Enjoy and review. This is going to be a short story.
Dougie took a deep, very deep breath as he tried to let go some of his anxiety, but it didn't work, as he'd been expecting. Stephanie squeezed his hand and smiled at him while they waited for someone to open the door. They could hear people inside.
"Relax" she told him, the situation and expression on the her boyfriend's face was extremely funny to her.
"We can still go home, you know?" Dougie said "Tom and Giovanna are throwing a big party, we were invited..."
"I already told them we're not going. We are spending Christmas here, Dougie"
"Do we have to? Is it extremely necessary?"
"You know I've never had a normal Christmas with all the presents and a big family; don't take this away from me"
"Now, that's not fair" she giggled, knowing he was right, and he looked at her nervously "Please?"
"You already know we're staying, so stop it. Suck it up"
"It's worth trying..." he mumbled.
He took another deep breath and finally sighed, defeated; there was no way out of this, they were spending Christmas with his family and there was nothing he could say or do to change her mind, even though he'd tried so hard, he'd tried everything; begging, pretending to be mad, pretending to be hurt, asking Tom to throw a Christmas party, saying he was busy on Christmas for a TV show with the band -he eventually felt guilty about lying and ended up telling her they had cancelled it-, pretending to feel sick, and the list goes on and on... But no, Steph wanted to meet Dougie's family and have a normal Christmas.
'A disastrous Christmas' he thought once more. No one had opened the door yet and he was seriously thinking about just running to the car and leaving her there. He was seriously worried about this; this wasn't the first time he introduced a girl to his family... And those girls weren't his girlfriend anymore, were they?
Dougie squeezed her hand and looked at her face, her gorgeous face; grey eyes, kind of rather round face, brown but very light hair, perfect eyebrows, awesome legs, cute smile... 'Oh, God, please don't let this turn out horribly, please... Let me keep this one at least!'
"Why, oh, why won't you introduce me to them!?" she'd told him weeks ago when they recieved a letter from Dougie's mum; an invitation to a Christmas party on her house. Of course she could have simply called, but she liked sending those silly letters on Christmas. Steph had found it before Dougie could hide it -or burn it- and decided that this was it; they'd been together for 2 years and she did not know them! How could that be allowed? "Are you afraid of introducing me to them? Is that it? You've never introduced me to them, you've always made up such silly excuses. You think I'm going to embarrass you, don't you?"
"No, of course I'm not, babe! They are going to embarrass me! Drop it, Steph, babe, we're not going"
"Hell yeah, we are! I'm going on my own if you're not coming with me"
"You don't even know the address!"
She'd sighed, crossed her arms and sat in the couch.
"Fine" she'd told him in an agressive tone. They stayed in silence for a while. He knew it wasn't fine and he wouldn't bear having her mad at him.
"Oh, come on!" he said after a moment, falling on his knees by her side "Don't do this to me and, believe me, you don't want to meet them"
"I do, Dougie, I do!" she changed her tone now, it was a bit softer now "Please... It's important to me"
'Oh, yeah, sure' he'd thought ', just 'caused she never met her father and she'd seen her mum drunk since kind of the very first day she could remember, it doesn't mean she can be a part of my family; my family sucks!'
"Honey, they are not the type of family that it's all crazy but in the end you really love them 'cause we're so loyal to each other and we've been through a lot together. No, they are just crazy, forget about the rest. Just crazy, got it?" he'd told her in a desperate try to change her mind.
"I've had enough of crazy, they'll look rather dull next to my... mother" she hated calling her mother, Stephanie had never felt like she deserved to be called that way, she'd never been a real mum. In many ways, she'd always felt like an orphan and she even told some people she'd been raised without parents "We are going, Dougie"
And there they were now, in front of the door. As Dougie's mum opened it, Stephanie smiled from ear to ear as Dougie's heart started beating faster.
"I love you" he whispered before Sam, Doug's mum, had fully opened the door. He was really scared that his family would drive another of his girlfriends mad and make her run away. It had happened before, it could happen now.
She turnd her head and looked at him, slightly surprised that he'd finally stopped been so negative about these holidays, but she was actually wrong, she had no idea what was going through his mind.
"As I do too" she whispered back.
"Welcome home, Dougie, darling!" Sam said, smiling as eargerly as Steph. Sam put both her arms around her son and kissed his cheek "Oh, baby, you're even taller than the last time I saw you"
"Oh, please, mom..." he said; yeah, right, like he would ever be taller, he'd given up that dream years ago.
"This pretty lady must be Stephanie, isn't she?" Sam said, still smiling, as she looked at her son's girlfriend.
"Nice to finally meet you" Steph said. She turned her head again to smile at her and let go Dougie's hand to shake Sam's.
Doug sighed again; this is like it had begun before... He would pray every night so this Christmas with the Poynters wouldn't end as bad as the others.