Absolutely No Vomit. Absolutely No Stabbing.

The Wily Republican is engaged.

I know this because the WR rang me up the other night, and, after months of ignoring him after our biggest fight ever, I suffered some sort of ridiculous guilt complex and answered the phone. He'd been sending me e-mails and texts for a long time now. He wanted to know if I thought we could ever be friends again. He said he wanted to try. He wore me down, and I answered the phone.

He told me things, and I told him things. I told him that Greg had just gotten married, that I'd flown to Michigan to be there for the momentous occasion. I said, "What do you think about that, Wily? Your arch enemy, the man you hated more than anyone in my grad program--he's married!"

Then, after the Wily remarked on that, I said, "You didn't run off and get married in these last few months, did you?"

The Wily laughed. "No," he said, and then he paused. "I did get engaged, though."

If this had been revealed to me a year and a half ago, I probably (no--definitely) would have cried. I would've had the breath knocked right out of me. I would've had the sudden desire to stab myself in the heart repeatedly. I know this because that's exactly how I felt the fall I'd moved back to Buffalo when the Wily called me up one night and, during the course of that conversation, revealed to me that, oh yeah, his girlfriend had moved in with him. And they had a cat. The Wily was living with his girlfriend, and they owned a cat together.

He told me this while I was chopping vegetables for the stuffed pork chops I was making. It was the worst possible time to tell me that news. I put the celery and carrots aside and considered sticking the blade of that knife into the center of my eye.

But this time when the Wily revealed he was taking the next logical step with his girlfriend--a future doctor I most times suspect he actually sort of hates--all I wanted to do was ask him how he'd done it. I was actually interested. I was curious. I wanted to know if the Wily had gotten down on one knee and done a respectable job of proposing to his woman.

And it sounded like he did. It happened at some waterfall, after a hike. When I said, "And did you say sweet things, Wily? Did you wax poetic?" the WR admitted he did. He said he worked some things out in his head before they climbed up to the summit, and he got them out the best he could. He said, "Yeah, I did pretty okay, I think." And I guess he did because she said yes.

And while he was filling me in on their wedding details--and while he was busy complaining that they're probably going to end up getting married way sooner than he'd like just because she's already whipped herself into a bridal frenzy--I was busy half-listening. The other half of my brain was busy being impressed with itself, busy realizing that even if I had a knife in my hand, I wouldn't care enough to stab it any soft tissue. And after the Wily and I hung up the phone, all I wanted to do was call up the Boy From Work and tell him thank you, thank you, thank you; thank you for so many things I will never be able to list them all.