THIS STORY BELONGS TO AND WAS WRITTEN ENTIRELY BY KEEPDREAMING93.
THIS IS THE END.
Disclaimer: All characters belong to James Patterson.
Perfect
Chapter Nine: Fang
Epilogue
And I'll Be By Your Side,
Wherever You Fall,
In the Dead of Night,
Whenever You Call,
And Please Don't Fight,
These Hands That Are Holding You
My Hands Are Holding You
"No," she said, tugging back.
"Yes," I said.
"No!"
"Yes!"
"Fine!"
"...Seriously?"
"No."
This had been going on for awhile now.
I was trying to convince her to marry me. Seriously. And she was saying no.
I'd proposed to her five times now.
I thought that this surely would work, this time. It was so romantic and perfect. And yet—here we were, her rejecting me...again.
I stood up now, and started to walk away, only to hear her calling after me. "Stop, Fang! Just 'cause I won't marry you doesn't mean you can just walk away! Jesus! You stupid jerk!"
Ugh. She's lucky I love her, because...ugh.
~[*]~
We were sitting in our bed, with her in-between my legs. I was massaging her shoulders while she sighed and moaned and told me thank you. We were sitting on...just a mattress, actually. No sheets, a few new pillows. Boxes were stacked up all around us.
Twenty three, baby.
She wasn't the type to shack up with her boyfriend after high school, but we were well-off. If we broke up (which we weren't going to) she'd be able to survive on her own (which she wasn't going to have to do. Ever.) because she was all rich and stuff.
"You're amazing," she sighed, closing her eyes and tilting her face slightly to press a small kiss to my neck before resuming her position so that I could continue my awesome masseuse skills.
I leaned down and tugged on her earlobe with my teeth before whispering into it: "I know. So marry me, you idiot."
She smiled and turned around in my arms, kissing me softly, hands on either side of my face.
"Someday. I promise."
~[*]~
She eventually agreed, though. Of course. 'Cause she loves me and stuff.
"Seriously?"
Max looked over at me. "Yeah."
She was still staring at the huge wall that I'd painted. On the left was a silhouette of a boy and a girl kissing, and on the rest of it, in huge letters, was, "MARRY ME YOU STUBBORN BUTTHEAD."
"But we have to paint over this. Like, now."
"Don't you think we should leave it?" I mused. "So our kids can look at it someday and be like, 'Awwww'?''
She looked at me like I was crazy.
"Kids?" There was an arched eyebrow on her forehead.
I reached forward and pulled her to me, wrapping my arms around her and kissing away her questions and giving her answers and god, I love her, and pouring my heart into her and pressing her up against the wet proposal on the wall.
~[*]~
We had a summer wedding, the next year, since Max is my summer girl. She's got this warm tan skin and spark in her eyes and sunshine streaks in her dark hair. Bright smiles and short dresses and flip flops and no makeup and bikinis and breaks and lounge chairs and martinis.
We had this wedding on green grass with white everything. Chairs and tables and dresses. She's got these bridesmaids, and they're wearing red that's the color of the roses that make it all look like a dream, and these high heels. There's lace and there's ice sculptures and alcohol and laughter and everything's great. And then she's coming down the aisle, and she's so beautiful. Pink lips and white teeth and I'm so lucky that she's crazy, you know why?
Because if she weren't crazy, she would never have come up to me that day about ruining her life because of my grades. Sane girls don't do that. And if she'd never have done that I'd never go up to her, because she's unapproachable. And if I'd never have gone for her, she'd never give into me. And if she'd never given into me, I'd never have her be my girlfriend, or my fiancee, or my wife.
I'd be sitting somewhere lonely. I'd be sitting on the beach, on this fine Saturday afternoon, instead of getting married. I'd shove my toes into the sand and feel all of the grains and think about how they used to once be these huge rocks and now they're so little. I'd squint at the sun and I'd run my fingers through my hair. Some pretty girl in a skimpy bikini would come up to me and sit on my lap and offer me her fruity drink, and I'd flirt with her, and then I'd take her back to my place, and I'd think that I was happy, but you know what? I wouldn't be.
Because happiness is this, right now. It's watching her come down the aisle and watching the dimple in her cheek appear as she looked into my eyes. Biting her lip and walking fast to me, because she's not wearing super high heels underneath her long dress, she's wearing flats. She has this strapless dress on with a red bow that matches the bridesmaids dresses.
Max's across from me now, and I'm holding her hands. She whispers, "Hi."
When we kiss, there's these little tears that are pressed out of the corners of my eyes when I squeeze them shut, and there's nothing but here and now and everything is Max and everything is what I want with her, which is everything and anything and all of it.
~[*]~
We honeymooned in Rome.
She's her nerdy self, examining all the old stuff that I don't care about, during the day, but at night she's all mine. We stay in this awesome hotel with a huge tub with jets and this soft bed and this awesome view.
We finally talk about kids when we're in this soft bed.
Max is naked except for this sheet that she's wrapped around her body lazily and it's distracting me from the objective, which is convincing her to have my babies. She's in my lap, too, fighting off my hands as I try to also convince her to have this conversation naked.
She's not going for it.
"Let's have babies," I tell her.
"How many?" she asks.
"I dunno...forty?"
She elbows me playfully (hard) in my stomach and then turns around, pulling up the falling sheet (dammit).
"Fine. I'm thinking three."
Max hums as she thinks about this. "Two or four. So none of them get lonely."
I shrug. "Four's good. I don't want them to only have the choice of hanging out with one other kid."
"I want all girls. Boys are too annoying."
I jab my fingers into her sides.
"No! Then they'll all be prisses."
"Not necessarily," Max protests. "I'm the only girl out of one and I'm not a priss."
I make no comment.
"Right?" she asks, quirking an eyebrow.
"...you're sort of a priss," I admit.
"Am not!"
"You almost killed me when I was holding a frog five feet from you!"
"They're gross."
"You totally just proved my point."
Max rolls her eyes but doesn't say anything else.
"Whatever, you jerk," she says, crawling over to where I was and lying next to me, "it's not like we can predict the gender of our kids anyway."
"That's true."
"When do you want to have kids?"
"Right now," I admit. "I want a family."
"You're crazy." She flips onto her stomach and props herself onto her elbows. "We're so young! Don't you want to enjoy youngness for right now? Party and stuff?"
I looked at her. "I want to be a young dad."
She sighed and flopped back onto her back.
"Why don't we just let whatever happen, happen?" I asked as I finally pulled the damn sheet down and kissed the planes of her stomach.
"Fang, you know—"
"That I have to have a plan for everything," I sung out (which she hated). "But this time, we're not going to do that. Now shut up. This conversation is over."
"You're so annoying—"
I dove my head under the sheets and she finally shut up.
~[*]~
Max had twins, and god, they were the most beautiful things that I've ever seen in my life.
More beautiful than the sunrise, or the ocean, or Fiji, or flowers, or anything. They were it. A boy and a girl: Cameron and Brea, and they had dark eyes and hair and happy smiles. Always smiling, those two. Laughing at nothing and smiling at everything.
They loved me, and I can't even describe the way that I love them back. They're a part of me. My own. Never thought I'd be able to feel something like that, and then they come along and it's just...it's just crazy.
It's hard, managing babies and school and everything. We manage, though. And since we didn't have a huge wedding, we saved plenty of money to be able to live well. Plus, I had a job and everything. Max and I just scheduled our classes so that at no point would the twins be left home alone. If there was ever no way to make that happen, they stayed with one of our parents.
Who were very annoying, by the way.
At first, Max wouldn't let anyone hold them at all. She had trouble letting me hold them, and they're half mine. But as soon as she grew comfortable enough, the family was all over them like honey and bees. Iggy was probably the proudest uncle in the world, going on and on about how Cam's going to play football when he's older and all this crap.
Speaking of which...
"Don't say that!" Max scolded me, slapping my shoulder after I said the word 'crap' in something I said to Iggy.
I looked at her. "Why? It's better than shit."
She frantically covered Brea's ears, who was in her arms.
"You're going to make our children potty mouths!"
"But you like it when I talk dirty," I said with a smirk, and she glared at me.
"Oh god," Iggy moaned, scooping Brea up into his arms (pulling her away from an angry Max) and dismissed himself from the room.
"Stop acting so immature."
I rolled my eyes and leaned forward, scooping up some of the cookie batter that she'd made and putting it into my mouth, causing her to smack me in the stomach. I caught her hand and pulled her into me, smiling.
"It's yummy."
I kissed her.
"You're yummy, too," I said, and she rolled her eyes with a smile, pushing away and turning back to the sink, washing a glass. She fit into that housewife roll perfectly, from being an overprotective mother to washing the dishes in the sink even though there was only one. I came up behind her and wrapped my arms around her waist, leaning down and resting my chin on her shoulder. "I love you."
"I know."
"Forever," I whispered, kissing her neck, and I feel her body relax into mine. "You're an amazing mother, amazing wife."
Her body's exhausted, I can feel it. It's all the work, and I just want to take it away. Make her feel better.
She turns around and wraps her whole body around me, and I kiss her forehead.
"I love you, too," she says.
~[*]~
"We haven't gone out on a date in awhile," Max says casually, in that way that she tries to make seem like it doesn't bother her when it totally does.
"Well," I say, "I was going to surprise you, but since you're complaining so much, I'll just tell you."
"I wasn't complaining at all." She gives me a look.
"Anyway, Friday I made reservations for dinner. Then I figured we could go into town or something. My parents said they'd keep the twins overnight."
She's straddling me, all of a sudden, dropping kisses all over my face and down my neck.
"I love you," she breathes, "you're the best."
She rolls off when we're interrupted by a piercing cry coming through the baby monitor on her nightstand, but it doesn't even matter when I have to get out of bed to check on them. I'm not even pissed or annoyed, like I usually am.
Life's amazing.
~[*]~
Max has been in the bathroom for one and a half hours.
"Open the door, Max, please," I say, pounding on it, and she keeps telling me to go away.
Eventually, after I've entertained the kiddos with a dumb cartoon, I just break the damn thing down.
She's sitting on the toilet, looking at the door in shock.
"You broke our door!"
"It would have been much easier if you'd just opened it."
Her eyes have fateful red circles around them, and I kneel in front of her, my hands on her bare knees. She's wearing her underwear and one of my long sleeved shirts, her hair is knotty and crappy, and she looks miserable.
"Baby," I say softly, and all of a sudden she's nodding.
Like, nodding a lot.
One of her hands is pointing weakly at the counter, the fabric of my shirt pulled over her knuckles.
There are seven pregnancy tests on the counter, and I don't have to look at them to know.
I look back at Max, and wrap my arms around her waist, pressing my face into her flat belly. Her arms hold my head to her, and I don't even understand why she's crying. I look up at her, smiling, and she has the most confused look on her face.
"Why are you smiling?" she chokes out.
"Do you not want this baby?" I counter. "Because I want this baby."
"Oh, my god," she says, and slides off of the closed toilet seat and into my arms on the floor. I hold her for awhile, my girl, and then pull her back a bit to look into her broken eyes. "I...thought you wouldn't...I can't believe..."
I laugh. "Why wouldn't I want it?"
She just shakes her head and snuggles into me, calming down, and there's nothing I want more.
~[*]~
We're watching fireworks at the park, the five of us; it's the Fourth of July. The twins are a bit drowsy, and are kind of just sitting there, playing with their toys: Cam's got his books, Brea's got her cell phone. But Roxanne, she's this wild thing, with Max's curls and my eyes running circles around us, and laughing and keeps on hurting herself.
"Roxy," Max calls out, "you have five seconds to sit down. The fireworks are about to start."
Max starts to count down, but Roxanne, she's a rebel, she's my girl, standing there shouting, "Make me!"
She gets to zero, and I can tell she's pissed, but I just kiss her cheek and give Roxanne what she wants: a fight.
I chase after her, and she lets out this high-pitched squeal, laughing and running away. I give her a few seconds of victory before I catch up and scoop her into my arms, flipping her onto my back while tickling the bottom of her feet. She starts hitting my lower back with her tiny fists, and I love her so much. Cam's like Max, and Brea's like me, but Roxy's the perfect mix of both of us.
I drop her onto the comforter that we have set out and give her a raspberry on her stomach, and Max scolds her a little bit before pulling her between her legs and starting to braid her hair. Brea's bitching about how she was supposed to be at Samantha's party instead of here with us, and Cam's yelling at everybody to shut up so that he can concentrate. Roxy's all restless and messing up her braid, and eventually Max just gives up.
I'm behind Max, and my hands are on her stomach, and her arms are wrapped around Roxanne.
Fireworks shoot up, and Max leans her head against my chest.
I look down at her as she looks up at me, and I kiss her softly. The twins moan, "Ewww," and Rox is just entranced by her first firework show.
"How are things?" Max asks me, this little game that we play so that we're never confused about each other's feelings, this little smile playing at the edge of her lips, like she knows what I'm going to say.
I kiss her again and say, "Perfect."
"So turn up the corner of your lips. Part them and feel my fingertips. Trace the moment, fall forever. Defense is paper thin, just one touch, and I'd be in. Too deep now to ever swim against the current." —Vindicated, by Dashboard Confessional
