"You're getting married in the morning!"
"I never, ever should've agreed to watch My Fair Lady with you," Chris groaned. "Is this all I'm going to be hearing for the next few days Stephers, because if it is, I'm going to invest some stock into ear plugs and then buy all the earplugs in the tri-state area."
"Ding dong the bells are gonna chime!" she kept signing.
"Stop Stephers, spare my eardrums!"
"Would you rather I sing something else?" she asked sweetly. "Oh…I 'ate you 'enry 'iggins!"
"Stephers, please, my eardrums, they're going to burst, and then they're going to leak, and I'll slip and then my brain will fall out and then my parents will sue you."
"They will, but Mom and Dad would never sue me," she said, giving him a pouty look. "If anything, they'd scold you for not taking some action in order to not let your eardrums burst. So they wouldn't blame me. They like me better anyways."
"Why is that!" Chris exclaimed. "My mom didn't give birth to you."
"I think that's why Snooks," Stephanie answered with a definitive nod. "See, she didn't have to go through pain with me, but she did with you, so I think that she secretly resents you and probably doesn't want you anymore. I'll tell you the truth, we're phasing you out, I'm going to be their only child."
"I will not go gently into that dark night!" he yelled, raising a finger to the air. He chased after Stephanie and she squealed as she turned tail to run.
She got a few steps when her shoelaces became untied and she started to trip. She fell to the ground and her hands caught the ground first. She grunted as she was propelled to the floor. She turned around and looked at Chris with wide eyes as he sauntered towards her. She backed herself up until she hit the wall, still looking like she was going to get murdered by Chris.
"Please don't hurt me Mr. Jericho, please, I have so much to live for!" she said, giving him wide eyes.
"Come here Stephers," Chris said in a sickly sweet voice. He lunged for her and she crawled under his legs and out of his reach. He pounced on her though, laying her flat against the ground and kept her pinned as she rolled over. "You're in so much trouble."
"Snooks, get off of me," Stephanie said, wiggling around underneath him. "You have to leave soon anyways and do you really want your future in-laws to see you on top of a woman who isn't the bombshell…you know, I don't really think they'd want to see you on top of the bombshell either.
"What if I don't want to get off?" he tested the waters.
"I'd flip you on your back," she told him, her chest heaving.
Chris stared down at her. After the whole kiss fiasco, things had pretty much gone back to normal. Chris was still getting married, Stephanie was still her crazy self, and the kiss was all but forgotten. For Stephanie it was, at least. Chris, on the other hand, not so much. It wasn't like he was dwelling over the fact, but he couldn't help but let it pop into his mind. He could still remember how her lips felt, how her body pressed against his own.
"Snooks, do you maybe want to get off of me?" Stephanie asked as Chris zoned out on her. "I know that you find this whole thing kind of kinky, in a twisted way, but I'm going to have to veto this entire idea. Like on that Frasier I saw once where they got to blackball people while deciding on who came to a dinner party. I feel like I should blackball this entire incident right here."
"Sorry, sorry, I was just thinking about…the dinner tonight, with Trish's parents, if they'll like me and stuff like that, you know, I mean, they might not like me. They might ban me from seeing their daughter. I might have to marry her in secret and then kill her cousin and be banished from the city and then things will get mixed up and she'll pretend to die and then I'll kill myself and then she'll kill herself and then it'll all be so tragic that they should make it into a play or something."
"Where will I be?"
"I don't know, you can be the one that discovers us and gasps and calls the police and then they question you to make sure that you didn't do it, but since the wounds would be self-inflicted, you'd be off the hook."
"I don't want that to happen, I like having you around. I think they'll like you, what's not to like? Smart? Half-check. Funny? Check. Looks? Three-Fourths-check."
"Excuse me, a half-check for smarts and a three-fourths-check for looks? Who are you describing, a gargoyle, all of those deserve checks, I think you should check over your notes again because I think that they're terribly wrong Stephers and I demand a recount!"
"Well, since it's just me judging," she paused. "Recount done, the checks stand."
"I'm smarter than you," he said petulantly.
"Not smart enough to get off of me," Stephanie said, pushing his chest. Chris reluctantly got up off of her. "You have to get ready for your date anyways. You want to make sure that these people like you. You will be related to them forever."
"Hey, wouldn't it be weird if we got married and then your parent's reaction to that, I'd pay to see that!" Chris exclaimed.
"Oh Snooks, you wouldn't live to see the wedding day. They would do something like on 90210…do you think it's funny that I just call it 90210, how did a zip code of all things become such a powerful word in our lexicon?"
"Tangent!"
"Oh yeah, that word is so helpful, but when Dylan married that one girl and then her car blew up, like the day they got married, that'll happen to you. You get in a car and you go boom. Ka-boom! Bye-bye Snooks."
"Wow, now I'm going to have to watch your parents a little more closely now, knowing that they have a hit on me."
"Oh no, see, you're only the bad influence on my life Snooks, if we were to really be together, that's when the shit would hit the fan so to speak. That's a really gross saying, don't you think? I mean, what does that evoke? Feces spraying everywhere. Nobody wants that."
"Hence the point of the saying because that's the grossest thing they could think of at that particular moment."
"Shit and a fan, I don't want to meet the people who came up with shit hitting the fan. If they smell, I'd run because you'd know what they were doing upstairs, probably throwing crap like they were gorillas or something."
"I'm getting ready now, for real this time, not for fake."
"Fake getting ready would be awkward yeah," she said as he wandered into his bedroom, going through his clothes. Stephanie went and lay on the bed and waited for him to come back to see her. He was a quick dresser so he shouldn't take too long and he didn't, coming back in a nicely pressed pair of pants and a dapper button-down shirt. "Well hello there Mr. GQ, did you come for your fashion shoot?"
"Why yes, I did," he said, striking a few poses. "Let me go into my thinking mode?" He raised his leg and put it on the bed and then grabbed his chin, almost doing the Thinker pose. "How do I look?"
"Great Snooks, now get the hell out of here before the blonde bombshell starts calling."
"I'm going, I'm going," Chris said, leaning down to hug her. "I'll be back later Stephers, and I know what you'll want, but if I don't, expect a call asking what you want to eat."
"I'm so predictable Snooks, haven't you figured me out yet?"
"You! Figure you out! I don't think so, you're an enigma wrapped in a puzzle, wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in a Twinkie. You've got so many layers, you should just call yourself an onion, cause they have layers, not because you smell. You smell sometimes, but then you shower and everything is clean again, and the moral of the story children is that cleaning is fun!"
"Goodbye Snooks," Stephanie said pointedly.
Chris left the hotel room and went down to the lobby of the hotel where Trish was waiting with her parents. She spotted Trish and waved, walking over to her and giving her a light kiss. He smiled as he pulled away and she looped her arm through his. He wasn't going to compare her kisses to Stephanie, he wasn't going to compare her kisses to Stephanie, her repeated over and over. Even though he had done so quite a bit over the last couple weeks (and no, he won't reveal who was the better kisser), he wasn't going to do that when her parents were here. He had more respect for her than that.
"Chris, these are my parents, Alice and John Stratus. Mom, Dad, this is my fiancé, Chris Jericho," Trish said, making the introductions.
"It's so nice to finally meet you," Alice said, shaking his hand politely. "You're all that our little Patty talks about."
"I'm flattered that I could be the only subject a person talks about. I didn't even know I had enough material to be spoken about at all hours of the day. I must be something."
"See, funny, right?" Trish said to her mother, grinning up at Chris.
"Very," Alice winked. "Let's go to dinner, shall we?"
"I think we shall," Trish said, letting her parents go ahead of her.
"Patty?" Chris asked, holding in his laughter. "Really? Are you serious? Patty?"
"Shut up, you know my name is actually Patricia and I go by Trish for short. But my mom likes Patty instead and if you tell this to anyone, I'm going to be so angry with you."
"I'm sorry, it just really reminds me of Peppermint Patty from the Peanuts gang. And then when I think of peppermint patties, I think of York Peppermint Patties and how chocolately and delicious they are. Which invariably makes me think of Junior Mints, which brings me back around to Seinfeld who had an episode involving a Junior Mint."
"You're one screwed-up guy Chris Jericho," Trish said adoringly.
"Yeah, I've been told that a time or two."
They went to the restaurant and once they were seated, the discussion of the wedding got underway. Chris let Trish and her mother talk it out while he discussed hockey with Trish's dad. They were nice people, down-to-earth and extremely friendly and warm. They were just the kind of parents he expected the bombshell to have. They were like her and she was like them, it was the perfect parent-child match, as opposed to the bad parent-child match, which used a picture of Stephanie and her parents in the dictionary of weird terms that nobody uses except Chris when he's thinking about things.
"So, I'm very excited for you two," Alice said as she glanced at them, "now you have all your dresses and what not right?"
"Right," Trish nodded.
"Now, I know your sisters, Christie and Lissa are your bridesmaids, and that's squared away. Chris, do you have your best man all picked out and everything."
"Best woman," he corrected.
"I'm sorry, what did you say?" she asked.
"Best woman, I don't have a best man, I have a best woman. She's not a man, so I felt weird calling her a man because she's so obviously a woman. But yeah, she's my best friend, Stephanie McMahon, she's my best friend and she's going to be my best woman. Right next to me."
"Woman? Don't you think that's a little unorthodox?" John asked. "Don't you have male friends?"
"Yeah, of course, my friend Christian is the other groomsman, but Stephanie is my best friend and she means the world to me and I already promised her that she would be up there and I can't have a wedding without her," Chris said, defending Stephanie because she was his best friend in the world and this engagement wasn't going to change that.
"Oh, does she have a dress? Is she wearing a dress?"
That brought him back to their kiss again. He nodded slowly, trying not to picture her naked. Instead he brought himself back to the conversation. "She's wearing a dress, I helped her pick it out so it's perfect."
"That's so…interesting," Alice said. "A woman groomsman. Well, I guess if you can figure out all this new technology, we can at least go forward with the wedding. Now you say this girl is Stephanie McMahon, who works with you."
"That's the one, she's the best," Chris said, a smile coming over his face as he thought about his best friend in the entire world. "She's been with me through everything and I think it would be an insult to her if she wasn't in this wedding with me. She's my support system and part of my family. My parents regard her as one of their children, so she's like my sister."
"Oh, that's so nice," Alice said.
"That reminds me," Chris said as he flagged down a waiter.
"Yes sir, can I help you sir?"
"Yeah, thanks, I wanted to order one more meal, but can you make it to-go and have it at the end of the meal before we leave?"
"Of course sir, what would you like?"
"The chicken piccata please," Chris said as the waiter nodded and walked away. He turned to Chris's confused parents. "Whenever I got out on a date or when Stephanie goes out on a date, we bring the other food back and then we talk about what happened, it's a tradition and we'd hate to buck tradition right?"
"Right," Alice said.
Chris looked down at his hand. "Oh man, I just noticed I have ink all over my hand, if you'll excuse me, I'm just going to wash them."
As soon as Chris left the table, Alice turned to Trish, "Is he in love with this Stephanie girl?"
"No Mom, they're just really close," Trish explained. "I thought it was weird at first too, but trust me, there's nothing going on there, they are just best friends and nothing more."
"Do they share a hotel room?" John asked, "That's what it sounded like?"
"They get adjoining rooms, separate beds," Trish said. "Look, they're just really, really close, but I'm glad he has her. She's the only one who can keep up with him on a good day and when he comes to me, he's softer, nicer. He gets it all out with Stephanie and then he's great with me. I love him Mom, he loves me too. Stephanie is just his best friend. It's not like they're making out."
"I'm just worried that you might be in over your head."
"I'm not, Stephanie and Chris are friends, I trust them, they've never done anything to hurt me. They wouldn't start now, they're both good people, really Mom, trust me. There's nothing between them."
If only she knew what had happened.