Vignette:Til Death...

alentijn can’t help but think about how this all started.

In a quiet coffee shop too many years ago, he bumped into the rudest woman he’d had the displeasure of meeting. The pair had to be dragged out by the mall security, lest they turn the mall into rubble in their ensuing scuffle. As the dust settled, he hoped he’d never have to come across her face again.

Fate dictated otherwise; he found her again at the company’s welcoming party for the new recruits. He could remember his head pounding with anger and confusion as he flipped through the employee files; she’d been working under him for just over two years, and to find out this way sent his papers flying across his office and his temper out the roof.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, the business trip to New Valentina forced him to sit next to her for hours on end on the plane. He could remember the moment she shot up from her seat, rushing to the bathroom as she covered her mouth. He didn’t feel like laughing in her face after that whole debacle. It’d be rude, after all.

When she showed up at the stockholder’s meeting not long after the vomiting debacle as his assistant, he tried his best to keep things natural. When he ended up blackout drunk during the afterparty, he woke up in a messy hotel room staring at her face. They both agreed to call what happened a mistake, but he wasn’t sure if he meant those words.

It got uncomfortably awkward at work. She tiptoed around him, and he tiptoed around her; at some point, they both decided to drop the spiel and start dating in secret. When that fell through and news of their relationship spread through work, quite a bit changed; her coworkers started trying to appease her to get a chance to nab a promotion, and his partners started trying to talk him out of this relationship. Behind every corner, someone was gossiping about them.

Despite all of their hardships, they trudged through it together. When the worst came to pass for him at his grandmother’s funeral, she was by his side as he cried into her warm arms, listening to her words of comfort. When she ended up in a hospital bed, he could only repay her by clutching her hand tightly, never letting go even when he himself passed out.

He still has so much to repay her for. As he shakily gets down on one knee, he thinks:

I’m too lucky.