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The second time Rick proposes, he’s had more of a chance to prepare ahead of time. He’s had the year to save up and upgrade the stone in the ring; it’s still small, but it’s a lot bigger than it was last year. The ring itself is a pretty white gold band with some swirly designs up around the diamond, that makes Rick think of Alicia because they’re fancy and delicate. He doesn’t think the size of the diamond had anything to do with why Alicia told him no last time, but there’s no harm in giving himself a little extra boost in the ‘say yes’ department, the way he sees it.
Rick finishes his last final on a Thursday. Friday night, he takes Alicia out to dinner at the new fancy sit-down Chinese place that just opened up across from Breadstix. He orders pork that comes with these big, crazy-looking pancakes, and Alicia gets crab legs that she has to use the nutcracker thing to open and get the meat out of them. After they eat dinner, Rick takes Alicia back down by the lake where he proposed to her last time, and they watch the sunset and hold hands and make out a little.
This time, he’s not as nervous as he was last time, but he’s still a little nervous. He thinks Alicia might suspect, because she keeps side-eying him the whole time they’re sitting by the lake, but he waits until they’re standing up to walk back to his car to drop down on one knee.
“I asked you to marry me a year ago,” Rick says, pulling out the box with the ring and opening it to show Alicia. “You told me no. Do you think you might’ve changed your mind about that by now?”
Alicia shakes her head slowly from side to side. “Daniel, I still haven’t quite graduated from high school. I don’t think I’m quite ready to be engaged.”
“Well, you graduate in less than a month. You want me to try again then?” Rick asks hopefully, holding the ring box a little higher.
“Oh, Daniel.” Alicia laughs and pulls him up to standing. “I do appreciate your optimism.”
“Oh well,” Rick sighs. “I guess there’s always next year.”
The third time Rick proposes, he decides he’s got to raise the bar a little. He trades in the diamond again; this one’s only a little bigger than the last one, but the other three of the ‘Four Cs’ are supposed to be a lot better. Alicia’s at OSU now, so Rick has to be a little more careful about going to the jewelry store and then hiding the box in his room, but the plus side is that he gets to see her almost every day.
Rick finishes his last final on a Wednesday, but Alicia doesn’t get done until the next Thursday morning, so they don’t drive home to Lima until lunchtime on Thursday. This time, Alicia spends Friday with her Ma, which gives Rick an extra day to plan. He has to talk to Coach Beiste to get it all set up, but by Saturday night, he’s ready to go.
This time, he doesn’t take Alicia out to dinner. He doesn’t pick her up until it’s already starting to get dark, and he drives her straight to the McKinley football stadium.
“Why on earth are we here?” Alicia asks when he parks.
“Wait here,” Rick tells her. He jogs out to the field to light all the candles he’d set up around the picnic blanket, then runs back to the car. He’s a little out of breath when he opens Alicia’s door, offers her his arm, and says, “Right this way.” It’s only a little bit because of being nervous.
Rick escorts Alicia to the big picnic blanket he set up in the field earlier that evening, now surrounded by a bunch of candles. They have to step over the candles to sit down, and Rick makes sure neither one of them is going to knock a candle over and set themselves or the field on fire. He’s sure Coach Beiste wouldn’t be too happy about that.
“Well, this is lovely, Daniel,” Alicia says, settling in and looking around. “I’m relieved there are no Cheerios here.”
Rick just shakes his head. “Why would there be Cheerios here? Only Cheerio I ever wanted to look at was you.”
Alicia smiles at him. “Good!”
Rick opens up the picnic basket that’s on the corner of the blanket and sets out the fruit and sandwiches and the bottle of sparkling cider that the icepacks in the basket really did manage to keep cold. He couldn’t find any good plastic champagne glasses, though, so he pours the sparkling cider into two of those clear plastic cups his mama uses at birthday parties, keeping his hand around the bottom of Alicia’s cup until he transfers it into her hand.
Rick holds his glass of sparkling cider up in Alicia’s direction. “To three years,” he says.
“Three years?” Alicia echoes, then starts to sip her cider before she giggles a little. “Oh, Daniel. I’m afraid the answer is still no.”
Rick’s shoulders sag a little and he sighs loudly. “Well, you didn’t swallow the ring at least, so that’s something. Brown said you would swallow it for sure.”
By the fourth time Rick proposes, the diamond in the ring has finally crept up to one full carat. He only has one more year left of school, and that makes him hopeful that this might be the time when Alicia finally says yes. He doesn’t have a problem with a two-year engagement to wait for her to graduate, after all.
Rick finishes his last final and Alicia turns in her final paper on Wednesday, and they load their stuff up into the back of Rick’s car. Instead of putting them on 33 West to Lima, though, Rick drives around Columbus for a little while to throw Alicia off the scent.
“Daniel, where are we going?”
“Oh, was I not going in the right direction?” Rick asks, giving Alicia a big smile.
“Daniel!” Alicia shakes her head. “This is still Columbus.”
Rick makes another turn and then drives up in front of the Columbus Hotel. “I’ve got us a little bag in the trunk,” he says.
“What? What’s going on, exactly?”
“Don’t worry, I made sure Ma and your dad both know,” Rick explains. He hands his keys to the valet, gets their bag out of the trunk, then comes around to Alicia’s side to help her to her feet. “It’ll be real nice. I got us a king size bed and they even have room service here!”
“What exactly is the occasion?” Alicia asks suspiciously.
“Can’t I just take you someplace nice for a night without it having to be an occasion?” Rick asks as they head into the hotel.
“Well, you haven’t exactly done that before,” Alicia points out.
“I had to save up!” Rick insists. “Come on. I think the room’s got a whirlpool tub!”
A half-hour later, they’re checked into the hotel and Alicia’s in the whirlpool tub eating the chocolates that came with the ‘romance package’ Rick booked for the room. Rick opens the bottle of real champagne and pours them each a glass before he gets into the tub with Alicia, since it’s big enough to probably fit three or four people.
“So, Alicia,” Rick begins. “You know it’s been another whole year.”
“Oh.” Alicia looks at her champagne glass closely. “So it is an occasion, then, Daniel.”
“Only if you say yes this time,” Rick says. “So, you think you can marry me now?”
“Not this time,” Alicia says, almost regretfully.
“You wanna see the ring anyway? It’s gotten a lot nicer this year,” Rick says. “It’s just over there in my pocket.”
Alicia giggles and shakes her head. “Maybe after we’ve enjoyed the champagne.”
Rick doesn’t make any big, fancy plans the fifth time he proposes. By this point, he’s starting to think that ‘not this time’ might be code for just plain old ‘not at all’, but that doesn’t mean he’s giving up entirely. Just like he has every year since the first time, he takes the ring back to the jewelry store. This time, instead of making the diamond bigger, he gets two little amethysts added, one on each side of the diamond, because that’s Alicia’s birthstone and also because she likes purple. He puts the box in his drawer underneath his socks and leaves it there.
The weekend before their finals, Rick and Alicia are cuddled up in his bed in his dorm room. Rick rolls onto his side and looks at Alicia for a long, long time.
“Alicia Brown,” he finally says, “are you ever going to marry me?”
Alicia smiles almost secretively. “I don’t know. Where’s my ring?”
“Underneath my socks,” Rick says. “The clean ones, not the dirty ones.”
“Well?” Alicia looks at him expectantly.
“Huh?” Rick says, and then he feels like an actual light bulb lights up over his head like in the cartoons. “Oh! You mean right now!” He leaps out of bed and runs to his dresser, getting the box out from underneath the socks. He hits his knee in a baseball slide and almost collides with the side of the bed, but at least he’s kneeling like he planned to, and at least he’s got the ring box in his hands, even if his one knee’s sort of carpet burned and he’s naked, which isn’t how he’d pictured it going this time.
“Alicia Brown,” Rick says, holding up the ring box. “Will you do me the very great honor of being my wife finally?”
Alicia giggles. “Yes.”
“For real?” Rick asks.
“Really!”
“No take-backs?” Rick asks.
“No take-backs!”
“Well, then,” Rick says, then he grins and he whoops loudly. “Woohoo! Let’s get this dang ring on your finger before you change your mind!” He plucks the ring out of the box and slides it onto Alicia’s finger.
It fits perfectly.