Fall-Year 1

Their flat is a nice, furnished one bedroom in a decent part of town. Of course, town is really a city of 625,000 people (not including the close suburbs) many of whom are university students, so decent is a relative term. Still, it's cozy and near a good Chinese delivery place and not far from public transport or the university, and it suits them just fine.

There's a lot to get used to; the thick accents, the regional colloquialisms, the subway that's not quite a subway. But some things Rose likes right away, like the history and some of the architecture, and how nice people are. The tea is awful, the waning summer heat is muggy and disgusting, and the town is obsessed with baseball at the moment (they're in first place, whatever that means) but she finds that she doesn't mind any of it nearly as much as she thought she would.

They have two weeks before Rose begins her job at the university's publishing house, so they spend it learning about their new home; which areas to avoid, where to get groceries, the best bar to watch the footie games. They spend one sunny Sunday at a beach where Rose's pink bikini garners her much male attention, much to John's utter dismay. They barely make it back to their flat before John spends the rest of the day and a good part of the evening tracing her tan lines with his tongue.

They spend their first Fourth of July watching fireworks, then making some of their own.

Rose's schedule is such that she works three days a week, proofreading books yet to be published for spelling and grammatical errors. It's not sexy or scintillating, but the pay is decent and she socks her paycheck away every two weeks until there's enough for a flight home at Christmas. The chief copy-editor is a nice, middle-aged British ex-pat woman named Sarah Jane, who takes a shine to Rose immediately. When Rose gets homesick, Sarah Jane invites her and John over for tea and an evening of Coronation Street, and those evenings are John's favorites because he knows he's going to get a good meal at Sarah Jane's and a really good shag when they get home. Before long, Sarah Jane is offering her a full time job with benefits, and Rose buys herself some racy knickers and John a good telescope and they celebrate by going camping and shagging under the stars.

John prepares for his classes, spending lots of time in the office that will be his for the next three years, if not more. He meets his colleagues, starts planning lessons and tests and working on his dissertation. Some days it's all work, but some days he does nothing more than horse around in the physics lab with his colleagues who are fast becoming his friends.

The chair of John's department holds a barbecue the weekend before classes start, and once his colleagues meet Rose, they like him even more. Rose is no scientist, but she proves to be a valuable asset during their (now usual) Wednesday night quiz night at the bar, when she is the only one among them who can name all of the Spice Girls; they win by a hair and buy her a fruity drink that comes in a fishbowl and comes with a crazy straw, and when they get back to the flat, Rose and John shag on every available surface and wonder in the morning how on earth they ended up sleeping under the coffee table.

The mugginess of summer fades into fall, with it's brisk mornings and orange-yellow-red leaves. John walks Rose to work in the mornings, and meets her for lunch. After work, she meets him after his classes and they walk home, hand in hand. When it finally gets to be too cold, John has Wilf sell his old Citroen and uses that money to buy a Honda Civic for a song, which is good because John soon needs to replace the clutch and gear box because driving on the wrong side takes some getting used to.

For Columbus Day weekend, he takes her to a bed and breakfast that has amazing blueberry pancakes and a four poster bed that they hate to get out of.

They spend their first Thanksgiving with Sarah Jane and her son Luke, along with several other ex-pats who have no place to go for Thanksgiving. There's American football on the telly and lots of food, and they fall asleep on their sofa while watching old movies. That's when they begin to think of this as home.

Winter-Year 1

The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are a flurry of activity; John has exams to both take and grade, and although they see each other every day, John is cranky and out of sorts and ready for a vacation. Rose has only one week of vacation, so their trip to London will be short, shorter than either would like.

London is London, grey and rainy and Rose thinks it's never been more beautiful. They sleep their jet lag off and then proceed to make up for lost time by shagging anywhere and everywhere, much to Jackie's dismay. She never says anything to them directly, but when she pulls a pair of Rose's knickers out of the silverware drawer in the kitchen, she doesn't have to; several hours later Jackie's kitchen is cleaner than it's ever been and an exhausted John swears they will never shag anywhere but a bed again.

They spend an entire day helping Donna pick out bridesmaids dresses; John whinges mightily until he sees Rose in the first dress, a tea-length halter dress with a deep v-neck, and he nearly chokes on the Jelly Babies he's been eating. Donna vetoes that one, but he maintains his air of disdain while watching Rose try on dress after dress after dress. He thinks she looks good in all of them-hell, she'd look gorgeous in a bin bag-but he's so busy imagining what it would be like to take the dresses off of Rose that he misses the final selection. When he whinges about that, Rose makes it up to him by allowing him to help choose her lingerie. This cheers him immensely.

On a cold and rainy evening when the women are busy with wedding plans, Wilf slips John a small black box. He doesn't need to open it, he knows what's in it; but he opens it anyway and finds himself fighting tears.

"I can't take this," John says, trying to hand the box back to Wilf, who is having none of it.

"You take it and you give it to that girl of yours," he says. "Your Gran never met Rose, but I know how much she'd love her because you love her. It's nothing fancy, didn't have much money back then, but Rose doesn't need big and fancy. She just needs you."

It's a simple round diamond in an elaborate, Art Deco setting. It will look perfect on Rose's slender finger.

A week later they're back in the States, and John formulates a plan. If he does three courses over the summer, he can do three in the fall and sit for his comprehensive exams. In the meantime, he can work on his dissertation and, if all goes according to plan, can have his doctorate in another 18 months. It's a long shot, and it means a lot of work, but it means that two years from now there's a good possibility that he and Rose could be married.

She returns to work and he starts working in earnest on his dissertation. He's been working on it for years, tinkering and tweaking, but now he sets about his research like a man possessed. By the time the new semester starts he's got enough to start writing seriously, so he does.

They celebrate Valentine's Day in their little flat, a blizzard having struck the day before. They eat cold Chinese food and drink hot tea and he showers her with gifts-chocolates, sexy knickers, a pair of pink sapphire earrings that she wears when she shags him senseless later that night.

He keeps the ring in his sock drawer.

Spring-Year 1

She cannot believe it's still this cold in April, she half-expects it to snow again. But one morning she wakes up and can't see her breath in the air, and then spring has arrived and brought the sunshine with it.

John's been working hard, harder than she's ever seen him work. He comes home exhausted and keeps working after they eat, sometimes working long into the night. But the weekends are theirs, and they use their time to see and do things, to drive as far as they can in a day and see what they can find. Sometimes they are pleasantly surprised-tiny towns with quaint little inns, big cities with fancy hotels and room service-and sometimes they end up sleeping in the car in the middle of nowhere. But it's always an adventure, which is really all they want.

John spends Spring Break in the lab and the library, his only concession to vacation being going to bed at a decent hour and having a lie-in. He starts walking Rose to work again instead of driving her, and when the weather cooperates they meet for lunch (and usually a good snog) under an ancient maple tree.

They eat ice creams and watch children play and laugh at the undergraduates who celebrate the end of term by streaking across campus. They celebrate the end of term by splurging on a weekend in Chicago, eating brats and deep-dish pizza and watching the Cubs lose spectacularly.

When Rose misses her period, she cries for a day. When her period comes two weeks later, she cries for a week. John has no idea what's going on-she won't tell him and he's asked time and again-so when she finally blurts out "I thought I was pregnant and I was so scared, and then I wasn't and now it's all I want!" all he can do is hold her, because it's something he didn't know he wanted, either.

Summer-Year 1/Fall-Year 2

John takes summer classes and works on his dissertation, knowing that his hard work will pay off in the end. Since Rose had that pregnancy scare he's been unable to think about anything other than how he wants to marry her and make babies with her, and the sooner he gets this done the sooner he can.

They mark a year in America by having a gigantic row. John is working himself ragged, and Rose doesn't understand why. She feels neglected, like an afterthought, and finally the weight of her emotions is too much and she bursts. She accuses him of becoming distant, of not wanting her anymore, of not loving her anymore; his response is that he is doing this for her, and maybe it was a mistake because clearly it was she who no longer loved him. Bags are packed and doors are slammed, and three days later he finds her at Sarah Jane's and begs her to come home.

After that, he works a little less and dotes on her a little more.

Summer is punctuated by cookouts and trips to the beach and evenings spent outside, watching children splash in open hydrants. They go to baseball games, sitting in the cheap seats, and John explains to Rose the rules and nuances of the game. Before long she's become somewhat of an expert, and the folks in the seats around them have claimed her as one of their own.

They shag. A lot.

When August comes around, and the undergraduates have returned to campus, life goes back to normal-work and classes, quiz nights at the bar on Wednesdays and lazy Sunday mornings. Rose gets promoted to assistant copy editor, and with her promotion comes a pay raise. Over Columbus day weekend they go back to the bed and breakfast they went to before, and this time they don't get out of the bed until it's time to check out.

He sits for his comprehensive exams the week before Thanksgiving. When they're over, he sleeps for 18 hours, which is then followed by him eating an entire pizza and watching nothing but Homicide re-runs for an entire day. Rose finds him at 6pm, on the sofa and still in his jimjams, with dried tomato sauce on his shirt and in dire need of a shower and a shave.

They go to Sarah Jane's for Thanksgiving, and this time Rose brings a pie and Luke teaches them about American football. They end the day like they did the year before, asleep on the sofa, hands entwined.

Winter-Year 2

Donna's wedding is a week before Christmas, and Rose spends the week keeping Donna calm. The hen night isn't a total disaster, Donna manages to relax somewhat and when Rose stumbles home at 2am, John holds her hair back while she gets sick and then holds her all night.

Donna's wedding is on a Saturday, and it's freezing cold but thankfully not raining. It goes off without a hitch and soon there is dancing and cake cutting and bouquet throwing and finally, they're alone in a hotel room. He undresses her quickly and makes love to her slowly, and the next morning he asks Jackie for permission to marry her daughter.

He proposes on Christmas Eve, not in a manner that could be considered traditional. Rose is naked and flushed beneath him, panting from her orgasm, when he blurts out, "Marry me, Rose." She bursts out laughing, then laughs harder when she sees the hurt look on his face. He gets up and rummages around in his pockets, finally producing the ring, and her laughter stops as suddenly as it started.

"Marry me," he says again, and this time she's both laughing and crying and when he puts the ring on her finger both of their hands are shaking.

They don't plan on announcing it, but Donna's eagle eye doesn't miss a thing and she screeches like a banshee for a good twenty minutes. There is hugging and crying and cameras are produced and Rose is forced to make up a story of how John proposed because she is not about to tell them the truth. They promise not to elope in Las Vegas.

They fly back to the States before New Year's and ring in the new year in their flat, with champagne and pizza and shagging.

John comes to the realization sometime in February that there's no way he can get his dissertation done by April and have it be any good. His advisor has been telling him for months that it won't work, but after an afternoon of staring at a blank laptop screen, John realizes his advisor was right. A weight has been lifted from his shoulders, so he leaves early and buys Rose a bouquet of flowers and when she gets home she finds him making dinner, the flowers sitting on the table.

And, as it turns out, Rose doesn't care if it takes him another year or another decade, she'll marry him regardless.