L: Find a GirLfriend

George and Erica (Epilogue)

Dedicated to AnimeeeFoxx, thanks for caring about the end :)

And the music? Goes to the Alternate Epilogue where... well, I'll let you read it. I'd choose "Today" by the Smashing Pumkins for the first epilogue.

I get to feel that way almost every day now.

After then, she moved in for good, and I had to start "hanging out" with her friends. It surprised me, Des seemed to... enjoy my presence before Gracie did, despite her rampant ADHD and historically short attention span.

She took it slowly, and it was ten months and eight days before she started to hint on a larger commitment. It all started with the usual seemingly insignificant morning conversation.

"When I get married, I want him to propose using this."

And she handed me a copy of unabridged "Jane Eyre" with a paragraph highlighted on the pages it was opened to.

The nest week, there was a note on the computer telling me what ring she wanted, the cost, the address of the jewelers, and to tell Oscar that it was for Ramona, with a side note saying "He knows what it means."

All this would seem demanding to anyone else, but it was all what I needed, when I needed it. I suppose Watari hinted her, I mentioned it to him once or twice.

After I had bought the ring and coughed up the courage, I remembered I had nothing planned for WHEN I would say it. Thankfully, Watari was still around, and I consulted him for input.

"Ryuzaki, do you remember what she said about her childhood in Virginia?"

"I remember much of it... She would play under the cedar trees and make mudpies, go to church every Sunday in an old Methodis-"

I looked up at him in awe and began to search for the right place.

I found a college who's last graduating class was in 1972, with a chapel full of old carpet and seventies hymnals. The chapel was hidden away towards the center, with only one stained glass window of the virgin mother.

The building was kept by an adjacent superchurch that hadn't enveloped the old building yet. It was using it to host their church camps and other activities. I was able to rent it out for a day (afternoon and evening until midnight), and then set my plan in action.

I led her, blindfolded, into the chapel. It was dim lighted by the lone window, enough to cast the room in gray.

"Oh! Wow... I love old churches..."

She walked to the altar to peer at the large bible resting on the pulpit as I ran over my lines on a notecard and pulled out the ring.

She was holding her hands on the altar rail, looking up to the ceiling when I lowered myself.

"Ramona?"

Her hair flew up from her shoulders as she turned, and quickly covered her face as she began to smile. She hated her smile.

"I-" and I cleared my throat, "I have for the first time found what I can truly love-I have found you. You are my sympathy- my better self- my good angel- I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my center and spring of life, wraps my existence about you- and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one."

I still remember that phrase in verbatim.

She was so exited she was nearly squealing, obviously taken by surprise even though it was her who suggested these things.