the language we were assigned at birth. People are careless with their words nowadays. They throw them away in a text or a tweet, they write them, pretend to read them, twist them, misquote them, lie with, without, and about them. They steal them, then they give them away. Worst of all, they forget them. Words are only of value if we remember how to feel what they mean. We won’t forget, will we? I like to think that what we have is more than just words.
I’m glad I found your secret screenplay hidden away in your desk, and I understand why it means more to you than anything else you have written. Reading Rock Paper Scissors was like getting a little glimpse of your soul; a part of you that you weren’t quite ready to show me, but we shouldn’t hide secrets from each other or ourselves. Your dark and twisted love story about a man who writes a letter to his wife every year on their anniversary, even after she dies, has inspired me to start writing some letters of my own. To you. Once a year. I don’t know whether I’ll share them with you yet, but maybe one day our children can read how we wrote our own love story, and lived happily ever after.
Your future wife
xx
Adam
I slammed the chapel doors closed. I didn’t mean to do it that hard, or realise it was going to make such a loud bang. And I don’t know why I didn’t just confess to it rather than blaming the wind. Maybe because I’m tired of being told off by my wife every five minutes.