Nick had a good relationship with his roommate, he did. They considered themselves friends, and sometimes they went out together. Not always, sometimes they'd go for days without having any real conversations, but it wasn't an unamicable lack of communication. All things considered, it was a fairly lucky random roommate assignment, and he was fairly certain that the two of them would end up rooming together again next year.
The boy was also surprisingly understanding and cool with having to make himself scarce from time to time when Nick needed to have some alone time with Natalie. And when the couple didn't need their privacy, the three of them hung out and all got on well together.
So, it shouldn't have been surprising to Nick when Bennett had an opinion on his plan to ask her to marry him.
"You can't propose to the girl on Valentine's Day," he said, breaking a silence they had fallen into, both of them poring over coursework. It had been nearly half an hour since Nick had said that that was what he was planning on doing; when Bennett hadn't said anything in reply, he figured that he probably wasn't listening or just didn't care.
"What?" Nick asked, looking up from what he was doing and raising an eyebrow. "Why not?"
"Because it's tacky as hell, for starters," Bennett replied with a small shrug, shaking his head. "And besides, not that I'm saying you'll ever break up with Natalie, she's a sweet girl and all, I wish you nothing but the best, et cetera, et cetera, but still. If y'all break up, she's got legal rights to the ring, and sure, what're you gonna do with it, but…"
Nick paused for a moment after Bennett spoke. He had been getting his arguments up, pulling out his mental flashcards of bulletin points about Why Marrying Natalie Is Not a Bad Idea. It hadn't even occurred to him that maybe his roommate didn't care whether or not he was throwing himself into this too young, or maybe he believed in them. The thought that someone might oppose simply because of the day he had chosen had yet to cross his mind. "Oh," he said, nodding slightly. "Well… I don't really care if she'd keep the ring. Like you said, what am I going to do with it?"
Bennett paused for a moment, picking up his phone and tapping at the screen. "This is just an idea, but I think it's a good one," he said with a laugh, tossing the phone over to him. "It's called I Do Now I Don't, and it is probably my favorite website on the internet."
He looked down at the phone curiously, furrowing his brow as all he saw at first was just a bunch of glitzy jewelry. After a moment, he realized what it was: people who had been engaged, married, or whatever else, selling their rings when it didn't work out.
"Some of the rings and all that have stories," Bennett said with a laugh. "It's the greatest."
"This is absolutely terrible," Nick said, shaking his head slightly. That didn't stop him from clicking through a few of the rings and reading some of the stories anyways, though after a few minutes he threw the phone back to his roommate.
Bennett looked down at the phone with a grin before shaking his head slightly. "Oh, right, there was a point that we were making here," he said. "Like I said, you can't propose to her on Valentine's Day."
"I think that it would be really sweet," he protested.
"The only thing worse than proposing on Valentine's Day is getting married on Valentine's Day," he said, shaking his head. When Nick opened his mouth again, he added quickly, "Don't get any ideas. I refuse to attend a Valentine's Day wedding."
"You know, some might say that you're just bitter because you don't have a special someone," he said with a grin.
Bennett just sighed, giving him a hard look. "That is absolutely not true."
"It seems pretty true to me," he said, chuckling.
"It's not," he said. "And trust me, I'm not even sure that I'd want a Valentine. Like I said, tacky."
"You're just sad and lonely."
"I think I'd rather be sad and lonely than have to deal with a girlfriend like yours," he said, shaking his head.
"What's wrong with Natalie?" he asked with a frown.
"Nothing serious," he said. "She just is… so damn enthusiastic. It is tiring and I feel like to have a normal conversation with her she'd need some Adderall or something. She's sweet, sure, but just way too much. And, you know, she has hairy toes, which she can't help, but I have to think that she can help plucking the hair in our room."
"That was one time," Nick protested.
"This is just like that time that I got a pizza with a bug on it, and then my brother tried to order pizza from the same place another time, and he said that it was just one bug one time," he said. "Do you know how many bugs is enough to ruin a pizza shop for me forever? One! One bug is all it takes."
"You're going off on a tangent here, Ben," he said with a laugh, shifting to lay down on his bed but still looking over at him.
"Right, right," he said. "I just mean, she had no qualms with bringing her tweezers over here and dehairing her toes. It's just weird. And if she's so open about that, what is she hiding?"
Nick let out a soft laugh, rolling his eyes fondly at him. "She's not hiding anything."
"Oh, come on," he said. "Everyone is hiding something."
"Not Natalie," he replied. "She is seriously an open book."
"If that's true," Bennett said, "and that's a big if… Then yes, go ahead, propose to her, marry her, right now. However, just remember, you two will have hairy-toed children."
Nick let out a laugh, rolling his eyes fondly. "I won't love them any less because of it," he said.
"They'll be called Hobbits," he said. "Or Wookies. Something with hair in unusual places."
"Those references might be out of date by then," he said.
"Woah, woah, woah, slow your roll, Duval," he said, his face having gotten dead serious. "Star Wars will never be outdated."
Nick laughed loudly, rolling his eyes fondly. "Oh my god, shut up, you're such a nerd," he said through his laughter.
Bennett chuckled, grinning at Nick. "But you love me," he said.
"Nope, I don't, I really don't," he said.
Bennett got up from his bed, going over and getting onto Nick's, climbing over him and tackling him into a hug, sending him into another fit of hilarity. "You love me," he repeated.
"No, I don't, you won't change my mind," he said.
Tightening his arms around him, he said, "Just admit it, you love me. I'd say it. I love you."
"This has got to be the gayest thing that has ever happened to me," he said, chuckling.
Bennett nodded quickly, grinning at him. "There's no shame in my game."
Nick's phone went off beside them, and he gave Bennett a good-natured shove, sending him rolling onto his side beside him on the bed. "Okay, lover boy, get off, gotta talk to the girlfriend," he said.
"You always choose her over me," Bennett said with a pout, putting his hand over his heart.
"Oh shush, you always knew that it would be like this."
"Go ahead, choose her hairy toes," he said.
Rolling his eyes fondly, Nick answered the phone and pointedly ignored the kicked puppy look his roommate was giving him in favor of paying attention to what Natalie was saying. After a few minutes of conversation with her, he hung up, stumbling over Bennett to get out of bed. "I may or may not be back tonight," he said once he was on his feet, looking back at his roommate. "Hopefully when I get back, you've returned to your own bed."
"No promises," Bennett replied with a small shrug. "Your bed is awfully comfy, and mine is covered in books. So."
"You're the worst roommate ever," he said, shaking his head.
"You could sleep on my bed," Bennett offered.
"Not helping," he said.
"I don't care too much about helping, sorry, bud," he said, chuckling. "I am just too comfortable."
Nick rolled his eyes at him, turning around to go to the door. Glancing back over his shoulder at Bennett, who was already starting to drag himself to his feet to get back onto his own bed, he said, "If you get so inspired, you could do me a huge favor and find a good, relatively cheap florist in town."
"I'm not sure that I want to do that," he said, shaking his head. "But maybe."
"Or sign up for eHarmony or something," he said. "Find yourself a girlfriend."
"I keep getting emails for something called Senior People Meet," Bennett replied with a grin.
"Well then, there you go, there's your calling," he said with a laugh, rolling his eyes fondly as he opened up the door and walking out.
As it turned out, planning a marriage proposal was a lot harder than Nick thought it would be.
He knew, in theory, that it probably wouldn't matter what he did. If Natalie was going to say yes, then she wouldn't care how exactly he asked, it would just matter that he had in fact asked.
But still, he wanted it to be special. And, just like Bennett had said, he eventually realized that a Valentine's Day proposal was incredibly cliché and probably wasn't his most creative and impressive idea ever.
He didn't want to just get her some flowers or chocolates and call it a day. He didn't want to sing to her or to hire somebody to play a song for her. He wasn't sure if he wanted to propose to her in public or in private; for that matter, he didn't know what she would want.
And speaking of what she would want, he wasn't sure what kind of ring she would want. He dragged Bennett out to the mall to try to help him pick out a ring, but even with his roommate's almost amazing ability to dress himself, the pair was absolutely hopeless.
They went to three different jewelry stores, and at each one they arrived at the same conclusion: they were miserably lost when it came to trying to pick out a ring. As far as Nick could tell, there was no difference between any of the styles of rings.
Eventually he resorted to calling Lacey, which, upon him telling her what he was calling for, resulted in a solid minute of nothing but her groaning unintelligibly into the phone. Once she accepted that fact that he was neither going to hang up or give up on proposing, she talked him through what he could look for in a ring and told him that ultimately it would just be a matter of which one felt right and wasn't ridiculously expensive.
He accepted her advice and went back to the stores to try to find something. He ended up getting one that was probably simultaneously too expensive for him and one of the cheapest rings the Kay had. But still, it was a pretty ring and he was sure that she would end up loving it just as much as she would a ring that cost thousands on thousands of dollars.
As Valentine's Day got closer, so did a snowstorm.
"We should get snowed in together," Natalie said to him with a laugh as they lounged on the couch I her apartment, watching the news. "It'll be, like, a foot of snow, so we'll be able to get out, but it's the thought that counts, I think."
"I thought that getting snowed in wasn't really something you planned for?" Nick replied, raising an eyebrow at him.
She shrugged, chuckling softly. "I don't know, I don't think it really matters whether it's planned or not," she said. "No truly romantic moment happens organically anymore. Or ever, I don't really know."
"What about how we met?" he asked.
"Oh, god, no," Natalie replied with a quick shake of her head. "That wasn't random or organic at all."
He raised an eyebrow at her. "You fell out of a window."
"Because I knew you would be walking by!" she said. "You had a pretty smile and an almost terrifyingly precise schedule, I'd had a few drinks and a little crush on you."
"No way did you know I would walk by right at that exact moment," he said, shaking his head. "No way."
"It's true," she replied, holding up her hands to show him that none of her fingers were crossed. "Though I genuinely didn't mean to fall out the window. We had some friends over, I saw on the clock that you were about to walk by, so I went to the window to point you out to another girl—Lindsey, you know her—and I guess I leaned forward too much."
"I still don't believe you," he said.
She chuckled softly, leaning forward and pressing a kiss to his forehead. "Okay," she said. "You just keep on believing in your totally romantic version of how we met, in which the girl of your dreams is wasted, falls out a window, and pukes on your shoes when you try to help her."
"It was romantic," Nick said, shaking his head, "just… not in a classical sense. It led to great things, anyways."
"Anyways, point is, we should get snowed in together," she said as she leaned forward, grabbing the remote off the table. "You should come over on Thursday and plan to spend forever here with me. Assuming, of course, your roommate can live without you." She glanced back at him with a grin, winking.
"He'll be fine," he said, rolling his eyes fondly at her.
"Are you sure? Sometimes he seems a little dependent on you," she teased as she flipped the channel to something else. "He's probably got a big ole crush on you."
"He's not even gay," he said, waving off her words. "And besides, I'm not getting snowed in with anyone but you."
Natalie smiled as she set the remote back down, flopping back down against the couch and against him. "Good," she said, shifting so that she could kiss him. "We'll have the place all to ourselves, because Holly's taking a few days off and going home for the weekend to see her own lover boy."
"I guess I have to come then," he said with a soft laugh. "You know, just so you won't be all alone here."
She chuckled, grinning at him. "I'll try and make it worth your while."
Part of Nick's plans had involved not being in her apartment. Actually, all of his plans.
Okay, if he were to be honest, he would admit that even as late as February 12th, he hadn't really had any plans that were actually set in stone, aside from their dinner reservation, which Natalie herself had actually made. All he knew was that he had wanted to go out to dinner with her and then they'd go for a walk somewhere he hadn't decided yet, during which he would get down on one knee and ask her to marry him.
(In hindsight, this half-baked plan was even less well-thought-through than he had originally realized it was: it was February, and this wasn't California or something so being outside for a long period of time wouldn't exactly be enjoyable or particularly romantic.)
So as he sat on Natalie's couch looking out the window at the snow falling from the sky outside on Thursday, it occurred to him that it was probably a good thing that he had never really figured out an actual plan to propose to her.
"How deep do you suppose it is now?" she asked as she saw that he was looking out the window again. She leaned her chin on his shoulder, gazing in the same direction.
"No idea," he said. "Several inches."
"That was your answer when I asked an hour ago," she pointed out, elbowing him lightly.
Nick chuckled softly, rolling his eyes. "Well, it's my best guess," he said.
"Oh yeah, of course," she said, shaking her head slowly. "How do you ever win bets, Duval?"
"I generally don't actually bet," he said with a small shrug.
"Ugh, I'm dating a tragically boring person," Natalie said, groaning. She got to her feet, walking over to the closed door of her roommate's bedroom. "I'm going to get a ruler, and you're going to figure out how much snow you think there is on the ground."
Nick chuckled softly, rolling her eyes as she disappeared into the other girl's bedroom. He got up and walked over to the window (the very same one she had fallen out of several months ago, though at some point between then and now she had acquired a screen), leaning against the window frame as he looked out.
Once she came back out, slapping a wooden ruler against her hand, she asked, "So, how many inches?"
He chuckled at her words, and when she rolled her eyes at him and mumbled something about him being literally a child, Jesus Christ, he said, "I don't know. Six."
"Okay," Natalie said, walking up beside him and leaning into him lightly as she looked out at the ground below them. "Eight."
"And what if it's neither of those?" he asked her with a raised eyebrow.
She slipped her hand that wasn't holding the ruler into his, pulling him towards the door. "I don't know," she said. "Whoever gets closer, I guess. C'mon, let's go outside and measure it."
Nick nodded, glancing down at what she was wearing. "Babe, you're still in your pajama shorts," he pointed out. "And barefoot. It's cold out."
She looked down at herself, shrugging. "I'll be fine," she said as they stepped out of the apartment, closing the door behind them. She turned around and kissed him softly, adding, "Besides, if I get too cold, then you can hold me and warm me back up once we get back inside."
He rolled his eyes fondly at her and pulled his jacket tighter around himself (early on in their relationship, he had tried to do the typical chivalrous guy thing and offer to let her wear his jacket, but she had laughed and refused, saying it wasn't her size) as they stepped out in the cold.
Natalie turned her head up to look up at the sky, snowflakes falling on her and nestling themselves in her hair. She stuck her tongue out, laughing as she tried to catch the flakes. After a moment she seemed to remember what she came outside for, and turned back to Nick with a grin, brandishing the ruler. "Wait, what're the stakes here?" she asked.
"I don't know, five bucks?" he said.
"Five bucks!" she repeated with a grin, turning back and stepping off the sidewalk onto the more thickly covered grass. He could see her tense slightly as her bare feet hit the deeper cold snow, but she didn't seem to care that much as she bent over and stuck the ruler into the snow.
Nick stepped in closer, leaning forward and trying to see what the ruler was measuring.
"It's about seven inches," she said, glancing back at him and laughing. "So, who wins?"
"Well, is it closer to six or to eight?" he asked.
She knelt back down, looking at it closer and squinting. "Not sure," she said.
"That probably means it's closer to six, knowing you," he said.
"Not even!" she said, looking back at him with a small frown.
Looking closer, he shook his head slightly. "No… That is absolutely less than seven."
"It's not," she said.
"No, look at that, it's definitely lower," he said. "You'd have to be blind to think it's closer to eight."
"Go ahead, keep arguing it," she said. She looked up at the sky with a grin, watching the snow drift down from the sky. "I've got all day."
Nick let out a soft laugh, rolling his eyes at her. "Just accept it, baby, you lost," he said.
"Not true," she said as she stood up. "I won."
"You absolutely lost," he replied, shaking his head. "It is not even close."
She stepped in closer to him, placing her hands lightly on his chest. "I won," she repeated, leaning in and kissing him slowly. Against his lips, she mumbled, "Right?"
Nick sighed softly, shaking his head slightly. "Kissing me will not make you win."
She pouted at him, saying, "Won't it? You love me, though. You love my kisses."
"My love for you has nothing to do with how much snow there is on the ground," he replied.
"That's just because you're not a metaphor person," Natalie replied with a small shrug.
"That would be a horrible metaphor," he pointed out. "Snow is cold and wet, which is pretty much the opposite of love. And also, yeah, like my love for you, there's a lot of it, but there's just… There's going to be way too much of it, so it's not even fun anymore."
"There's no problem with loving someone too much," she replied as she turned to head back for the door. "It's poetic. What's that Mumford and Sons song?"
"Also a bad example," he replied with a laugh.
Natalie laughed softly, shaking her head slightly. "One day, I'll have an amazing example," she said. "You'll love it."
"Maybe you are the one who isn't a metaphor person," he said.
"I might not be, but you aren't either," she said with a small shrug. They stepped back into the building, Natalie letting out a huff of air and rubbing her arms as she shivered. "C'mon, let's get back up there."
"You wouldn't be so cold if you had just stopped for a moment to put on a jacket, or, you know, shoes," he said with a fond roll of his eyes.
"Shh, you," she said with a soft laugh. She leaned towards him as she walked, giving him a light smack. "I have you to keep me warm. You're like a goddamn furnace."
Nick laughed softly, shaking his head as they went up the stairs. "I'm not that warm," he said. Shaking his head slowly as she lifted her hands and held them near him as one would by a fireplace, he added, "You're just ridiculously cold all the time."
"I am not ridiculously cold," Natalie replied as they stepped back into her apartment. She grabbed his jacket and slid it off his shoulders and down his arms, then set it on the back of the couch. Taking his hand, she said, "Let's go lay down."
He smiled softly and obliged her, going into her bedroom with her. He kicked off his shoes and pulled off his shirt (earning a thumbs up and a playful catcall from his girlfriend) before sliding into the bed beside her, tugging the blanket up over them.
Almost immediately she moved in closer to him, wrapping her arms around him and leaning against him. "So warm," she hummed, her knuckles lightly pressing against the skin on his back.
"So cold," he replied, but there was only laughter behind his voice so she didn't do anything about it, just laughed and buried her face in his neck. He ran his fingers through her brown hair, feeling the melted remnants of the snowflakes that she'd been catching.
It wasn't long after that that Natalie stopped shivering and just relaxed completely against him, and an even shorter amount of time after that that she started to snore softly. He chuckled softly to himself, pressing a quick kiss to the top of her head before closing his eyes as well.
Nick didn't fall asleep, since it was only midafternoon at that point and he didn't have his girlfriend's talent for being able to sleep anywhere and at any time. He just laid there instead, listening to her breathing and occasionally drifting a little bit into sleep before a snore brought him back to reality.
It was getting dark by the time Natalie woke up again, and she insisted on going out in the cold again to check and see how high the snow was piling up. He nearly had to force her into a pair of boots and a jacket before going outside to find out that the snow was up to about a foot.
"We're snowed in!" Natalie declared as they walked back inside, grinning as she flopped down on the couch to pull off the footwear.
"I don't think we're snowed in," he said with a laugh. "I mean, we were just outside."
"We can't drive anywhere."
"But we could still walk places if we needed to," he said, chuckling.
"Well, we're not going to," she said. "Classes are cancelled for tomorrow, and we're snowed in. Maybe you know how to handle snow, Mr. I Lived in Michigan Until Two Years Ago, but the rest of us call this weather treacherous and dangerous."
Nick chuckled as he sat down beside her. "You're exaggerating," he said, rolling his eyes fondly at her.
"Just barely," she said, leaning back against him as she picked up her laptop from the coffee table. She pulled up Netflix and they started to watch the first season of Scrubs, and a few hours later they fell asleep just like that.
When Nick woke up on Valentine's Day on his girlfriend's couch with her wrapped around him almost uncomfortably tightly, three things immediately came to his mind: 1) he was going to propose to her today, 2) they were not going to leave the apartment at all that day, and 3) he was going to have to improvise a proposal.
For a moment he considered getting up and starting to make her some breakfast. If nothing else, doing so would not only be romantic but it would also give him an opportunity to think about what he might want to do and/or be able to do within the apartment and the general area around the building.
But then she shifted over in his arms, her hold on him getting just a bit snugger, and he knew that he wouldn't be getting up soon. Besides, there probably wasn't too much in the kitchen to work with, so there wasn't really much point in trying to pull something together.
He stayed laying there for a while, not wanting to move just in case doing so might disturb her sleep. His hands absentmindedly ran through her hair as he tried to come up with something, knowing that he'd have to put in more effort to make it special and memorable now that there were limits on what he could do.
Eventually she uncurled herself like a dandelion popping up in the beginning of spring (a thought that felt out of place with winter still firmly holding onto them), letting go of Nick and mumbling, "We shouldn't have fallen asleep on the couch."
Nick chuckled softly, nodding. "That's true," he said. "I don't think we meant to."
She flopped back against the couch, draping herself over it and stretching out in order to crack her bones after sleeping in the unusual position. "We should've tried harder not to if we didn't mean to," she said.
"Right, right," he said, rolling his eyes fondly at her.
"Anyways, I think I'm about dead," she said. "My back won't pop."
"Not at all dramatic," he commented with a soft laugh.
"You don't know," she said. "I could die."
Nick shook his head slowly, finally moving to get up from his position. He lifted his arms up over his head to stretch as he got to his feet, looking down at her. "I'm going to grab some water from the fridge. You need anything?"
She paused for a moment before answering. "Um, yeah, actually," she said with a nod. "Could I convince you to fix me up a bowl of Lucky Charms?"
"Yeah, I can do that for you," he said, chuckling softly as he turned away. He had just gotten into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water for himself when an idea struck him. He brought the water back to the living room, setting it down on the counter. "I'll get your cereal in a moment, I have to go to the bathroom."
"Ugh, couldn't it wait?" Natalie asked with a laugh as she watched him walking towards the bathroom. "You're going to make my cereal with your penis hands."
"I would literally pay you to never use the phrase 'penis hands' ever again," he told her.
As he stepped into the bathroom and shut the door behind him, he heard her calling after him, "You owe me five dollars, Duval, don't you forget."
Nick rolled his eyes to himself as he opened up a drawer under the sink, pushing a few things out of the way in order to find what he was looking for. When he had gotten there the day before, he'd put the ring box in there, hiding it where he knew she never really looked. He stuck the ring in the pocket of his sweatpants, then flushed the toilet and washed his hands for good measure.
He stepped back out of the bathroom and went to the kitchen, grabbing the Lucky Charms from the cabinet. He poured it into a bowl and then added milk, glancing over his shoulder to check that Natalie was still laying on the couch before pulling out the ring again. He looked at it for a moment, hesitating, before dropping it into the bowl and watching it disappear into the cereal and marshmallows.
By the time he worked up his nerves to bring the bowl of cereal into the living room, Natalie had pulled herself to sit up finally. She smiled as he came back in, reaching out and taking it from him.
"Happy Valentine's Day, by the way," he said to her with a small smile.
She paused for a moment, furrowing her brow. "Oh," she said. "Yeah, it is Valentine's Day, isn't it? Huh."
Nick chuckled softly to himself, grabbing the bottle of water and opening it. "Such a romantic," he said before taking a sip.
"Can't help it," Natalie said with a soft laugh.
Watching her eat the bowl of cereal was more stressful than Nick ever thought something could be. He had seen her method before, how she inspected each spoonful before eating it, making sure to eat the cereal before the marshmallows. So he was sure that she wouldn't accidentally eat the ring without realizing it or anything. But still, today she seemed to be eating even slower than usual, as if she just knew that he was waiting for her to get on with it already.
Eventually, it finally showed up. Encircling a rainbow-shaped marshmallow, there was the ring, shining up at them.
Natalie frowned slightly as she looked down at it. "What's that?"
Chuckling a bit nervously, Nick reached forward and took the ring out of her spoon and moved to the floor, getting down on one knee. He grinned at her as he saw the shock filling her face. "Natalie Colette Smith," he said slowly, smiling at her. "My beautiful, amazing girlfriend."
"Nick…" she said slowly, her eyes wide and her voice barely audible.
"I love you more than I have words to say," he said. "And I never really thought that I would find someone who makes me feel the way that you do. But now that I've found you… Plenty of people have been telling me that we're too young, that I should wait, but… I think that when you find the right one, you just know. And I know with you, Nat. So… Will you marry me?"
There was a long silence between them as Nick looked at Natalie expectantly and she looked back at him with big eyes that looked like they were still deciding how exactly to feel.
But then, finally, Natalie set her cereal bowl down (less than carefully, considering the milk still in it) and threw her arms around him, kissing him eagerly. "Yes," she said against his lips. Peppering kisses across his face, she repeated, "Yes. Yes, I'll marry you."
He managed to push her back for just long enough to get the ring on her finger before she leapt at him again, kissing him as if her life depended on it.
If Nick were to be honest with you, he would tell you that the rest of February of 2014 passed by in a haze. When he looked back on it, all that he would really recall was a constant blur of celebratory just-engaged sex, congratulations from friends, more sex, more congratulations, a call with a disappointed but understanding pair of siblings, and of course more sex.
The details, he would decide later on, were not as important to him as he had thought they would be at the time.
Still, though, it was an important step in his life, an important step forward. In order to be honest, he would have to tell you that he wouldn't take back any bit of it, because throughout that month he was ridiculously happy the entire time, living on cloud nine.
AN: I swear to God, Jeff is coming soon. All of this is necessary to bring him in.