"Okay, the gang's all here, so come on Steph, lay it on us."
Stephanie held her new baby in her arms and stuck her tongue out a little, "Chris, drum-roll please?"
Chris, who was perched next to her on the bed, turned and started drumming a beat on the table in an appropriate drum-roll. Shane rolled his eyes as he looked to his parents who were looking anxious to know what Stephanie and Chris had named their baby. Chris's parents also looked anxious, like this was all tedious and they should just get to it.
"His name is…Finnegan Aaron Irvine," Stephanie announced proudly as she went back to staring at her child and ran her index finger down the bridge of his nose. "My little Finny."
"Finnegan?" Shane asked in disgust. "You're naming your son Finnegan?"
"Yeah, what?" Stephanie asked, looking up at him.
"Do you want your kid's ass kicked?"
"It's not like we named him Yancy," Chris said. "Finnegan is an awesome name."
"Where'd you come up with it? I mean seriously, who the hell around here has the name Finnegan?" Shane asked.
"Are you trying to make this day unhappy for me?" Stephanie asked. "I gave birth yesterday and the least that you could do is like my choice of name."
"You came up with it, should've figured," Shane teased.
"You're such a jerk," Stephanie said as she shot a dirty look at her brother, "Finny, Uncle Shane is a jerk."
"So, what do you want to do today?" Shane asked Finnegan. They had been sitting on the couch watching Spongebob for the past half hour and that was just about all Shane could take. He wasn't exactly Mr. Kid-Friendly. Finnegan shrugged as he looked up at his uncle. "Well that's not very helpful."
"I don't know," Finnegan articulated.
"Again, no help," Shane said, but his tone wasn't annoyed. "Hey Finn."
"Yes?" Finnegan said, fidgeting on the couch as he tried in vain to get comfortable.
Shane contemplated for a moment, "Do you miss your Daddy?"
"Yeah," Finnegan answered immediately and with a firmness to his voice. "I miss Daddy lots and lots, but Mommy said that he was picking me up today. Then I can spend the night with him."
"But you want him to come home huh?"
"Yeah," Finnegan nodded, "but Mommy said that she…that…Daddy and she are broken up, and that means that Daddy can't live at our house anymore. Mommy says what happens."
"Yeah, Mommy kind of knows what she's talking about right?"
"Mommy's smart," Finnegan said with a grin. Shane laughed at that. Stephanie was smart, too smart for her own good, and a total smartass. But to Finnegan, Stephanie was a superhero. She was Wonder Woman to him and Shane didn't blame him. She was Wonder Woman to a lot of people.
"She is smart," Shane agreed. "But I don't think she's being smart right now."
"Why?" Finnegan asked, looking at his uncle attentively.
Shane looked at Finnegan for a second. He couldn't even begin to figure out Stephanie on this one. His sister was a little stubborn, a little high-strung, and sometimes didn't know what was good for her. She had everything and she gave it away like it was nothing. By any and all accounts, Chris treated her very well, and they had a house that they bought, there was no white picket fence but there might as well have been. Then they had this little boy who was genuinely one of the sweetest kids that you could ever meet, and she had torn it apart for what?
"Because she won't let your Daddy come home."
"She won't?" Finnegan asked, his eyes wide.
"Uh uh," Shane said. "Your Mommy and Daddy are being stubborn right now. Especially your Mommy, she's being very stubborn and she doesn't know what's good for her. But I want to show her what's good for her."
"Okay," Finnegan said, not really understanding a whole lot of what his uncle was saying.
"Well, I want to get your Mommy and Daddy back together so they won't be broken up anymore."
"Okay," he said again, still not really understanding the dynamics of what Shane was saying. But what four-year old is going to be in tune with the emotional attachments of his parents? Not too many, and while Finnegan certainly felt the tension between his parents and knew that his daddy was not around, he didn't understand the reasons why. But then again, neither did Shane.
"How can I put this into terms you'll understand?" Shane muttered to himself as he thought of how he could possibly make the little boy understand. He tapped his chin and sucked on his teeth a little and then turned to face the little guy again. "What I want to do is get your daddy to come home."
"Daddy can come home!" Finnegan exclaimed standing up on the couch and looking at Shane. "Daddy can come home?"
"Well, I want your daddy to be able to come home," Shane said. "And I want to make sure that he doesn't have the opportunity to leave again. I want your daddy to marry your mommy."
"Why?" he asked.
"Well, when two people are married, it means that they stay together all the time, and they don't ever go away from each other, forever," Shane added for dramatic effect, which seemed to work since Finnegan's eyes were widening.
"Mommy said that she didn't have to marry Daddy," Finnegan told Shane.
"Yeah, she doesn't have to, but I really think that your mommy wants to, deep down, deep down in her stomach," Shane said, and then grabbed his nephew and tickled him around the middle as he squealed with laughter. "So Finn, do you like my idea?"
"Yeah," Finnegan screamed as he tried to get away from Shane.
"Good, because I'm looking out for you, kid," Shane told him, though he didn't think that the little boy cared at the moment.
Stephanie walked out of the restaurant with Chris next to her. It had taken all her willpower not to hold his hand as they walked out. Things had gotten so habitual for them over the past six years and now that they were apart she was noticing all their little habits that they had with each other. They had fallen into such a routine together.
Chris stared at the back of her head as she stood outside the restaurant, looking around at the busy shops on the street. She had her shopping face on and he thought it sad that he even knew she had a shopping face. They had worked out their schedules to accommodate Finnegan's schedule and thought they had a good system set up. Finnegan would go with Chris to Winnipeg to visit Chris's dad and then he'd spend the next couple weeks with her until Chris moved into his apartment. It all seemed to work.
"I should probably go pick up Finn," Chris said. "We'll stop by the house and pack his things for Winnipeg."
"Yeah, that sounds okay, you have the key, feel free to go inside."
"Cool…well…I guess we'll talk later, you know you can call my dad's whenever, if you need anything, if you miss Finn. Any time of day that you want to talk to him, just call, my cell phone, my dad's phone, any phone," said Chris. He knew that Stephanie would hate to be separated from Finnegan for that long a period of time. She didn't even really like it when he spent the night at someone's house, let alone spend a week away, even if he was going to be with his father.
"I know, and tell Ted that I said hello, okay," she told him. Chris's father had always liked her, and he actually never pressed her to get married to Chris like her parents did. Her parents had been fine with them having Finnegan out of wedlock, after getting over the initial shock of it. At the beginning they had wanted the shotgun wedding, but they had dropped it when Stephanie had said it was out of the question, but when he turned two they started to hint at it, and when Finnegan turned three, they really started turning up the burner. Chris's mother had passed away last year, but she was always supportive of their decision not to get married.
"Yeah, I will," Chris said, and he looked like he was going to hug her, but he refrained himself. "Yeah, um, bye Stephanie."
"Bye Chris," she said with a short wave as he started to walk away towards his car. She watched his back for several moments, feeling like she shouldn't move at all. She should just stay there and watch him walk away.
In a way, Stephanie felt like she was giving Chris his future back. Getting pregnant with Finnegan had never been in the plan. She never figured out what had happened there. He was an accident of epic proportions. Sure, she wouldn't trade him back for all the money in the world and she would gladly die for him, but he was an accident, and the circumstances surrounding his conception and the changes it brought to her life were forever.
She always felt like she had tied Chris down. She had gotten pregnant and she had told him. Sometimes, late at night, when her thoughts were muddled with sleep and the promise of dreams, she thought about how her life would've turned out if she had never told Chris about Finnegan. She knew that Chris loved his son, but if he didn't know he had a son, there'd be no difference. He would've gotten the future he had wanted, the one she wasn't in.
She could never give herself fully to Chris after she had heard that. She gave him everything she had yes, and she loved him and told him often and their relationship had been good. But she kept the marriage card off the table. It was the one way that she could control things that happened, that she could always give Chris the option of leaving. That's what she had been doing; she had been leaving the option open for Chris.
She always knew that he was going to open that door. She knew he was going to leave her and she steeled herself everyday for it. She never knew when the day would be that he would realize that he could have so much more with someone else and leave her. She knew he'd never leave Finnegan, but leaving her didn't seem such an impossibility, and if she kept herself his girlfriend, it wouldn't sting as much because she would've seen it coming.
It reminded her of something she saw once, or read, one or the other. All ahead of her was a series of tomorrows and one of those tomorrows was the day he was going to break up with her and it was lurking in front of her saying, "Beware of me." And so she had been aware of it, knowing that it was lurking, and last Saturday had been that tomorrow that had been lurking off in the distance.
She counted herself lucky that she had gotten six years with him. Six years with him was probably more than she deserved. If there was no Finnegan, they probably would've broken up that second year. She was just fun for Chris Jericho, someone to have fun with, like a friend with benefits. He never mentioned moving in together, never mentioned marriage, or kids, or any kind of future with her. Then she had told him she was pregnant and all of a sudden, he had done a 180 and he was all about the future. He wanted the house, he wanted the marriage, everything and anything.
That had happened all because of Finnegan. If there was no baby, he wouldn't have seen those things. She wanted to believe that he would have, and that he loved her solely for her person, but when Finnegan came into the picture it distorted it until she didn't know whether it was just her that drew his attention or the fact she carried the moniker, "the mother of my child."
Chris tried to keep his composure as he drove. Falling into routine with Stephanie, falling into the banter they loved had felt so natural. Several times during their lunch, they had fallen into the laughter and flirting that they had perfected in their six years together. It felt so good to him, to be like that with her and he could not for the life of him figure out why Stephanie didn't want to make that permanent. Was he not good enough for her?
Or…he didn't even want to contemplate the idea that she might have been cheating on him. No, that thought quickly flitted out of his mind. Stephanie and he were not cheaters; they did not cheat on each other. Neither one would do that with Finnegan in the picture, and neither of them would do that without Finnegan in the picture. So his mind went back to not being good enough for her. It wasn't something he wanted to think about, but at this point, it was the only thing that he could think of that she could possibly use as a reason to not want to marry him.
Just the thought that she didn't want to marry him hurt his heart. He had been trying for years, he had done everything short of a PowerPoint presentation to try and convince her. He had tried to talk her into it, trick her into it, and anything and everything under the sun and she never relented. It was frustrating and that old, familiar anger was creeping inside of him again.
How dare she put his heart through the ringer like this? He deserved better than to be treated like this. He had been with her for six years, and they had had a child together. He most definitely deserved to be treated better than this. Now he was letting his anger take over for him. Yes, he was angry at Stephanie for tearing their family apart, for not wanting to marry him, for telling him to leave. He deserved better than that. He was fury-filled at the moment. But one thing, one thought made him angrier than all the others.
He was angry she didn't stop him from leaving.
And that stung the most.