Day 76

"Are you kidding me?"

"What?" he asked as he opened the door and let her into his apartment.

"This place is ridiculous!" she told him, turning around as she walked a few steps into the room, holding her arms out to in demonstration of the room around her. There was barely anything in the room besides a coffee table, couch, and a TV. It was almost completely bare otherwise. "Chris, you came to get your stuff, where is it all?"

He shrugged, grabbing her hand and leading her down a short hallway to a door. He opened the door and inside was all his stuff, still in boxes, untouched and pushed against the walls. "I just never really unpacked."

"Why not?" she asked.

"I don't know, I guess I could say that it was because I always knew I'd be coming home to you, but in actuality, I was too busy and too lazy," he confessed to her. "Honestly, it didn't really feel like home, it was more just a place where I slept occasionally."

"I don't even want to know what your bedroom looks like," she shook her head. Inside, though, she was kind of happy that he didn't seem to have a life here. If she'd walked in to a perfect place that was devoid of her, she might have felt left out, like his life had moved on while hers had remained stagnant, but it was obvious from her surroundings that he had remained as stagnant as she had.

He was staring at her, and when she looked up at him, her eyes honest and open, he could see it in her eyes what she was thinking. He gave her a crooked smile and kissed her lightly. She pulled him in for a deeper kiss before sighing and looking at the boxes. At least it would be easy to get everything loaded up into the car and to the plane they took out here.

"You probably don't want to know, that's where I brought all my groupies back," Chris teased, and she growled and pushed him out of the room. He laughed and tried to grab her hands, but she eluded him and went down the hallway a little further to what she figured was his bedroom, pushing it open, she started laughing.

"Chris, your bed is on the floor," she told him, "I didn't realize when you left that you went back to college."

"Like I said, I didn't have time," he said defensively. "When would I have had time to put a bed frame together, let alone buy one."

"Wait, you don't even have a bed frame," she turned to him, "man, I knew you missed me, but I didn't know you regressed this far without me."

"Oh, you would just love that, wouldn't you, if you could claim that I was just this emotional wreck without you," he said, starting to back her up into the room. Her ankles hit his mattress, and she almost fell backwards, but he caught her and held her around the waist. "You want me to admit that I was nothing without you."

"It would be nice," she told him, wrapping her arms around his neck as she played with the ends of his hair. "I want you to tell me that if you had spent one more minute without me, you would have just curled up into a ball and died."

"You're such a drama queen, you know that," he told her, kissing her neck. "I can't believe I love you as much as I do."

"I can't believe that I want to marry someone like you, some weirdo rock star with delusions of grandeur."

"Let's do it then."

"What?" Stephanie said.

She was about to say something more, but then he was getting down on his knee in front of her, and her eyes just about popped out of their sockets. She would have had the wherewithal to drop her jaw open if she hadn't been so shocked. Then he was pulling her down to so she was kneeling in front of him. He grabbed both her hands in his, and she pursed her lips together.

"I want to marry you, I know that, you know that—"

"Chris, this isn't romantic!" she cried. "I don't even know what's happening, this is your bedroom in an apartment that you bought after we broke up!"

"How long have I been with you, Stephanie, how long have you been the love of my life?"

"Nine years," she whispered.

"Never in those nine years have I ever wanted another human being, just you, why wait and draw this out. I don't want to marry you because conventions tell us that we should, I want to marry you because I want you to know that nine years isn't nearly enough with you. Being without you isn't something I liked, and it isn't something I want to do again. I know we've had our issues, but who cares, we'll always have our issues—"

"You're such a blowhard," she told him, finally regaining her voice in the face of his silliness. "I swear to God, I don't know why I've been with you for so long."

"You love me," he said. "You love me and you want to marry me, and you want to drive your mother crazy with this news, and my stepmother is probably going to do the same."

"I don't want a fancy gown."

"I wouldn't want you in a fancy gown."

"Chris, are we crazy here? We broke up, we broke up, I mean," and here was stupid logic trying to ruin everything for her. She moved so she was sitting on the edge of his mattress, and he did the same, but kept close to her, their knees touching as he placed his hand on the bed so he could lean in close to her. "I don't think we're necessarily rushing things, but…is it too fast?"

"I don't."

"We fought a lot about Fozzy and about me and we broke up and I just…I'm not saying no."

"But you're not saying yes?" He wasn't sad, not really, but he'd really wanted to marry her, and it was a secret desire he'd kept from her for a long time. He'd always wanted to marry her, deep down, but he'd loved her more and if she never wanted to, just being with her was enough. He wasn't sure it was enough anymore though, and that's probably where the sliver of sadness came from.

"I didn't say that," she told him, "I just want to make sure that we make it clear that we're not going to get married next week or something, it'll just be like, four or five months down the road."

"So you want to marry me four months from now?" he smirked.

"You know what I meant."

"I know we still need to talk, and we haven't actually put this plan into action, but I do want a yes from you, and I didn't know how much until I actually asked you," he chuckled. "I guess I kind of did want the marriage after all."

"I guess I kind of did as well," she told him shyly. "So do you maybe want to ask again?'

"I will definitely ask again," he told her, "so Stephanie McMahon, will you marry me?"

"Yes, I will marry you," she told him, hugging him tightly before pulling back to kiss him. "I guess we're engaged, wow, that sounds so weird and so…"

"Not us?" he finished for her. She nodded. "I think it's because in most states, we're probably already common law married, or will be by the time that we actually do get married. We've been together nine years, so this isn't like this huge deal because we've done this marriage thing for a while now without actually calling it marriage. That was a little anticlimactic, don't you think?"

"A little bit, yeah," she admitted, "but maybe the wedding will be better."

"Let's hope so," he said, kissing her again. "So new fiancée, shall we?"

"Oh, you mean clean up this dorm room, sure," she said, lifting herself up and off his mattress. "You're not bringing this thing back home, are you, I mean, you can just like, donate this or something, we have a very nice, very worn in mattress at home."

"And thank God for that, it was hard breaking this one in," he pat the mattress before standing up as well. He started to grab open his drawers to pull out clothes as Stephanie went back to the room of stuff and started to grab boxes, at least ones she could carry down to the U-haul they'd rented just for this purpose.

It reminded her of the first time she'd done this under very different circumstances. She smiled at the memory. She and Chris had been together for a year and a half, going back and forth between Florida and Connecticut. She didn't mind the trip if she was honest with herself, it gave her some time away from her family, something she desperately needed at the time, but it was a hassle for work as well.

She'd been the one to ask him to move in with her. They'd talked about it in passing a couple times, living together, having a life, but it was just that, talked about in passing. Nothing concrete until she decided that if she was looking at a future with Chris, shouldn't they be on the same page? She hadn't been nervous even though she really didn't know what his answer would be. Looking back now, she wondered what would have happened if he refused, would she have broken up with him, would they have stayed together, would she have moved to Florida?

"Need help?" Chris asked, seeing her just standing in the hallway holding a box of old wrestling magazines in which he was featured.

"Oh yeah, no," she said, "I'm sorry, I was just thinking about when we had to do this the first time."

"Oh God, that was a mess," he laughed, "I remember that you were so set against me bringing some of my stuff, you kept telling me to leave this or that behind because there'd be no room then I would tell you that it was essential that I have it then you would make me tell you why. I thought we were going to break up that day."

"Me too because your house was full of junk! This is much better."

"Well, I didn't have you to tell me where to put everything," he told her, kissing her cheek as he walked past her and down the hallway towards the front door.

"It's called feng shui!"

"It's called you being a control freak!" he yelled back at her, and she growled at him under her breath. "I heard that."

"I'm not a control freak!"

There was no answer so he must have been down at the car, but then suddenly, he was in front of her, "You're totally a control freak, you barely even let me keep my clothes, didn't you think I needed a new wardrobe?"

"I merely suggested that some of your shirts looked like they'd been through the ringer, that's all," she told him. Then she laughed at how silly they were being. He started laughing too before he kissed her again. She let that feeling wash over again, the one she'd felt when he showed up at her door, when he came when she asked.

It felt good, right, and she wondered how she could have gone three minutes, let alone three months without him. What was she thinking? She loved him, and there was nobody else in the world she could love quite like this, and it was so reassuring to know that it was solid and tangible again.

"I'm really glad I'm coming home," he told her sincerely.

"I'm really glad too."