December 5(?) – Up to “I do”

Author’s Note: l gave myself this prompt on Friday the 5th, started writing it then, finished writing it on the 6th and am posting on the 7th. I am on holidays at the Moment, that’s my excuse! we’ll see if I play catch-up once I’m home or just let it go.

Prompt: The main character is a 55-year-old woman. It begins in a registry office. Someone gets snowed in at Christmas. The theme is: a chase.

As David stood in front of the celebrant in the registry office, he thought back on how he had ended up here. He’d been married twice before; surely he knew better than to try again?

It had been Catherine daughter’s twenty first birthday party. David had been dropping off his own daughter, but Catherine insisted he come in for a quick drink himself before he left. Catherine was loud and exuberant and had probably already had a couple of drinks of her own by then. It was cold outside and David had to admit the drink warmer him up. Before he knew it, his cup had been refilled more than  once and there was no way he was going to be driving home any time soon.

Nothing happened between them that night, but their daughters fou four them asleep on the cough the next morning, Catherine curled up with her hand on David’s chest, him with his arm around her shoulders.

“Oh, my god, Dad!” Amanda’s voice woke David up immediately. Realising where he was, he sat bolt upright and whipped his arm from around Catherine.

“Amanda…” he said, scrambling for something to say that would wipe the horrified expression off his daughter’s face.

Catherine sat up. “Good morning, Brianna, Amanda. How did the party go?”

Looking back, David wondered if it was Catherine complete nonchalance in the face of that moment that made him first fall in love with her. She seemed far too outgoing and confident to be interested in a guy like him, though, and It took him a couple of months to get up the courage to ask her out for a drink. It was only with Amanda’s encouragement – and once she got over the initial weirdness of her dad fancying her friend’s mum, she did encourage him – that he persuaded himself to ask at all.

Catherine had been enthusiastic from the start – “Any man who remains a perfect gentleman when I drunkenly fall asleep on his shoulder is certainly worth a shot!” – but as time went on and words like ‘marriage’ started crossing David’s mind, he wasn’t sure exactly how Catherine would take it. He managed to contact Brianna through via Amanda’s Facebook, and ask what she thought. Brianna warned him that after her divorce from Brianna dad, there was a good chance that Catherine would be wary of making anything so official, but she said that David should go for it anyway.

What Brianna had said was right, and David had to propose twice before Catherine had accepted him. They didn’t see each other for a while after the first time, and David thought that perhaps that was it for their relationship. Slowly, though, they gravitated back towards each other, and soon David thought It was worth taking another chance.

And now, here they were, about to embark on the next chapter of their lives together. The celebrant looked at David, waiting for his line.

He looked at Catherine. “I do.”

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