This photo was taken on my second date with Adam, a little over two years ago. It was right when the city was in the process of turning the Broadway stretch in Times Square into a pedestrian plaza, and Adam thought it would be fun to treat it like a concrete park and picnic in the middle of it. Naturally, he was right. We laid down a blanket on the street, where we ate Virgil’s BBQ and drank wine from a box. We played Mad Libs and doodled on the street with sidewalk chalk. Tourists gawked and took pictures. Some even sat down with us and shared some pulled pork. At one point, I took the chalk and wrote “kick me” on the back of his shirt. Quickly realizing I was no longer 12 years old, and this was not the way to seduce a man, I erased it and added a more second date-friendly message. It was the most fun date I’d ever been on.
Last week, Adam suggested another Times Square picnic and recreated our second date down to our exact BBQ order and cheap boxed wine. We sat on our trusty picnic blanket and made googly-eyes at each other, and everything was the same except for the pedestrian plaza, which is now complete, painted and outfitted with tables and chairs, and us. We were no longer strangers getting to know each other via shallow questions and sloppy make-out sessions, but two people in love who share secrets and bathroom-cleaning duties. When we finished eating, Adam requested that we recreate the picture above, so he asked a tourist to take our photo, as I puckered up and laid one on him. She handed him back the camera, and when he looked at the photo, he said, “That’s weird. I don’t remember you writing that on me.” Then he showed it to me:
I immediately started crying, and Adam got down on his knee and did the whole, “I love you, blah, blah, blah. I want to have adventures with you forever, blah, blah, blah.” thing, except the blahs were actually very sweet sentiments. Then he pulled out a ring, which was attached to a miniature globe, and asked me to marry him. “Yes, blah, blah, blah!” I blubbered.
The ring is beautiful and sparkly, and best of all, the diamond came from his grandfather’s pinky ring! So with the money he saved recycling the gem, Adam explained that we were going to take a trip on our one-year wedding anniversary to anywhere in the world I wanted to go. Considering I still shop at Claire’s Boutique because I’d rather spend money on fancy cheeses than fancy jewelery, he clearly gets me. And I can’t wait to marry him.
