I think I wanna marry you
Frances looked over sharply at the red headed man still sitting at the bar, one of the last ones in the building. He had his head resting in his hand, elbow on the wooden surface, and a strange look in his eye. “If it were anyone else, I would say you were drunk,” Frances replied, trying not to show how flustered the words made her feel. It wasn’t that she had never been proposed to before. It happened on an almost nightly basis. Drunken sods and besotted young men with stars in their eyes and a desired notch for their belt. Old men, young men, middle aged men, she had seen and served them all. But she never took their flirtations or solicitations seriously. It was safer that way. She smiled and winked, but never lingered, never led them on.
She had originally thought Gideon was more of the same. She thought he had seen her at the Ministry that day and put her up on a pedestal, then came to the bar to worship at the feet of the perceived angel. Frances wasn’t interested in any of that. Then she had thought he was there because she was a challenge. He tried all the cliched pick up lines–and even some new ones. He flexed and flaunted and hemmed and hawed. She had written him off as a meathead, a gym rat, concerned with his holy body (who came to the bar so often after all and didn’t drink?) and his next lay.
That had changed though. He jumped to her defense amongst the other patrons–whether she needed it or not. It exasperated and amused her to no end when she would come out from the back and have so many looking around innocently and/or shamefaced, and Gideon himself looking both innocent and smug at the same time.
He opened doors for others, and helped her whenever she was carrying anything heavy. And no amount of saying she was fine would send him away. He was persistent, she would give him that much. And he had grown on her. She half expected to see at least one red head sitting at the bar most nights these days. But she would never admit to being disappointed when she didn’t.
“In your case, I’ll just put it down to being over tired and working yourself too hard at the gym,” she said with a soft smile, and ignoring the blush on her own cheeks and fluttering in her stomach.
