"Now, will you get on with this bloody proposal?"
Y/n stopped laughing along with her mother at the two's bickering to look at him. Her entire immune system felt as if it stopped working, the cogs in her brain halting. "What did you say?"
"Mike, what's going on-" her mother hurried to the other side of her husband's bed, crouching down to get a better view of the young couple.
"Go on, Gripweed," Her dad ushered John, who appeared nervous all of the sudden but he cracked a smirk and looked down at his girlfriend, who stared back with panic in her eyes.
"I don't like being pressured, especially in front of beautiful women like you and yer mum," he admitted. "But I love you. And I didn't know how much I loved ye until I talked to yer dad about it-love I mean." Tears we're frozen in her eyes as she gazed up at him. "I realized I needed you. The way he explained how he knew he loved yer mum—it seemed all too familiar, and this is so goddamn cheesy, but I knew it was the same thing I felt for you since I first saw you."
"Stop it, John," she whispered as he pulled away from her side to stand in front of her. "You're making me cry."
"Isn't that what's supposed to happen?" he said. He was about to start again, but he stopped to take a deep breath. "I didn't have a dad, well, I did, then he fucked off to go somewhere else. I never had what you had. When I met you I thought I'd be somewhere where I couldn't be loved by anyone but you. Meeting this man, and such an old man he is, I knew I wanted to marry you from the first moment I saw you. But after meeting the people in this room? And after meeting everyone close to you?" He paused, dropping down to one knee and pulling out a zip-tie from his pocket.
"They gave me what I didn't, and never thought I would have," he stuck the zip-tie under her finger and positioned the ends together, ready at any moment to claim her as his.
"Please, marry me."
She was out of words, completely speechless. He'd done it before, he'd taken the English language out of her mouth and hidden it somewhere only he knew, but this? Never before.
"Dad?" she turned around. Her father nodded at her.
"Just say yes so I can call him my bloody son already."
