Perfection

"Elena, you asked what I'd do. Seriously, for now, I want to take this one day at a time, to get to know you better, to love you more, and when the time comes, if all goes as I hope, I want to love you forever."

***

Valentine's Day, one year later

With so many people and so many varying expectations, there may be no true perfection in the world. We seek perfection, but knowing that we'll never achieve it in ourselves or find it in others, we usually have to settle for something and hope that it's close enough.

Yes, I know I'm not perfect and Elena knows it. Maybe she really isn't perfect either...with my rose-colored glasses, I'm not certain but I know she's close enough for me. Hogan finally realized it with Lisa too; after some ups and downs between them, Elena and I attended their wedding a couple of weeks ago.

I reach in my front pocket and feel the little box resting in the change pocket. When I pull it out in a little while and ask her to be my wife, I hope she'll feel that I'm close enough for her too.

The End

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End Note:

Thanks to everyone for reading, voting, favoriting, following, and/or commenting. Your support is appreciated.

The idea for the story was sparked by reading about the retirement of an adult model some years ago. This happens every day, with women doing a single modeling session or two and then moving on, but big stars with hundreds of sessions or videos sometimes retire when they find what they want in life or maybe just get too sick of the business. The idea that Dan would run into the particular woman of his dreams may be farfetched but strange things happen sometime...especially in fiction!

The boombox scene that Dan attempts to emulate in the story was from the movie "Say Anything" starring John Cusack and Ione Skye in 1989. While the movie was a minor hit bringing in about $21.5 million in box office revenue worldwide), it's become something of a cult classic since then and Filmsite.org considers the "BoomBox Serenade" as one of the 100 most iconic and recognizable scenes in movie history.