Cindy was quite content to spend her Sunday afternoon absorbed in a few good books. Few of her numerous friends, family members, and acquaintances could understand why she would squander away such precious moments on such a foolish activity week after week, but she didn't care – or bother to take the time to explain. She didn't lend an ear to the hustle and bustle of the 21st century, nor did she let it interlude her moment of peace. The pressures of life would wait until Monday morning, where they could once again poke and prod at all the work-goers, chuckling behind their backs in mockery.
Cindy would have none of this sinister chuckling at her, however, so she side-stepped society every once in a while, allowing herself to become lost in some fantasy world where life was happy, made sense, and had a heavy dose of adventure. (Not the she hadn't had her fair cut of the latter, but that was beside the point.) Books were her escape, and with a virtually endless supply she could reconcile herself for years on end with stories of valiant heroes and courageous figures that struggled tirelessly through perilous dangers, eminent death, and were still able to come through with perfectly applied make-up and neatly-pressed cloths.
This certain Sunday was a rainy one, and Cindy loved it. She was sitting cross-legged in a cozy corner of the sofa, sandwiched between several well-placed cushions. The glass in the window behind her was cool from the seasonally chilly rain, creating a refreshing draft. The rhythmic droplets tinkling a tuneless pattern on her roof only added to the ambience. She was currently one-hundred and eighty-two pages into a particularly delicious plot, so completely engrossed by it that it wasn't until page 214 that she realized she was being observed. Her watcher made his presence obvious by flinging his lanky form onto the sofa, nuzzling his head under Cindy's arm and onto her lap.
Rather peeved at being interrupted during the most climatic point, Cindy lifted the book up to glare at her husband and snapped, "What?"
"You're quite grumpy today," Jimmy observed aloud, most likely oblivious to the fact it had been his abrupt entrance that set her into a cranky mood. He traced light circles on her stomach with a finger for a moment before dropping his arm as though gravity had suddenly intensified, sighed heavily, and declared, "I'm bored."
"Obviously, since you have come to spoil the atmospherically-perfect pinnacle of my book," Cindy groused, snapping her book shut, the desire to continue on to the resolution all but evaporated. "Why do you smell like zirconium?"
Jimmy looked down at the lab coat he was still decked out in and plucked at it, releasing another waft of the burnt chemical. "I was in the lab, attempting to create a larger-scale form of my hypercube that would allow me to simulate nuclear activity, and I forgot to test the reactor support structures for hafnium. The chemical vicissitudes were irregular, and – well, you know the rest." He sat up, scooting up next to Cindy and showing her the mildly burned fingers he sported.
"Aside from the fact that this doesn't surprise me in the slightest," Cindy said, rolling her eyes as she reached behind her to grab the small, potted aloe plant in the window sill, (the experience of marriage to James Isaac Neutron, the stupidest genius on the face of the earth, taught her to keep such thing handy,) "why wouldn't that qualify for a place on the list of 'Not-boring Things To Do'?"
Jimmy shrugged, accepting the broken-off aloe leaf from Cindy and picking away the tough, outer skin to reveal the gooey center. He wrinkled his nose at it and set it back in the pot Cindy was replacing, apparently preferring minor burns to a smelly, goop-glove. (Cindy made a scathing noise, wondering why she had bothered to try to help him in the first place.) He looked over at her, putting on a mask of self-pity and melancholy. He added a theatric tone of pain as he said, "There was no pretty girl to kiss…"
Cindy snorted, not at all flattered. After 17 years-worth of mess-ups, fighting, waiting for him to mature, waiting for him to even notice her, waiting for him to say something, the procrastinating, big-headed – well… exasperation won over her emotions, if anything.
"Get a better line, Nerd-tron."
As if to prove his worth and true intentions, he leapt from the squashy sofa and dropped to one knee before her, grabbing one of her hands in his own, crying dramatically, "By love! Who first did prompt me to inquire – "
"Oh, shut up, show-off!" Cindy snarled, ripping her hand free and shoving him in the chest, but grinning nonetheless. Jimmy fell backwards, perhaps continuing on with his air of theatrics – or perhaps she really pushed him that hard – and lay on the floor, his blue eyes fixed abjectly on the ceiling above.
"I can never please you," he said, remaining virtually motionless.
"I wouldn't say 'never'," Cindy mused idly, searching for her page and ignoring the looks of mock hurt her husband threw her from his place on the floor. "Sometimes you get lucky and do something right."
"I thank you for your kind words of support, m'lady," Jimmy muttered. Cindy was almost positive this had accompanied an eye-roll, but she had found her place and had once again let herself slip into the world of suspenseful fiction. She gave an inarticulate mumble, jade eyes not stopping their rapid page-crossing.
Jimmy fell silent, but it was only a few paragraphs later that he broke the serenity once more. "How do you think Libby and Sheen ever got together?" he asked. "They're so… Libby and Sheen. Two totally different personalities."
Cindy, still too detached from reality to notice how random the question really was, muttered, "Mm – well, it's just about as odd as you and I, isn't it?"
"I guess so," he said slowly. "I never really thought it would stick with them, though. I figured there were simply lingering effects of 976/J… hm, c'est la vie." He was silent for a short while more before he gave a small laugh. "Do you remember their reception?"
"How could I not?" Cindy retorted, turning the page and continuing along with her fictional companion to the end of the cathedral hallway. "Only Carl could take out an entire wedding cake doing the mambo."
Jimmy laughed again. "Libby was so mad; I never thought I would see her stop dancing in the middle of a good song. She was already rather peeved at the name-less someone who requested the Ultra-Lord theme song to be played, though. You know, I do wonder what Joyce is going to turn out like…"
Cindy faltered to a stop mid-paragraph, bewildered.
"Huh?"
She had only been listening with a partial ear. It took her several moments to realize Jimmy was speaking of the Estevez daughter.
"Yeah, it'll be weird, but – where is all this coming from?" She looked up from her entrancing book, surprised to see her husband still lying on the floor, now with the addition of a dusty book propped open on his chest. Cindy recognized it at once.
"Where did you find that!" she exclaimed, clambering off the couch and to Jimmy's side. "I've been looking for it for ages…"
Jimmy gestured toward the small gap between the couch bottom and the carpeted floor where nothing but a few dust bunnies, a broken pencil, a lone sock, and one or two of Joyce's crayons, lost during a past visit she had made with her parents, lay lonely and forgotten. "A rather strange place for a photo album, if you ask me…"
"Well, of course it is," Cindy snapped, snatching it away from him and flipping through its pages, releasing a small cloud of fine dust particles. "I never put it there intentionally. It must have fallen a while back."
She opened the thick, soft-leather book to one of its final pages. It bore the picture of little Joyce that had invoked the comment from Jimmy. It was a few years old – the now six-year-old must have been only three in the picture. Her fine, black hair was pulled into two equal sections on either side of her head; her dark-skinned face was alight with mischief.
Cindy flipped a few pages backwards, replacing the candid shot of giggling Joyce pulling on one pigtail with one of Sheen and Libby dancing at their wedding reception. Judging by the slightly irate look on Libby's face, Jimmy collapsed from laughter in the background, and the lack of a cake on the display table, Carl had already taken his fateful stumble. Turning back a few more pages, she watched in still-time the memorable dance once more.
"It's rather funny now that it's over," Cindy admitted, grinning broadly. "And now that Libby's not here to skin us alive for mentioning it."
Jimmy sat up and rested his chin on Cindy's shoulder, motioning for her to continue on with the reverse trip down memory lane. She did so, freeing more dust from the enslaving pages as well as some laughs and smiles. Libby trying on wedding dresses; Jimmy and Sheen playing basketball in a driveway while Carl stood on the sidelines, looking nervous; Carl in his zoo-keeper uniform, flashing an ecstatic grin at the camera; Libby and Sheen at the park, kissing; all five of them outside Retroville just after graduation; Cindy and Libby blowing a kiss toward the photographer. Cindy stopped on the very first page of the book.
It was her favorite picture. They were at Retroland, a week before high school graduation, cramming in a few final rides on "Bat Outta Heck", and standing just beyond a picnic table where the whole gang had been waiting for Carl's motion-sickness medication to kick in. It was late in the day and, though enjoying herself entirely, Cindy was tired from the amount of walking they had done. Jimmy was giving her a piggy-back ride, his arms tucked underneath the back of her knees. Cindy had wrapped her arms loosely around Jimmy's shoulders and tilted her head to look at him. Although she had been unable to see it as she kissed his cheek, the picture revealed that Jimmy's blue eyes had been turned toward her, full of adoration, a lopsided grin spread across his face.
A happy sigh came unbidden to Cindy's lips. "Do you think it's still… oh, I don't know – as fairytale-like as it was back then?"
Jimmy snickered and slid an arm around her waist. "I don't know what magical land of wonder it is you are referring to, but our relationship was never 'fairytale-like'. Still isn't, in fact."
Cindy nodded, wiping a film of dust from the page she was continuing to stare happily down on. "It would be a rather disturbing fairytale, wouldn't it? Never before has a Prince Charming taken so long to sweep the Fair Princess off her feet."
"Yeah, well, it wouldn't have been such a tedious process had the Fair and Delicate Damsel not made it so intimidating with her constant threats, arguments, and fierce, physical reprimands when anything remotely related to a relationship was brought within fourteen miles of the theoretical playing field!" Jimmy snapped, lifting his chin off Cindy's shoulder to glare at her.
Cindy only giggled and leaned back into the arm that was still wrapped around her midsection, still fondling the open page of her photo album. "This will be one of the few times I will say this, so make a note: you are absolutely, one hundred percent right. But think of it as the ultimate test to your feelings; after six years of endurance, you really knew you liked me."
Jimmy gave a cross between a sigh and a morose chuckle, leaning his cheek on the top of her head. "Cindy, only deep adoration and undying love could withstand the years' worth of berating degradations you threw out. Don't sell yourself short with 'like'."
Cindy chose to take this as a compliment – even if a very contorted one – and snuggled deeper into Jimmy's chest. She deeply considered herself to have found her own twisted form of "happily ever after", daily life-threatening situations and all. (It wouldn't be the same without them, or the thousands upon thousands of arguments she and Jimmy had.)
She stopped fingering the necklace her photo-self was wearing and transferred her hand to the real thing, running her slender fingers down the fine silver chain until they came to the desired object that rested just below her collar bone: the smooth pearl Jimmy had given her nearly sixteen years ago. She had rarely taken it off since then.
"You're so silly." Jimmy took the pearl from her hands and held it in the palm of his own. "I can't believe you still have this!"
Cindy snorted. "First of all…'silly'? Geeze, Nerd-tron, what else did your most recent explosion affect?" She pulled her head away, jerking the chain with her and pulling its pendant from Jimmy's open hand. It settled comfortably back against the smooth skin of her chest. "And it's not like it's completely sentimental; I'm not about to find the nearest person on the street and give them a perfect pearl!"
She could feel Jimmy smile against her jawbone as he kissed her. "Whatever you say, Cindy."
"Whatever I say -- I'm glad it's only taken you five years of marriage to reach that sentiment," Cindy retorted, scowling at him good-naturedly. "Let's see how long you can keep it up."
She grinned when Jimmy gave a scathing "tach!" in the back of his throat.
Life certainly wasn't a textbook experience, but was never short of excitement. Prince Charming and Lady Fair unable to go 36 hours without squabbling over the most insignificant of things, giant civilization-eating chickens, sinister eggs, love potions, body transversals, crash-landings on uncharted islands, robotic canines, and intergalactic kidnappings.
A strange "happily ever after" indeed.