Tami wasn't going to tell Kimberley about the proposal, as much as she was itching to, because she had said no, and she didn't want to embarrass Eric by sharing her refusal. So instead, when they met at the sandwich shop on Main Street for lunch one day, she said, "Eric and I have started talking about the future. Like, maybe someday after college we might get married."

Kimberley crunched down on a chip. "I'm not surprised. Jack and I were talking about how y'all seemed headed in that direction."

"Have you told him yet?"

"That I'm breaking up with him? No. I keep trying to, but then he keeps doing something sweet or adorable, and I can't bring myself to do it. But I will soon. I know I have to do it in person, as much as I hate to. Then he'll go off to Oklahoma and find some gorgeous Catholic cheerleader. He'll forget about me completely in two months."

"Yeah, sure, because that's how that works when you're in love with someone, huh?" Tami sipped her coke. "Two months?"

"How long did it take you to get over Mo, once Eric started walking you home?"

"But I didn't love Mo like I love Eric," Tami said.

"Jack doesn't love me like you love Eric either." She pointed to Tami's untouched potato chips. "You gonna eat those?"

[*]

"When you make the second proposal, our senior year of college," Tami told Eric as she cast her fishing rod from the pier into the lake, "I want it to be a surprise."

The sun twinkled on the water's surface. This was a nice, quiet way to spend a Saturday morning after their work week. Saturday was their special day.

Eric tugged at his own rod and began to reel it in. "I didn't surprise you with the first one?"

She laughed. "You seriously surprised me. But I mean…I want…"

"Something more romantic next time?"

"Yeah," she admitted.

He reeled in a tin can and cursed. He unhooked it, tossed it to the shore, and rebaited his hook. "I'm not hiring anyone to do any skywriting, you know."

She pushed his shoulder playfully, and he grinned.

"I'll turn up a notch, though," he promised. "Next time."

"So…about the sex…" She wiggled her eyebrows at him. "Wednesday nights…I'm just saying…My family's not home."

Eric shook his head. "If we're not getting married until after college, then we can't do it in your father's house. What about the coffee shop?"

"What?" she exclaimed, momentarily imagining him bending her over the counter.

"There's a backroom. After closing, before I walk you home, we could…you know…"

She often walked to the coffee shop to read and visit after she got off work at 5. Now that it was summer, Eric was working there almost full-time, from noon to the 7 o'clock close.

"Like, do it in the supply closet? Eww!"

"Nah. It's spacious," he said. "And there's a couch and a coffee table back there. It's like a breakroom. I have a locker back there. I can put a blanket in it. We can cover the couch and – "

"- Yeah, I guess we better cover it, in case anyone else has ever had a similar idea."

"We can make our own nest back there," he said. "No one's coming in there after closing."

"What about security cameras?"

"He doesn't have any back there. He trusts his employees."

Tami chuckled. "Maybe he shouldn't trust his employees, if one of them is thinking of taking a girl back there." She smiled teasingly at him. "That sounds kind of risqué for you. I'm sure you'd be breaking some rule to do that. You don't break rules, do you?"

"Some things are worth breaking the rules for." He grinned, switched his pole to his right hand, and slid an arm around her waist. "Some people are worth breaking the rules for. Please?"

"I guess it could be exciting," she said with a smile, and wondered how they would do it the first time on that couch, if he would sit, and she would straddle him. Tami decided they would.

[*]

They young couple enjoyed a summer of adventurous sexual exploration in the back room of the coffee shop, when the chairs were up, and the sign was turned, and the floor was shiny clean.

When Eric walked Tami home after their fooling around, they would talk. One evening, he said, "Did Kimberley tell you she broke Jack's heart?"

"I haven't talked to her since Monday. So she told him it's over?"

Eric nodded. "Cruel girl."

"No she's not," Tami said. "Theirs just wasn't a forever romance. It was great for what it was, for when it was. But she'll be in El Paso. He'll be in Oklahoma. Over seven hundred miles, Eric. And they're so different."

"So are we."

She slid her hand into the back pocket of his jeans. "We balance each other."

He sighed. "He's really choked up about it, Tami. He was thinking she might be the one."

"Really?"

"Well, she's the first girl he's ever dated seriously, for more than a couple months, and the only one he's come anywhere near sex with."

"I feel bad for him," she said. "But he'll find someone else. Maybe we should see if he wants to hang with us Saturday?"

"He's leaving tonight for Oklahoma. Said there was nothing here for him anymore, and he might as well get settled. He and I are going out together for one last hurrah," he glanced at his watch, "in forty-five minutes."

"Oh. You want me to come?"

"No. I mean - "

"- It's okay. Boys thing. I get it."

"Thanks." He looked down at his feet. "I hope Jack and I stay friends," he said quietly. "He's really my only friend, besides you. I don't make friends easy. But I don't guess we will. College does that."

She slid her hand from his pocket and to his hand and squeezed it. "You never know." They walked quietly for a long time, and she thought it best to take his mind off the subject of fading friendships. "When you do propose our senior year," she said, "you know you have to officially ask my father for my hand in marriage?"

"Yeah, I figured he'd be old school like that."

"Who are you kidding?" Tami asked. "You're old school like that. If we ever have a daughter, you'll want her boyfriend to come to you like that."

"Nah. That custom will be long dead by the time any daughter of ours is old enough to get married. At forty."

Tami laughed. "Because you're not letting her date until she's thirty?"

"Exactly." He smiled at her.

"Would you rather have boys or girls?"

"Three of each."

Tami stopped walking. "Six kids!"

He laughed. "Nah. Two sounds good to me. And I'd rather they both be girls."

They started walking again. "I want two, too," Tami said, "but a boy and a girl. I'm surprised you wouldn't want sons."

"I think there's less chance I'll become my father with girls."

"You won't become your father no matter what. You think I'd let you?"

He smiled and squeezed her hand. "See, that's why I love you. You want me to be my best self."

They would, Eric and Tami decided, get married the summer after they earned their B.A.'s. They would then both look for work in Austin, Houston, Dallas, or San Antonio. Tami wanted to live in one of those cities. After working for five years each at their respective careers, they would then, and only then, have their first child.

They had it all planned out, right down to the last letter, but, as the Reverend Hayes once told Mr. Taylor, "We may make our plans, but God has the last word."

[*]

Tami transferred to UT-Austin after her freshman year of college. Eric asked her to move in with him, but she refused. They fought about it briefly, but he finally agreed it was for the best that they didn't. Neither set of parents would be pleased.

They might as well have moved in together, however, for all the nights she spent in his apartment, sneaking by the rooms of his smirking roommates, and all the nights he spent in hers, doing the same.

Toward the end of her sophomore year, Tami discovered that, despite being on the pill, she was pregnant.

She waited until both of her apartment mates were out of town and Eric was spending the night at her place to tell him. Nervously, she informed Eric that they had become a part of a rare statistic, a party to the 1% failure rate.

He began to pace across the small living room. His hair soon resembled a bird's nest from all his gripping of the strands. He sat down beside her on the couch. "Well," he said, after exhaling one long breath. "I guess we revise the plan."

"This was not the proposal I had in mind," she said.

"Me either, but it's the one you're getting. So will you marry me after exams?"

"I suppose I might as well."

[*]

Eric and Tami were barely 20 years old when they got married, a year and a half older than their daughter was when she had the audacity to engage herself to Matt. They imagined they were grownups then, just like Julie one day would. They were, and they weren't. The years and challenges ahead would forge their characters and their marriage.

In late May of Tami and Eric's sophomore year of college, the Reverend Hayes walked his pregnant but not yet showing daughter down the aisle and delivered her into Eric's trustworthy hands. Then he also stepped up onto that stage and took his place between them, so that he might, with the power invested in him, join them in holy matrimony.

How life unfolded from there would require an entire book, and that's another story, perhaps, for another time. But let's leave our nervous, happy young couple at the altar, exchanging vows as they exchanged their rings, their future lives, full of shared joys and sorrows, stretched out like a colorful tapestry before them.

THE END

A/N: Sorry to draw it to an end, but I never planned for this to be a college story, and it's already near 100,000 words. A brief epilogue will follow in the next chapter to wrap up a few loose ends. Please comment!