It's Magic Chapter 8
"Marital Maintenance"
Randy's POV
I leave the restaurant and start driving again.
While I'm driving, I do a lot of thinking. I can still remember the night I proposed to Amanda. First we went out to a fancy dinner at Sorrentino's. Then we went to see The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, which had just come out that day in theaters. The theater manager was a friend of dad's, so right before the movie started, the words "Will you marry me Amanda?" flashed up on the screen. Obviously she said yes. We went back to her place for some decaf, and then approximately nine months later, on September 8, Jonathan was born.
We were so in love then. We'd only known each other for nine months. We met when a mutual friend was playing at this bar in Dearborn. To this day, we both smile whenever we hear Emotional Rescue.
We dated for a while after that. Dad never liked Amanda as much as Lauren. I tried to explain to him that I didn't want to marry someone based on their knowledge of cars, but of course got nowhere with that. Mom tried to convince me that I was seeing Amanda to cope with the situation with Lauren. Despite their initial doubts, they still supported our decision to get married.
After we got married, I don't know what happened. We were fine for the first eight or nine years, but then things just snowballed.
That's not to say that we didn't have our fair share of fights before then, but they were just small arguments. I'm convinced that those must've been warm up arguments for the really big ones to come. Like the one we had the school year before last at the homecoming dance, when Jonathan was a freshman.
It all started when Amanda was complaining about my driving on the way over there. Long story short, we said some things to each other then, and Jonathan is still sometimes called puppy boy.
That's one thing we've always tried to do; keep Jonathan out of our fights.
I look down at the clock. 9:02 am. I see a Super Walmart coming up on my right, so I pull in the parking lot and try to get a little sleep. I pick a spot the farthest from the store, lock the doors, recline the seat, and am soon off in dreamland.
While I'm dreaming, it comes to me what I need to do. Like mom once told dad, marriages are like cars, they need maintenance, which ours hasn't gotten a lot of over the years. Someone call the romance mechanic, because it's time for a tune up.
A/N: Not a lot happened here, but once again, this is a vital chapter to this story.
Please read and review! Thanks.
-Yours truly, Randy Taylor
