orange blossoms and silent tears

Friday night Chris and I are lying in bed. This is wonderful, because he was down here visiting me, rather than the opposite. But anyway.

He looks at me and asks...just out of curiosity, he says..."If I proposed to you, would you marry me?"

Wait a second. Did you say marry? Why yes, yes I would.

And now, for the last two days I've been in a tailspin. What to do? Why now, when I'm all the way down here and you're not planning to follow up on your curiosity with a real proposal? Does he not see how much I love him?

Then he's blind.

Does he not feel the way we are together, day and night?

Then he's cold.

He is none of these things, obviously. He says he wants to get his life together, and that he doesn't plan to get married for at least the next 3 or 4 years. But when he says it, he says "we" and refers to me as if I'm a part of his five-year (or ten-year) plan.

Could it be?

Right now I'm lying, and sighing, more than a little crying...I hate using lame rhymes, but here they are. I'm smelling orange blossoms and crying silent tears.

All I want is an answer I can live with.