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“Gabriel!” Polly sung as she waltzed through her boyfriend’s front door. He had given her the spare key for a –‘this is kind of a joke but serious at the same time’- birthday present.

“I’m in the kitchen,” he called in reply as Polly kicked off her shoes and stored them on the shoe rack, before wandering off towards the kitchen where she found Gabe cooking the two of them a Christmas-eve dinner, just the two of them.

“Hey, Gabey Baby,” Polly laughed at her rhyme and got up on her tip-toes to give him a quick kiss on his lips.

She fell back down to the flats of her feet and swayed lightly on them, rocking on the ball of her heel and up to the ball of her toes – grinning at Gabe the whole time.

He could feel her eyes burning into the back of his body and he put the wooden spoon down to turn around and look at her, leaning his body against the counter and crossing his arms across his torso. He raised his eyebrows at his grinning girlfriend and strung out the word ‘yes?’ making it longer than necessary.

“What you cooking?” Polly sung, still grinning and raised her eyebrows.

“Lasagna,” Gabe sung in reply, stringing out the last ‘a’ and making it sound like ‘lasagnaaaa’ and smiling quickly before turning back and doing whatever he needed to do.

Polly’s grin fell and a look of curiosity covered her face, “er… you do know I’m a vegetarian, right?” she asked, worried that he had forgotten – they had been dating for over a year, did he know that little about her.

“Relax, Pollpoll – I know you’ve gone veggie-breath, chill,” he smiled and Polly grinned in reply – but then why was he cooking lasagna? “I used Quorn meat instead of… well, real meat.” He answered her confusion and Polly nodded in understanding.

“…I see,” she mumbled and finally sat down at the wooden table in the middle of the kitchen.

“Mm, you do,” Gabe laughed and turned around again. “Sorry, I didn’t say my proper hello,” he walked over to where Polly was sat and leaned down, capturing her mouth with his and pushing his tongue into her mouth – massaging their tongues together. “Hello,” he said once he pulled away and stood back up straight to turn the oven off – lasagna was done.

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They sat at the table in the dining room, just the two of them and a candle on the middle of the table – lighting their food. Putting another forkful of vegetarian lasagna into her mouth, Polly almost chocked. She swallowed around the metallic tasting ring that she had somehow managed to miss and put her fingers into her mouth. She looked down at the ring, and then back up at Gabe, then back down again – repeating the procedure until her eyes widened at the realization of what he was doing.

“No way,” she gasped, eyes wide and shock written all over her face.

“Yes way,” Gabe replied and got up form the table, grabbing a napkin and kneeling besides Polly’s chair. He took the silver band out of her hand, rubbed it clean of Quorn and saliva on the napkin – chuckling at how stupid she had been to actually put it in her mouth – and held it out to her.

“Polly-Clare, will you marry me?”

Tears were already pouring down her face and she nodded her head, furiously wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands and launching herself at Gabe – knocking him backwards and landing on top of him, smothering him in kisses.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes,” she repeated between kisses, over and over again.

Gabe sat up, Polly falling off of him and he lifted her left hand up, slipping the silver band onto her finger – remembering the day that Polly had told him how gross big diamond rings were, and how she had wanted a plain silver one; the day they joked about getting married.

“You remember,” she laughed, looking down at her now ring clad finger, and pushed her lips back up against his, delving her tongue into the depths of his mouth and dancing against his own.