She walks further into the room.
“Nice sentiment and all but I don’t I want our child to be born a pot head and a drunk.”
I laugh and pick up the empty milk jug for her to see.
“Technically, this is milk pong.”
She laughs when she gets to the other end of the island and glances into the cup closest to her.
“Ahhh gotcha. If I remember correctly, I kicked your ass the last time we played,” she says with a smile.
“Oh I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure all of the ass kicking was done by me. You sucked at beer pong.”
“Lies! Not only were Liz and I the lap dance champions in our dorm, we were also beer pong champions,” she told me with a satisfied smirk.
“Wait, what?”
She laughs again and shakes her head at me. “I know I told you this story.”
“No, I’m pretty sure I would remember every part of a story that involved you and lap dancing,” I argue.
“Liz and I used to do lap dances on each other for free beers at the college bars. I was a little bendier then so I was usually the one on top,” she says nonchalantly.
Claire, bendy, girl lap dances…my penis exploded. That JUST happened.
“Promise me I will get to see this someday very soon,” I tell her.
“Yeah, okay. Because pregnant chick lap dances are so hot.” She chuckles.
“I don’t think you understand how serious I am right now, Claire. This is right up there with meeting God and winning the lottery.”
Seeing her happy and smiling confirms my decision to do this right now, this exact way. If only I could get the image of Claire grinding on another woman out of my head.
Damn you, penis, you aren’t in charge tonight! Take a break, go back to sleep, nothing to see here.
“As much as it pains me to say this, the lap dance can wait, but you’re going to have to prove to me right now that you’ve still got it in beer pong. The ping pong balls are right in front of you. Put your ball where your mouth is.”
She raises her eyebrow at me.
“Hmmm, that didn’t come out right. But I kind of like it,” I tell her with a shrug.
She picks up one of the balls and lines up her shot. It bounces off the rim of the first cup and lands in one behind it.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she taunts as I remove the ball from the cup and drink the milk.
I set the empty cup to the side, pick up my own ball and take aim while trying to keep my hand from shaking. I know I need to make as many shots as I can for this to work out the way I want it to. I toss the ball and it sinks right in the cup closest to her. I let out a huge sigh as she removes the ball and picked up the cup.
“Lucky shot,” she tells me before downing the milk.
“I love you more than I ever thought was possible,” I tell her softly as she sets the cup down. She cocks her head to the side and smiles at me.
I pick up another ball and quickly throw it before she could say anything back to me. It sinks into another cup right in front of her. As she picks up the cup to drink it, I speak again.
“I love you because you make me laugh and you make me want to be a better man.”
I already have another ball in my hand and throw it into the air before she even finishes the last cup of milk. She stares at me wide-eyed as the ball plops into the next cup in line and she hesitates before picking it up. I wait until the cup is by her mouth before I continue.
“I love you because every day you amaze me.”
A lone tear escapes from her eye as I throw another ball right into a cup. I’ve never played this well in my life. I guess it's only fitting since this is the only game where I'm playing for my life.
She picks that cup up and sniffles before taking a drink.
“I love you because you are the best mother in the entire world.”
One more to go. And this was the one that counts. I aim and watch the ball sail in an arc toward the last cup on her side of the counter. I hold my breath until it drops right where it needs to go. I walk around the counter until I'm next to her and wait for her to finish the last cup of milk.
A surprised gasp sounds from her when she tips the cup back and something bumps against her lip. As she pulls the cup away from her mouth and looks into the bottom of it, I get down on one knee.
With shaking hands, she reaches her fingers into the cup and pulls out the diamond ring I have been carrying in my pocket for months. She turns to look at me and gasps again when she sees where I am.
“The first time we did this, every time one of us sunk a shot we would tell each other a fact about ourselves. I remember you told me your favorite color was pink and that you watched the movie ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ once a year because it made you nostalgic for the time when Sarah Jessica Parker didn’t look like a troll.”
Claire laughs through the tears that are now falling freely.
“This time, I needed you to know every fact about why I love you. I wanted to marry you the first time I saw you again. I wanted to get down on my knees and beg you to never leave me. And I should have done it. I should never have waited this long. There is no one else in this world I could imagine spending my life with. I want to teach inappropriate things to our children with you forever. Claire Donna Morgan, will you please, please marry me and love me for the rest of your life?”
She leans over and throws her arms around me, holding me tight as she sobs out the one word I have waited forever to hear from her.
“Yes!”
I pull out of her arms long enough to take the ring from her hand and slip it on her finger. Our happy moment is interrupted seconds later by Gavin running into the kitchen.
“Mom, guess what? I swallowed a penny!” he announces.
Claire and I pull away from each other and turn to see all of our friends and Claire’s father standing in the doorway wearing the shirts Drew had picked out that say, “I played beer pong and all I got was this lousy t-shirt, knocked up, and a fiancé”.
“Sorry, Carter, I couldn’t resist the shirts. And really, they’re still appropriate considering how you proposed,” Liz says with a smile.
“Wait, I’m sorry. But did Gavin just say he swallowed a penny?” Claire asks, wiping the tears off of her cheeks.
“Oh, yeah. Well, we think he swallowed a penny. We’re not quite sure,” Drew explains. “He wanted some candy so Liz dumped out her purse on the floor because she knew she had a bunch of Tic Tacs at the bottom. He started scooping things up and shoving them in his mouth before we saw what he was doing. According to him, he swallowed a penny. But kids are liars.”
Gavin stomps his foot. “YOU’RE A LIAR YOU BIG FAT TURKEY!”
“I am not fat. I’m muscular. Get your facts straight,” Drew argues.
“Okay, can someone please tell me if my kid really swallowed a penny?” Claire asks loudly, putting a halt to the arguing.
“Well, I Googled ‘kids swallowing pennies’ and you’d be surprised how many hits I got,” Liz says. “Anyway, as long as the penny was made before 1982, he’ll be fine.”
Claire and I stare at her for a few minutes before Claire explodes.
“What the fuck?!”
“Awwwwww, Mom,” Gavin scolds as he pointed at her.
“I’m sorry, what the f-u-c-k does t-h-a-t mean and w-h-a-t do we do n-o-w?”
She has officially turned into one of the Stepford mothers, spelling words she doesn’t even need to spell because she is so freaked out. She is not going to be happy about this.
“It’s fine, Claire. I used my metal detector on him and the penny wasn’t there,” George stated.
“You’re kidding me, right? You know there’s this fancy thing called a hospital you can go to, don’t you?” she asks.
“I walked uphill both ways in a snow storm with no shoes just to get to school when I was his age, and I ate metal shavings for fun. A little copper isn’t going to hurt him,” George argues.
“Unless the penny was made after 1982 because then it’s made with enough zinc to melt his esophagus,” Drew said matter-of-factly. “I’m pretty sure that would have happened by now though, so he’s probably good.”