A Better Face

(Warning: There are plenty of mistakes in this piece. I'm planning to come back and fix them later. Also, I wrote this two years ago, so it may not be very good.)

"You should have told me you were coming. I would have picked a better face," he said. He'd come to the door angry, and when he saw that it was just me his features softened.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know I needed to call first," I joked, watching a smile form on his face. His smile was just what I needed to see right now.

He moved over, giving me just enough room to squeeze in between him and the door. The TV stand was right behind him, so he couldn't open it up all the way. The living room was pretty small, or at least it looked that way with all the furniture in it. There was a coffee table, one that opened up with a secret compartment. Jerry had all of his journals hidden in it. He didn't know that I knew.

"Can I take your jacket?" he asked.

"Yeah." I slid it off my shoulders and he took it and put it in the closet in his bedroom. He was a bit of a neat freak. Everything was so clean and tidy and had it's own place, whereas my apartment was cluttered with boxes and books. I'd just finished moving all of my grandmother's things into my apartment where I would be taking care of her, as well as juggling college and a boyfriend. It was going to be a lot of work, but I was sure that I could do it.

The couch, which he'd only just gotten a week ago from a yard sale, actually almost brand-new, was an ugly green color, but it matched so well with everything else in the room that the ugliness was almost unnoticeable. Almost.

Jerry came back into the room just as I was going to plop down on the couch and kick my feet up on the cushions.

"Don't you dare," he said, glaring at me from behind his long bangs. I knew that he was glaring because his cheekbones would always slightly tense up at the top when he did. He pushed his bangs back out of his eyes, which confirmed this.

I rolled my eyes and put my feet on the coffee table instead of his hideous couch. "There, happy?" I questioned.

"No." He walked over to me and pushed my feet off the table. "Please stop, sweetheart," he whispered, sitting down beside me. "It cost a lot of money and a lot of energy to get the things that I have now."

I looked up at him, into his eyes. Maybe my look was sympathetic. I didn't mean for it to be that way, but he turned away from me anyways. I knew that the last thing he wanted was someone else's sympathy. I just couldn't help it.

"You didn't get in?" I asked, my voice cracking at the last word. He was applying to the same university that I attended, and we had been planning this for so long, to move in together and finish school, then maybe settle down and start a family, and now-.

Jerry cut me off with one of his award winning smiles and he announced, "the interviewer said that I would probably be one of the brightest students on campus, behind you of course."

"You made it?" I could feel the rush of excitement flowing through my body.

He nodded his head and smiled at me, an even bigger smile than before. "I was going to wait for the right time to tell you, but I guess tonight is better than any other."

"I guess it is." I stood up on my knees on the couch and wrapped my arms around his neck. "I'm so glad that you got in." I pecked his cheek lightly, then moved over to sit in his lap. The couch was too hard for my liking, and he was warm and so much more comfortable.

"So," he started. I cuddled into him, my face nuzzled into the crook of his neck. "Do you want to go out tonight?"

I looked at him, a smile on my face. He had a smile on his face, too. His smile was beautiful. "Where did you have in mind?"

"That is for me to know and for you to find out." His smile turned into a smirk as I pouted at him.
--
He made me wear a blindfold. The place that we were headed to must've been some big secret, so I occupied myself the whole ride trying to figure out where exactly we could've been going. It was a neighborhood. There was a purple house to my left and a yellow one to my right, as well as a hideous orange one. There was a dog barking somewhere. There was a church in the middle of it all. The place looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite remember where I had seen it before.

"Jerry, where are we?" I looked around again, but for the life of me I could not remember this place.

"This." He grabbed my hand and kissed it lightly. "This is where we first met."

I gave him a confused look and shook my head. "We met at school, junior year. You were in all my classes."

"No, sweetheart." He smiled. "I was walking to the bus stop, right past the church. You were heading the other way, toward the dollar store. We bumped into each other on our way, talked for a bit."

I remembered the place then. I remembered that day. Mom had kicked me out of the house and then the next day I was suspended from school for three days for getting into a fight, which I shouldn't have even been punished for it because I was defending a person who couldn't (or rather wouldn't) defend themselves. I just walked around downtown for all that time, until my grandma said that I could move in with her. When my three days were up, I went back to school and I met Jerry there.

"Yeah, I remember." I told him, smiling.

He looked into my eyes and it took me back to that day. His eyes were just as green as they had been and his smile was just as big. He was always smiling. That's something that I loved about him. It was so rare to ever see him with a frown on his face.

"Baby, sweetheart, I have to ask you something." He put his finger under my chin, making me look at him.

"Okay." I said. I watched him get on one knee and pull a small velvet box out of his pocket. I could already feel tears pricking my eyes. "Oh, Jerry."

"Vallerie, that day that I ran into you, right here in this very spot, I remember thinking how beautiful you were and how pretty your smile is. When I got home that night I couldn't get you out of my head. Everywhere I looked it was like your face was plastered there." He chuckled lightly, as did I. "The other day I walked in on you in the kitchen cooking breakfast and dancing around like an idiot, a beautiful idiot, and I thought to myself 'this is the girl that I want to marry and spend the rest of my life with,' so will you Val? Will you spend the rest of your life with me?"

The tears were flowing down my cheeks like a waterfall. They weren't tears of sadness or tears of anger or regret. They were tears of happiness. I wiped some of them away and looked back at him.

"Yes." I whispered. The word was caught in my throat and I couldn't force it out any louder. I didn't think that he even heard me, so I leaned down and pressed my lips to his, leading to a loving and passionate kiss. When I pulled away I found my voice. "Yes, Jerry. I'll marry you."

"I love you." He whispered it in my ear and pressed his lips to mine again.

"I love you." I said it back to him, getting down on my knees in front of him.

He slipped the ring on my finger. I looked at it. The diamond in it was blue and the band itself was silver. I remembered seeing it and picking it out a month ago at the mall. I hadn't suspected anything when Jerry asked me to pick one.

It was beautiful.

We were engaged.

I was so happy.
--
Jerry took me to his house after he asked me to marry him and we did what people usually do after they get engaged; sat on the couch and watched Netflix until neither of us could stay awake.

I fell asleep in Jerry's arms. I had a very long, very scary nightmare. It was the same one that I had almost every night. It was the reason why I didn't sleep most of the time. It was the reason why I was so tired in the first place. It seemed so real. I knew that it must've been real at some point in time. I knew that the man in my dream was my father and I knew that the fire must've symbolized his death and, as mother would've said, his whereabouts.

(I was five years old, standing outside of my childhood home. My mom, never shedding a tear for two people that she should love unconditionally, and my older brother stood with me. Dad and my newborn sister were in the house. The house was caught on fire. Dad and my sister never made it out. They burned to death, both of them, and my little sister so young. To this day I have no idea how it started. I suspect that it was my mother who started the fire. She, for some reason, despised my father. He'd done nothing, as far as I know, but be there. She despised my baby sister; she just wasn't cut out to raise anymore kids. She was a terrible mother when my brother and I were still living with her.)

"Sweetheart, Vallerie." His voice cut through my dream, all the pieces scurrying away, out of mind, and pulled me back into the bedroom. "Is it the same nightmare?"

I nodded my head and cuddled up to him, wiping tears that I hadn't known were there on his white t-shirt. "I don't get it. I don't get why I keep having it."

"I don't know." He wrapped his arm around my waist as the other one came down on my thigh, pulling me closer to him. "But you know that I'm here, love. I'm always here."
--
He was always there, as promised. Jerry and I had three kids together. A boy, the oldest, named Brandon. A girl, the middle child, named Hollie. Another girl, the last one, named Searlait. Jerry worked, as he'd wanted, as a doctor, or more a surgeon. He was qualified to get the job after he successfully graduated from the college. I was the CEO of Teenage Dreams Magazine and Val's Rich Fashion.

They lived happily ever after and died happily ever after in each other's arms as they were peacefully sleeping in bed.