Carolyn: I can't believe Max actually thinks he's gonna be part of Dylan's life now. That doesn't seem fair after 4 years. I don't care how messed up he was with drugs or whatever.
Max kind of has this superiority complex, and even though getting to know Dylan wasn't his reason for coming to Roswell in the first place, now that he's here, he's just going after the idea full force, because his ego won't allow him to let up.
Engagement......wasn't expecting that quite so soon. But, Michael did have the ring.....
And Michael
is impulsive, so of course he just asked!
Can't wait to see what bomb you drop next.
There are quite a few bombs left to drop, some bigger than others.
Eva: The way he asked her to marry him, was so Michael in every way possible!
Wasn't it, though?
I wanted it to feel like a very authentic Michael proposal.
and I'm still holding my heart what Max will do next.
We'll see, we'll see.
Sara: Ugh...Max and Isabel ...the naughty brother and sister.
Neither one of them is a good influence on the other.
I really hope this engagement doesn't blow up in their faces....I think its a good move. We will see how everyone reacts to the news!!!
Reactions will definitely vary, that's for sure.
Thank you for the feedback! I really appreciate it!
Part 71
Since it was inevitable that word would get out about his and Maria’s engagement, Michael figured he would beat the wild gossip to the punch and reveal it himself. School was as good of a place as any to start. It would give him a practice round before he told the person he was really dreading telling.
“Hey, guys, shut up,” he barked at the breakfast table that morning. “I got somethin’ to say.”
But Jase was too busy regaling the guys with a story about this random chick he’d supposedly hooked up with the other night, and everyone was hanging onto every word of the way he described how she’d given him a blow-job in public. Like that had ever happened. Jase was all talk and everyone with half a brain knew it.
“Hey, guys, listen up!” Kyle called. And since he was still technically king around there, if only for a few more weeks, everyone fell silent. “Michael wants to say something.”
Do I really want
to? Michael wondered. No, he didn’t. Not really. But at least this way he could get the facts out there before the rumors started flying. He cleared his throat, getting a sense of what Kyle must have felt like at his press conference, where he had revealed the college he intended to sign with. All eyes on him, all of them expectant and curious. But this wasn’t like that. People wouldn’t react to this the same way.
“Alright,” he said, “so I just wanted to let you guys all know . . . I got engaged last night.”
The guys all just stared at him as if they didn’t understand.
“Engaged?” Bubba echoed. “You mean . . .
engaged?”
“Yeah.”
“To get married?” Antonio gasped.
“Yes.”
“What?” Jase spat. “To your girlfriend?”
“Who else?” These guys were his friends, but they were real idiots sometimes.
“Holy shit,” Kyle swore. “Are you serious, man?”
“Yeah.” He’d been hoping to tell Kyle earlier this morning, away from the other guys, but after dropping Dylan off at daycare, he’d run a little short on time this morning and hadn’t gotten the chance.
By now, other tables were listening in, and people already had their phones out and were texting the news to their friends who weren’t out there.
“
Wow,” Kyle said, staring at him with wide, shocked eyes. “I . . . I’m speechless.”
“You get it, though, right?” He was really counting on his friend to understand where he was coming from, why he’d done what he did. Because he highly doubted many others would.
“No, I get it,” Kyle assured him. “I just . . . wow, you actually
proposed to Maria?”
“Yeah, I kinda screwed it up,” he admitted, “but she still said yes.”
The other guys started snickering and talking in low whispers to each other.
“What?” Michael said, wanting to know what they were saying.
“Nothin’,” Jase said. “It’s just . . .” He chuckled. “Don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but
we don’t really understand ‘cause we’re not . . . we don’t got what you got with your bitch.”
Michael bristled. “She’s not a bitch.” He didn’t feel like he could relate to these guys anymore. He was at a different point in his life, and they weren’t thinking about things the way he was.
“Sorry,” Jase said. “You know what I mean.”
“I think it’s cool,” Kyle declared. “You found the girl you wanna be with for the rest of your life--”
“For the
rest of your life, man,” Bubba cut in. “What’re you thinkin’? Aren’t you gonna get bored with the girl?”
“No.” Michael was starting to grow frustrated. “You don’t understand.”
“I don’t,” Bubba admitted. “But congratulations or whatever.”
“Yeah, congratulations,” Jase and Antonio added quietly. And then, as if they couldn’t change the subject soon enough, they were talking amongst themselves again.
Michael frowned. What was this about? Did they really just
not get it to such a degree? Or were they upset to know that he wasn’t the same guy he’d been at the beginning of the year, the one whom they’d looked up to for all of his wild antics and womanizing ways? Or were they jealous that he had something real and they didn’t? He had no way of knowing, and he wasn’t about to ask them. Because he honestly didn’t really care. There were only a few more weeks of school left, and then he would be off to Alabama soon enough, where he already knew he would never speak to any of these guys again. Kyle was the only one at that table who was
really his friend.
“Hey, seriously . . .” Kyle held out his hand for a shake. “Congratulations, man.”
“Thanks, Kyle.” Michael started to shake it, but his friend pulled him in for one of their bro-hugs instead.
“Although I gotta tell you . . . you’re kind of a hypocrite, you know? You ragged on me when I said I wanted to marry Tess, told me I was too young, shouldn’t be thinkin’ about that kind of thing.”
“I know. But I get it now.”
“Yeah, you do. I know you do.” Kyle narrowed his eyes and nodded. “That’s how I know you’re doing the right thing. People are gonna talk, you know?”
“Oh, yeah.” They already were. The cafeteria was buzzing. Good old gossip. There was probably already a Twitter post.
“But don’t listen to ‘em, alright? You know what you feel and what Maria feels. That’s all that matters.”
“It is.” He planned on telling his dad today, and he knew that wouldn’t go well. But he had already made up his mind to
not care. His dad’s stupid opinion didn’t matter, and neither did Maria’s mom’s (because she was undoubtedly going to have a pretty negative reaction to the whole thing, too). Even his mom . . . as much as he loved her and was glad that she’d managed to put on a happy face this morning, he could tell that she still wasn’t completely thrilled about the news. She was wary, based on her own experiences. But even that didn’t matter. None of that would change the fact that he was in love with Maria DeLuca and always would be. Fuck everyone else.
Tess came stomping towards the table suddenly, flapping her arms about wildly. “Ohmygod!” she exclaimed. “I just heard. Is it true?”
“Yep.”
“Oh my
god!” she screeched. “No fair!”
“What? You wanted me to propose to
you?” he teased.
“No!” she whined, pointing to Kyle. “I wanted
him to propose to me!”
“I still will,” Kyle promised. “I didn’t know he was doin’ this.”
Tess whimpered. “Congratulations and all, but this, like, totally steals our thunder! Kyle,
we were supposed to be the engaged-in-high-school couple. That was gonna be our legacy!”
“Pretty sure Kyle’s legacy’s gonna be football-related,” Michael informed her.
“Shut up, Michael!” she snapped. “Congratulations, again, in all seriousness. Maybe this will be good for you.”
He gave her a confused look, wondering if she realized how bipolar she was sounding right now.
“Tess, just wait ‘til graduation,” Kyle told her. “Okay?”
“Yours or mine?”
“Mine.”
She breathed a sigh of relief, momentarily, then glared at him accusatorily. “Oh! So that’s when you’re gonna do it, huh? Graduation?”
“Shit,” Kyle muttered. “No, I didn’t say that.”
“No, you can’t do it then!” Tess shrieked. “Not when I know it’s coming! God, this sucks!” She started to storm off, then turned back around and said, “Congratulations,” one more time to Michael before huffing and puffing away.
“Oh god,” Michael muttered before teasing, “You’re really gonna propose to her?”
Kyle slugged his arm playfully. “I know she can be a little dramatic . . .”
“A little?” She was having a meltdown about not being proposed to first. “Is she on her period right now or something?”
“Who knows?” Kyle reluctantly got up and patted him on the shoulder. “Thanks, buddy. Your sudden burst of romanticism’s really killin’ my love life.”
“Sorry about that,” Michael said as his friend walked away, probably to go find and console his overly-emotional girlfriend. He wasn’t really sorry, though. Kyle was used to dealing with Tess when she was in her moods, and Tess, despite the fit she was throwing now, would gladly accept Kyle’s marriage proposal whenever and wherever it happened, even if she knew it was coming.
Once Kyle was gone, people started to swarm around Michael and around the whole table, most of them just asking if it was true. He got tired of telling them over and over again that it was. Why didn’t they just believe him the first time?
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
When Isabel walked out of Ms. Alvarez’s room that morning after finishing a make-up quiz, she nearly collided with Roxie and Ryan in the hall. They looked like they’d just emerged from an all-morning fuckathon in the eraser room, and they smelled like it, too.
“Oh my god, congratulations!” Roxie exclaimed. Ryan just chuckled.
“On what?” Isabel asked, suspiciously. Had the word that she wasn’t going to be valedictorian spread around already? Were they making fun of her?
“Everyone’s talking about it,” Roxie said. “Michael got engaged.”
“What?” Michael? Her Michael? Engaged?
To Maria. Oh, this was fucking great.
“Yeah, he got engaged,” Roxie chirped. “Isn’t that crazy?”
“It’s crazy,” Ryan agreed uber-cheerfully. He seemed well aware that Roxie was just being a ditz and was more than happy to sit back and enjoy it.
“So congratulations,” Roxie said again. “On being engaged.”
“Oh my god, does your brain even function?” Isabel wondered aloud.
“What?”
“He’s not engaged to me, Roxie. I’m not his girlfriend anymore.”
“Oh.” Roxie made a face of utter confusion, then giggled. “Oops, I forgot.”
“You sure did,” Ryan said, wrapping his arm around her waist. “Hey, listen, Isabel, I know this is a hard time for you, so if you need a shoulder to cry on . . .” He leaned in and whispered in her ear, “Or a dick to ride on . . .”
“I have a new boyfriend for that,” she informed him, pushing him away.
“Well . . . this one here . . .” He pointed to Roxie. “She’s into threesomes.”
“Threesomes!” Roxie echoed, licking her lips.
“And judging by your video, you’re not all that shy about group sex.”
“Fuck off, Ryan.” She pushed past the both of them and ducked into the nearest bathroom, needing to be away from people. She locked herself into the largest stall and dropped her books, pacing around a bit. The bell rang, and she didn’t know how she was even going to make it to class. She felt too emotional, and she probably looked like a wreck. How was she supposed to sit just two seats away from Michael, knowing about this, hating it, nearly hyperventilating over it?
She took a few breaths to try to calm herself down as the halls started to fill up with students. Their conversations were so numerous and so loud that she could barely distinguish one from the next, but whenever she did pick up on what someone was saying, it was something about Michael.
What he did still affected her. All day, people were going to be asking her how she felt about it, what she thought about it. And she was going to have to act like she was okay, like it didn’t bother her. But it did, and it always would. This was heart-wrenching. Knowing that Michael had moved on and was in love with another girl was bad enough, but knowing that he intended to
marry her? Why did she have to deal with that? What other eighteen year-old girl was having to deal with that right now?
With shaking fingers, she took out her phone, and though she thought about calling Jesse, she figured there was someone else who might better understand how she was feeling. So she texted Max with a short, simple message that would have him texting her back in no time:
Worst news ever.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Maria was so thankful when Krista suggested they go out for lunch instead of eating the food provided at the literature conference. The room they were shoved into was smaller than her high school classrooms had been, and there were at least three dozen people in attendance. Most of whom were
incredibly boring. And the subject matter wasn’t interesting, and it wasn’t like she intended to be a librarian for the rest of her life anyway.
They went to a small sandwich shop where Krista revealed she and Andy had had their first date. It was just a little hole in the wall nowadays, but the sandwiches were still good. The service was a little too speedy, though, since neither one of them was in any big rush to get back to the conference. Maria ate slowly on purpose, asking between bites, “Do you think anyone would notice if we don’t go back?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Krista replied sympathetically. “Only three more hours. You think you can make it?”
“I hope so.” Mid-way through the second presentation, though, her eyelids had started to feel heavy. “You were right when you said it’s boring.”
“And let me ask you, as someone who could technically still pass as a young adult, do you feel inspired to read any of these books they’re showing us?”
“Well . . .” Maria took a drink of water and admitted, “To be honest, I can’t even remember the last time I read a book.”
“You’ve just been so busy,” Krista said.
“No, plus, I really just don’t like to read.”
“Even working at the library?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know what it is, but I’ve never been a book person. I like poetry, though.”
“Well, that makes sense,” Krista said. “Poetry’s very musical.”
“Yeah. Poems are just like song lyrics.”
Krista smiled at her and asked, “Have you ever written any songs before?”
“Uh . . .” She laughed a little, embarrassed by some of the stuff she’d written back in fourth and fifth grade. A cheesy song about a time capsule to romance sprang to mind, as did a song about her great love . . . for a stray cat. “I don’t know, I’ve tried before. I wrote some decent stuff as a freshman. You know, before I kinda fell in with the wrong crowd.” Contrary to popular belief, drugs did not make your songwriting better. Kurt Cobain was an rarity in that way. “It’s never been my strong suit. It’d probably help if I took some songwriting classes or . . . you know, finished tenth grade English for starters.”
Krista looked at her sympathetically. “Do you think you’ll get your GED someday?”
“Yeah, hopefully.” She just had to find the time for it. “But until then, I’ll just keep working wherever I can, doing whatever I can. And then who knows? Maybe someday I’ll get my GED and be able to take a couple college classes. The music stuff’s kind of a far-fetched dream, so . . .”
“I don’t think it’s far-fetched,” Krista said. “I’ve heard you sing.”
“You have?”
“Yeah. Sometimes I hear you singing and playing the guitar, and I know you’re probably singing to Michael.”
Maria blushed. Some of those songs were wildly inappropriate, so hopefully Krista wasn’t able to make out the lyrics.
“I bet he likes to listen to you sing,” she said. “You have a great voice.”
“Oh, thanks.” Always nice to hear that compliment. “Yeah, Michael always says he realized he had feelings for me when he heard me sing for the first time.”
“Aw . . .”
“And sometimes he tries to sing, too, but it’s usually really bad. So the other night I was trying to teach him how to play the guitar instead.”
“Really? How’d that go?”
Maria shook her head. “Not so good. But he tried.”
“He
has been trying lately,” Krista acknowledged, sounding the slightest bit proud of her son. Wasn’t often that Michael’s parents sounded proud of him, but whenever they did, there was usually only one of them who felt that way.
Maria finished off her sandwich, glancing back up to the front counter, seriously contemplating ordering another one. She wasn’t overly hungry, but she didn’t want to go back just yet. She seriously had no problem with arriving back at that conference fashionably late by at least twenty minutes, maybe even half an hour.
“Okay, let me see that ring again,” Krista said, apparently just as content with biding her time.
“Oh.” Maria held out her hand, still getting used to seeing it there herself. It was so great that it didn’t need to be resized. Perfect in every way.
“My goodness, he did a good job, didn’t he?”
“Yeah,” Maria agreed. “He won’t tell me how much it was, though.” Which probably meant he’d spent more on it than he should have.
“You’ll have to watch that when you two are out on your own together,” Krista cautioned. “Michael’s not used to managing his money. Not that we have a whole lot of it to manage, obviously, but we’ve always had enough. So he’s never actually had to budget and cut back before.”
Maria nodded, knowing that this wasn’t a jab; Krista just wanted her to be realistic. Things would be tight for a while. They were going to have a few expensive things to finish paying off in addition to paying rent and paying everyday expenses for both themselves and Dylan. And she would probably be the only one working.
She didn’t want to think about that stuff right now, though. She thought about it enough. She just wanted to be happy about the ring on her finger.
“Were you surprised,” Krista inquired, “when he asked you?”
“Oh, yeah.” It had been so sudden, so out of the blue. But that was Michael. He was probably the only guy who would attempt to calm her down during the middle of a rant by popping the question.
“Had you two talked about it or . . .”
“No,” she replied at first before backtracking. “Well, kind of.”
“Really?”
“Well, he just told me at one point that he was probably gonna ask me to marry him someday. But I didn’t realize someday was gonna be yesterday.”
“Wow.” Krista stared at Maria in astonishment. “That’s really something, isn’t it? If you’d asked me five or six months ago if Michael would
ever wanna get married, I would’ve said you were crazy. And now here he is, proposing to you.”
“Yeah.” She remembered that utterly immature version of Michael who would have avoided marriage like the plague. He wasn’t all gone, but he’d definitely grown up a lot, too.
“He must really love you,” Krista said.
“I think he does. And I really love him. I know you probably feel like it’s all happening really fast, but . . .”
“Well,” Krista cut in, “it
is happening really fast. There’s no denying that. You haven’t even known each other for a year, right?”
“Right.”
“And you’ve been together how long?”
“Well . . .” That was always hard to say. When exactly were they supposed to mark that on the timeline? From the moment they first kissed? First had sex? “I don’t know, it was kind of complicated at the beginning. I mean, I had feelings for him for almost as long as I knew him, probably. He’s kinda charming.”
“Oh, he is,” Krista agreed. “Which can be a good and a bad thing.”
“And he started to figure his feelings out at Christmas. But we didn’t actually kiss or admit it to each other until my birthday. That’s when he first kissed me.”
“That’s sweet,” Krista said.
“No, not really. He was still with Isabel at the time, so . . .” She trailed off, letting that fact speak for itself.
“Oh.” Krista made a face. “Yeah, that’s less sweet then.”
“Yeah.” The start of their relationship would always be a bittersweet one, no matter how much time passed or how much the guilt over it faded as Isabel made it more and more impossible to feel sorry for her. “They were apart before we ever . . . did other stuff, though.”
“Did other stuff,” Krista echoed. “Maria, relax. I’m well aware that you and my son have a lively little sex life. As much as I’ll miss you guys when you move, I won’t miss knowing what’s going on just down the hall.”
“Watch out for Tina, though,” Maria cautioned. “And Todd, or whoever her boyfriend is in a few years.”
“Oh, I think she’ll be alright,” Krista dismissed. “She’s just eleven.”
“I was fourteen when I had sex for the first time,” Maria pointed out. “Fifteen when I found out I was pregnant. That’s not that much older than she is.”
“Hmm.” Krista considered that, shuddering in alarm. “Well, when you put it like that . . .”
“Just be very vigilant,” Maria suggested. “Tina’s a great girl, and she’s really smart, but it seems like she’s been trying to find her place this year. And she’s a little boy-crazy. I know Michael’s worried about her.”
“He is?”
She nodded.
“Well . . . I wouldn’t mind if she didn’t have a boyfriend for a while, or if she wasn’t so concerned with being friends with that Hannah girl.”
“Ugh, Hannah Crown?” Maria made a face of disgust. “She and her little brat friends came into the Crashdown the other day and left me a two-cent tip.”
“Oh, that’s just snobby,” Krista said. “I don’t care how young they are.”
“Well . . . it’s better than the first tip Michael ever gave me,” she admitted. “He didn’t leave one.”
“What?” Krista laughed a little. “Oh, things change, don’t they?”
“Yeah, things change.” Michael certainly had, and Tina probably would, too. And Maria was starting to realize that even she herself had changed. Because she used to believe that a happy ending just wouldn’t be possible for her, wasn’t in the cards, that her life would never even resemble a normal one. But now, with the move to Alabama on the horizon and a ring on her finger, she was starting to let herself believe that she had been wrong all along.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Michael rarely ever set foot in McDonald’s. Not the one in Roswell, at least. It was a tourist trap, like so many of the other places they had there. It was shaped like a flying saucer and had a space playground area for kids, complete with Ronald McDonald himself and his chicken nugget friends flying through the solar system. And there was a flying box of fries back there that claimed the fries were out of this world, which Michael personally didn’t understand since the fries he got there were usually cold and undercooked.
He had to go there, though, whether he wanted to or not, after revealing his big news to everyone at school. People were going to be talking about it. Word would spread all over town, and his dad would find out sooner or later if he didn’t tell him himself.
When he stepped up to the register, his dad didn’t even glance up. He just stood there and mumbled, “You know what you want?”
Michael sighed, taking in his pitiful appearance. “So this is it, huh?” he said. “The new job?”
His dad looked up, and for a second, there was a flash of embarrassment in his eyes. But then he just shrugged and said, “Gotta take what I can get.”
And this was all he’d been able to get? Employee at Mickey D’s? Damn, that had to suck. “Mom told me you’d be here,” he said.
“Full-time.” Again his dad shrugged. “Is what it is.”
Michael couldn’t quite find it in himself to feel bad for him. The guy was a jackass, and working here was probably karma in some roundabout way. Now he’d have to deal with customers being jackasses to him every single day.
“You gonna order or just stand there?” his dad grumbled.
“Well, clearly you didn’t get hired for your customer service skills.”
“I’m serious. I wanna go on my break. So either order or--”
“I need to talk to you,” Michael blurted.
His dad grunted. “During my break? My one and only break of the day?”
“Yeah.”
His dad sighed, punched in an order for himself, and said, “Go sit down. I’ll be over in a minute.”
Michael ended up waiting for about five minutes until his dad came and sat down at a table with him. At first, he looked more interested in eating than he did in talking. And his eating was accompanied with complaining, too. He complained that his burger wasn’t well done enough, wasn’t thick enough, and that his fries weren’t salty enough. “Dogs eat better shit than this,” he grumbled.
“Just be happy you’re gettin’ an employee discount,” Michael reminded him.
His dad grunted. “Employee. Yeah, that’s great.”
Michael rolled his eyes, not in the mood to attend another one of his father’s self-hosted pity parties. “Listen, Dad, there’s somethin’ I gotta tell you,” he said.
“You get that girl pregnant?” his father guessed.
“No.”
“Some other girl pregnant then?”
“No.” Michael looked at him angrily. Wasn’t it obvious that he was pretty damn devoted to Maria? He wasn’t sleeping around with other girls.
Chewing his food with his mouth open, his dad asked, “Then what is it?”
Michael took a breath to brace himself for what couldn’t possibly be a pleasant reaction, and then he came right out and said it. “I asked Maria to marry me.”
His dad stopped chewing, a piece of bread dropping out the corner of his mouth.
“She said yes.” There. There it was. Big news revealed.
“Oh, of course she did.” His dad swallowed the food in his mouth and gripped the rest of his burger so tightly that he nearly flattened the bun out. “Why wouldn’t she? Now she doesn’t have to raise her kid alone. She’s got you roped into that.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Then what’s it like?”
Wasn’t it obvious? Wasn’t there one overarching reason for asking somebody to marry you? “We love each other.”
His dad laughed indignantly at that. “Yeah,
now. But love fades. It’ll fade for you, just like it did for me.”
“Thanks for your support,” Michael mumbled sarcastically.
“Well, what do you want me to do? Sit here and act like I’m happy, tell you congratulations?” His dad’s voice was rising in volume, and the mother and son a few tables away turned to look at them. “I’m not gonna do that. You’re makin’ a big mistake.”
“It’s not a mistake,” Michael argued. He had never felt more sure about anything than he did about the idea of being Maria’s husband. He couldn’t explain it, but he just knew that was what he was meant to be.
“Did
she ask you to do this? Did she trick you into it?”
“No!”
“ ‘cause that’s what women do. They manipulate.”
“No one manipulated me. I went out and got a ring and asked her to marry me ‘cause I wanted to. That’s all.”
“You wanted to?” His dad scowled at him. “What the hell’s wrong with you? Haven’t you learned anything from my mistakes? Why the hell would you do that? You’re eighteen!”
“You and mom were eighteen when you got married,” he pointed out. Wasn’t it kind of hypocritical for his dad to judge him for making the same decision at the same age?
“Yeah, and look how that turned out. You wanna end up like us?”
“We’re not going to.”
“Yeah, you think that now. But marriage and kids and all that crap . . . it changes stuff. It changes
you. I only married your mom ‘cause you were on the way. Thought I was doin’ the honorable thing.”
“Yeah, you’re a real honorable guy,” Michael muttered derisively.
“Oh, and you think you’re different? You think you’re gonna end up different?” his dad challenged.
“I am.”
“Why? ‘cause you love her so damn much?”
“Exactly.”
His dad laughed angrily. “You don’t get it. You’re livin’ in a fantasy world. You think you’re gonna have this great, easy life together, but you don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know what it’s like to be out there in the real world where you got bills to pay, and kids to take care of, and . . . a job you hate.”
Michael wanted to have some snappy comeback for that, but he couldn’t come up with one. Because it was sort of true. He didn’t pay bills, and he didn’t work. And even though he helped take care of Dylan, his mom was always there as a safety net whenever they needed assistance. “Maybe I’ll end up at a job I like,” he said, “and maybe money won’t be an issue.”
“Oh, yeah, maybe. And maybe Maria gets pregnant again within the year. Mark my words, she will.”
Michael shrugged. “That’s fine.” He realized what a mistake it was to say that right after the words were out.
“That’s
fine?” his dad echoed incredulously. “Oh, no. No, don’t tell me you’re tryin’ to have a kid with her now.”
“Not trying, but if it happens, it happens.”
“Oh . . .” His dad shook his head. “You’re a fuckin’ goner.”
“I’m gonna have kids with her someday. I don’t care when it happens.”
“Well, it’ll happen before either one of you is ready,” his dad claimed, as if he was all-knowing or could see the future. “Trust me. You’ll knock that girl up, and then you’ll realize I was right.”
“Oh, ‘cause kids are such a burden, huh?” Michael growled. “Like I was such a burden to you.”
“You were! You got in trouble all the fuckin’ time . . .”
“Well, that’s shocking, ‘cause, as my dad, you were
such a good influence.”
“You shut the hell up!” his dad roared, shooting to his feet. He towered over him, pointing an accusatory finger at him. Everyone was staring at them now. “You don’t know! You sit there and you act like you do, but you don’t know what it’s gonna be like! You don’t know what it’s like to be so
fuckin’ unhappy!”
Michael stood, too, not backing down. “Well, I’m sorry Mom and I made you so unhappy, Dad. Sorry you would’ve had this amazing life without us tying you down.”
“I don’t know what I would’ve had! See, that’s the point! I’ll never know!” his dad yelled. “I’ll never know what else is out there, ‘cause all I ever got was this. And do you think I like havin’ to be the one to say all this to you?”
“Yeah, actually, I do.”
“Well, I don’t. I don’t like it, but if I’m not brutally honest with you, who the hell’s gonna be? I tell you this stuff ‘cause I actually do give a damn about you, and I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I made. There’s somethin’ better out there, and if you get your head outta your ass, you might actually find it.”
Michael shook his head defiantly, noticing that a few people were leaving the restaurant there, not wanting to witness this. “No, you’re the one who doesn’t get it, Dad. There’s nothin’ better than Maria.”
“Maria? She’s a . . .” His dad threw his arms around, sputtering furiously, “She’s a girl you like to fuck! That’s all!”
“She’s not just some girl!” Michael yelled back.
“She
is just some girl. She’s got no future ahead of her, and she’s gonna drag you down with her!”
“No.” Michael refused to believe that. Historically, he was the one who people thought had no future. If anyone was going to drag the other down, it would probably be him. But he was going to try really hard not to.
“You know what? Then fuckin’ marry the bitch!” his dad shouted. “Five years from now, when her beauty fades and the thrill of the sex wears off and the only time you feel
any better is when you’re gettin’ drunk, then you’ll know I’m right. You’ll know you wasted your whole life on some stupid whore!”
No way. Michael couldn’t take it anymore, couldn’t stand there and listen to it. He decked his dad right in the face. One punch wasn’t enough, though, not when he was calling Maria a bitch and a whore, so he grabbed him by his uniform so he could steady him and hit him again. His dad started to fight back, though, and soon enough, their verbal argument had escalated into a physical one, and other McDonald’s employees were attempting to break it up.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“Well, this is just lovely,” Krista bemoaned when they arrived home early that evening. “A great way to spend my afternoon, bailing both my husband
and my son out of jail after they got arrested for fighting. With each other!”
“Don’t look at me,” Andy said as he edged his way past his wife and on into the house. “I didn’t throw the first punch.”
“Oh, fuck you, Dad!” Michael shouted. “The only reason I hit you is ‘cause you wouldn’t stop talkin’ shit!”
Maria, immediately concerned that Dylan was overhearing all of this, looked to Tina and said, “Can you take him into his room to play?”
“Sure,” she said, grabbing hold of his hand and quickly leading him away.
Michael frowned as if her were pained and apologized, “Sorry. I didn’t . . .”
He was angry. He wasn’t thinking. Otherwise he never would have said something like that in front of Dylan. She knew that.
“What were you thinking?” Krista ground out at her husband. “I can’t believe you hit our son!”
“He hit me first!”
“That defense only works in the third grade, Andrew.”
Maria grabbed Michael’s arm, pulling him away from his parents slightly. “Michael, you shouldn’t have done this today,” she said, trying to keep her voice soft and patient-sounding.
“I had to tell him at some point.”
“No, you shouldn’t have fought with him,” she clarified. She glanced over at his parents again. Krista was lecturing her husband now about responsibility, and letting him know how upset she was that he had lost his new job already.
“Maria, you don’t understand,” Michael said. “He was bein’ a jackass.”
“I know, but you
both paid the price for it,” she pointed out. “You’re trying to make it onto a college football team, Michael. The last thing they need to see is a brand new arrest on your record.”
“Uh-oh,” Andy cut in, leering at them. “Trouble in paradise already?”
Maria rolled her eyes, not even bothering to hide her annoyance the way she usually did with him. She saw that Michael’s jaw was clenched shut, and his hands were in fists at his sides. He was holding himself back.
“Okay, let’s just go upstairs,” she said. “Okay?”
He nodded, and as they walked past his dad, he gave him an extra little shove, to which his mother scolded, “Knock it off, Michael.”
“Come on,” Maria said, taking hold of his hand. She scampered into their bedroom quickly and shut the door to cut him off from the whole toxic situation.
“Dammit!” Michael roared, kicking his computer chair over.
Maria startled a bit. Seeing Michael mad at his father was nothing new, but seeing him so mad less than twenty-four hours after he’d proposed and been so happy was a little upsetting. “Are you okay?” she asked him.
“No, I’m fuckin’ pissed.”
“Obviously.” She picked up the chair and pushed it back towards the desk again.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I didn’t mean for Dylan to have to hear any of that. It’s just . . . my dad, Maria. He makes me so angry sometimes.” He sat down on his bed, bending forward with his arms on his knees.
She sat down beside him and rubbed his back.
“I mean, I knew he was gonna react bad,” he said, “but I didn’t know it was gonna be
that bad.”
“What did he say?” She wasn’t even sure if she should ask; he probably didn’t want to rehash it.
“Just the same old shit about how it’s not gonna work out, I’m gonna be miserable, end up like him—blah, blah, blah.”
Maria bristled. There was just no easy way to take that. Knowing that your future father-in-law was so vehemently opposed to you becoming part of the family . . . it sucked, even if she didn’t require his approval.
“But if you’d heard some of the stuff he was sayin’ about you . . .” Michael shook his head. “That’s when I lost it.”
“What was he saying?”
“Trust me, you don’t wanna know.”
She probably didn’t, but she could take an educated guess in her mind.
Bitch. Slut. Something along those lines.
“Listen,” she said, angling her body towards his, “I know you don’t care what he thinks, but . . . if something he said made you change your mind, I would understand.”
“No, I’m not gonna change my mind,” he said, looking slightly hurt that she would even think that was a possibility.
“I mean, I just know that sometimes people start to rethink things,” she said, trying to sound calm.
“I’m not rethinking anything,” he assured her. “I wanna marry you, Maria.”
She breathed a small sigh of relief. Thank God. Because she’d spent all day looking forward to it.
“In fact . . .” He reached over and put one hand on her lap. “I don’t think I wanna wait.”
She stared at him curiously, and her heart started to beat faster in anticipation. What did he mean by that?
TBC . . .
-April
