Perfect Proposal, Part 2

When I last left off, Mark had asked me to dinner and told me to wear something nice. I convinced myself not to get my hopes up, and assumed he just wanted to go out to dinner somewhere nice, nothing more. That Friday at work, I wouldn't even let myself think about our plans, because I was always hyping our dates up and expecting anything and everything to be THE NIGHT when he proposed.

He told me to leave work right when I got off and go change, because he wanted to go eat dinner early (clue # 1 that this was something unusual!), so I raced out of the office at 4:00 on the dot. When I got up to my apartment and unlocked the door, I jumped because he was already in my living room, dressed nice and waiting (clue #2! Why did he leave work early?). At this point, I am still ignoring all the signs that something is up, and proceeding as if all of this is totally normal.

"Oh hi! You scared me. I didn't expcet you to be here already.. is that what you're wearing?"

Now to prove to myself that I wasn't expceting anything at all to happen, I hadn't even thought about what I was going to wear. When I saw Mark in his Sunday best (so out of character for him!) and could tell he was anxiously waiting to leave for dinner (Ummm why? It's only 4:15!), I scrambled into my closet and tried to quickly pick something out. I grabbed a dress that I had always liked and put on a pair of dressier than usual shoes. In my head I briefly thought "hmm is this the dress I am going to get engaged in!?", but then quickly pushed the thought out.

I barely had time to run a brush through my hair before we were out the door and on the road. I didn't ask any of the normal questions while we were driving ("So, where are we going to go eat?") and just pretended like this was all perfectly normal. Then there was clue #3. Mark's cell phone rings and I hear the following (one-sided) conversation:

Hello?.... Oh yeah, we're just on our way.... ok... ok... ok... ok... ok... ok.... Great, see you soon.. Bye.

He honestly must have said OK about 8 times! I turned and looked at him after he hung up and asked who had called. His response, "oh, just someone."

I didn't ask any further questions. Something was clearly up. At this point, I started to get freakishly nervous and my stomach started hurting. What this really IT?!!