“Okay…”

“You and I have been together for a while now, and you know how much I love you and enjoy your company…”

“Excuse me! Excuse me!” A frantic woman came running from seemingly nowhere, waving her hands in the air.

“Oh good Lord…” William muttered under his breath.

“Is something wrong?” Janine said, standing up.

“Did you see a golden retriever run past here?”

“A golden retriever?” William said, irritation in his voice. Janine elbowed him.

“We’re here visiting, and we saw this beautiful little stretch of beach. Thought we would come down here and check it out but my dog got off the leash. She doesn’t know the area, and I’m scared to death she’ll get eaten by an alligator or something worse!”

“What’s worse than an alligator?” William muttered. This time, Janine pinched his arm.

The woman was obviously very upset, and Janine felt like they had to help her. “We haven’t seen a dog, but we just got here. Maybe we can help you look for him.”

William stared at her, surprise on his face. “Right. Of course we’ll help. We weren’t doing anything else,” he said, dryly.

“We have to help her. She doesn’t know the area,” Janine whispered in his ear.

For the next thirty minutes, they scoured the beach, the trees nearby and even the backyards of the few cottages that were in that area. No sign of a dog. Finally, as they were all walking back to their cars, a very wet golden retriever came running up, barking, holding marsh grass in his mouth. Evidently, he had run far enough to end up in the marshlands, and he was probably pretty lucky that he didn’t get eaten by an alligator.

“Elvis, are you crazy?” the woman yelled at her dog, as if he understood. Janine almost wanted to ask the backstory on naming her dog Elvis, but she was truly afraid the woman would spend the next half hour telling her, and she didn’t have that kind of time. She had to get back to the studio and get ready for class. “Thank you so much for helping me look. I’m so sorry I interrupted your picnic.”

“It’s no problem, really. We’re just glad you found your beloved Elvis,” Janine said.

As they watched the woman walk off with her dog, William cleaned up the “picnic that never was”. Janine grabbed a few bites of food, shoving them into her mouth quickly before they had to head back to town so she could teach class. She could tell that William was upset, but she wasn’t totally sure why. Even though she was assuming that he was yet again going to try to propose, she was starting to feel like something was always going to get in their way.

Being the woo-woo type of person that she was, that was starting to concern her. Maybe the universe was putting obstacles in their path so that they didn’t end up married. And maybe he wasn’t going to ask her at all. Maybe she was just pie-in-the-sky dreaming things up in her head. At this point, she didn’t know what to think.