A/N: Thanks for the reviews, keep them coming. :)

“What do you mean they’re not coming?”

“Snooks, I couldn’t make it any clearer unless I got a skywriter to write it across the sky and by the time he gets finished the beginning is already going to be blending into the sky itself and it’ll end up saying something silly like, ‘Get free chicken at the car wash.’ My parents aren’t coming to the wedding.”

“There has to be some mistake,” Chris said. “Maybe they signed it in invisible ink and you need to breathe on it in order to read it. Or this is a joke invitation that they photocopied and sent.”

“My parents joke? They don’t know the meaning of the word unless it’s to humiliate someone,” Stephanie sighed, looking at the invitation again. “It says here, very clearly, with a checkmark that looks like it came from a computer that they will not be coming to the wedding.”

“That’s impossible, they’re your parents. Lord knows they haven’t been the best parents ever because let’s face it, you’re an anomaly with your complete rock-icity, but they’re your parents.”

“I know who they are, Snooks, I’ve only spent the past twenty-five or so odd years trying to get away from that fact,” Stephanie said, placing the invitation very carefully on the desk in front of her. It almost felt so delicate, like a piece of fine china.

There, sitting right in front of her was the proof of what her parents really thought of her. Despite her jokes and utter inability to be serious, she believed truly that her parents, somewhere deep inside where their hearts were two sizes two small, at least one small portion loved her and cared about her. She’d done the best she could with her life. She was never destined to be proper. She likened herself to Jo from Little Women, a book she’d read some time ago. She was wild and free and could never bee perfection nor did she want to be. She’d only been Stephanie, the Stephanie she’d wanted to be.

But here now, it was proof, hard evidence. She could show it to any judge and they would tell her, “Oh yes, yes, this makes it quite clear that your parents do not favor you one bit.” This was her wedding, one of the most important days of her life and they would not be there. She knew, quite well, that they did not like Chris or approve of this relationship. They’d never really approved of any of her relationships so why start now. She was never going to fall for someone like a doctor or a lawyer or someone rigid like her parents (not to say that all lawyers and doctors were like that, but the ones her parents knew were). Still, despite that, it was her wedding, something very important to her and they had decided they had something better to do.

“I can’t believe this,” Chris said, grabbing the invitation to look for himself. And yes, there it was, staring him in the face. There wasn’t even an explanation on it, a little note that said, “Sorry, going on vacation that day,” or “We’d love to come, but your father is getting a lobotomy.” It was just a lonely check mark in the box next to “Will not be attending.”

“It’s okay,” Stephanie said, shaking it off like she’d shaken so many things off before. When she was growing up, she’d have plays and recitals, but her parents had always been too busy to come see her in anything or if they weren’t busy, they didn’t find whatever she was doing engaging enough to attend. Why should this be any different?

“No, this is not okay, this is unacceptable,” Chris told her, looking up from the invitation. “Did your mom or dad give this to you?”

“My dad had his assistant deliver it,” she answered.

“He couldn’t even bring it himself, the coward,” Chris said and he was fuming. It took a lot for Chris to lose his temper. He was such an even-keeled guy, liked by so many, and he relished in that nice guy image. But when he got angry, he got angry. It would bubble below the surface, turning his normally peaceful face into a sneered one and she never liked to see that because it just wasn’t Chris, at least not the one she loved and had loved for so long.

“Snooks, don’t make a big deal out of this, please,” Stephanie pleaded with him. “It’s not that big a deal. Part of me thought they wouldn’t come anyways.”

“I don’t care,” Chris told her. “I don’t care what you may have thought. These are your parents, Stephers. I mean, God, who the hell doesn’t come to their child’s wedding. In the event Shane ever finds a female robot, I’m sure they’d attend that wedding.”

“Well, luckily for me he’s never found a female robot with all the working parts or the emotion chips,” Stephanie said, giving him a weak smile. She was trying to be brave. Hell, she was the bravest person he knew, what other girl would follow a guy around who kept telling her to get lost? Still, there was only so much a person could be brave about. This was a crushing blow to her.

Chris had known Stephanie for too long to be satisfied with her words when he could look at her. They’d been friends forever it seemed and they had talked, sometimes even seriously, about anything and everything and he felt like he had turned over nearly every stone Stephanie had. Sure, there were probably a few scattered at the outer edges of the Stephanie garden, but he was working his way towards those. He went over to her and leaned back against the desk, facing her. He ran his hand tenderly down the side of her head until he was cupping her cheek. Then he leaned down and pressed a small kiss to her lips.

“They don’t deserve someone like you. They never have.”

“You’ve only known me part of my life…maybe when I was around three or something I did some irreversible damage to them and that’s why they’ve made me the pariah in the family,” she told him.

“Anything a 3-year-old you could do would probably be adorable, even if it was something like spilling grape juice on the white carpet…do you recall any incidents like that?”

“Not clearly,” she said, then sighed. “It’ll be okay, right, them not there? I mean, I don’t need them at my wedding, right? We’re going to have a great party and it’ll probably be better that they’re not there because then I won’t have to act proper at all. I mean, I’m planning to rap my vows, you know?”

“Damn it, that was my idea,” he said, tracing her jaw with his finger. “Now I’m going to need to hire some circus performers for my vows just to upstage you.”

“Well, I’ll have a rip-away skirt so I can look like a ho when I’m doing my vows.”

He kissed her again. “Everything will be fine…did you get an answer from Shane?”

“No, you’d think I would,” she said, “not that I don’t know his answer already. If my parents said no, then he for sure said no. He probably sent it in the mail since that’s the proper way to do things and if anyone’s brain is wired to do things correctly, it’s Shane’s.”

“That’s true, it’ll probably be waiting for us at home, maybe it’ll have a self-destruct mechanism attached to it and it’ll explode and then we’ll have soot all over our faces and our hair will be sticking straight up and we’ll have shocked looks on our faces.”

She smiled at him. She couldn’t imagine herself with someone boring guy who did the right thing all the time. She wasn’t that type of person and she couldn’t ever appease her parents. Chris was the man she wanted. In a lot of ways, she was the man she’d always wanted. When other relationships had failed, Chris was always there, telling her she’d find someone, telling her that she was awesome and giving her pep talks. Neither one realized that everything they really needed was right there.

“I’ll be sure to wear my bomb-resistant suit when I get the mail at home,” Stephanie laughed.

“Good,” he said. “Look, parents or not, we’re going to have the best wedding ever. They’re going to bring in the Guinness Book of World Records and we are going to win for ‘Best Wedding’ or ‘Craziest Wedding,’ and we don’t need your parents there to strip us of that award.”

“You’re right, it’ll be great either way.”

“Do you want to call my parents and hear them yell and whoop it up about our wedding invitations? I think my mom is about ready to burst through the phone. She’s probably flying over here now and you’d think, ‘oh, she’s on a plane,’ but no, I think this news actually made her airborne. I think it made her so happy she sprouted wings and she’s flying to us right now and maybe she’s flying next to a plane and a man is sitting there and he looks out and sees her over the wing and she waves and he waves back, then realizes what he just saw, looks again and my mom is gone.”

“That would really save her on plane tickets,” Stephanie said and Chris could tell she was still a little upset, but trying to break free from her melancholy. “I’d like to call them.”

It would be therapeutic to talk to Chris’s parents. They were on the complete other end of the spectrum that her parents were on. While her parents were completely against the wedding and wouldn’t come, she pictured Chris’s mom telling the minister (or sea captain if that’s what they decided, maybe she could dress up like a mermaid and Chris like a sailor) to hurry it on up, or forcibly push her down the aisle if she walked too fast. Maybe she would even push the minster (or Elvis if they decided on a theme wedding and she could dress up as Priscilla and Chris could be young Elvis) out of the way and start presiding over the ceremony herself.

Chris called his parents on the office phone sitting on Stephanie’s desk and put it on speaker. It rang a couple of times and then Chris’s mother’s voice piped up, “Hello?”

“Hey, Mom, it’s me, promising to call you back like I said.”

“Oh, Christopher, hello.”

“Hey, Mom, I’m here too,” Stephanie added.

“Stephanie! Oh, it’s so good to have you both…now that I’m talking to the two of you…why the hell didn’t we know that you were getting married before this!”

Stephanie laughed, “Chris and I wanted to keep it a surprise. We thought it’d be better that way. Like you had to be kept in suspense, toiling away the hours, constantly thinking about when he would finally ask, if I would accept, if we could set a date before we both got bored of the idea and decided to go surfing instead and then when you’re thinking of all that, there’s the invitation!”

“Well it was certainly a surprise. I went out and got the mail and saw something from the both of you, but I had no idea it would be a wedding invitation because it didn’t look like your typical wedding invitation. I thought it was one of you sending me something and being a tattletale on the other and I was very prepared to call you and lecture you and I open it and I see it’s a wedding invitation and for a moment I didn’t even think it was yours and then I saw your names and a date and everything.”

“It’s real too, we promise.”

“It better be real or I’m disowning the both of you,” she told them sternly. “Your father is over the moon about this too. He’s just as happy as I am.”

“So I’m guessing you both will be attending the wedding then,” Chris said.

“We want front row tickets, are you kidding me, I want to be standing up there with you after all the times I’ve said the two of you should be together, but did you ever listen to me when I told you the most obvious thing in the world, no? Now I think you’ll learn to realize that I’m right at all times.”

“I don’t think so, Mom,” Chris told her.

“Oh, but I called it way before you knew it, so this is all mine. I’m so excited though. Stephanie, you are going to be my real daughter, you are going to be mine, you hear that. You are now my daughter just as much as Chris is my son.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Stephanie said, grinning at Chris as he kissed her temple. “I like the thought of that.”

“Good, I’ve just got a lot of time to make up spoiling you and first on that list, I am going to be there when you get your dress, no if’s, and’s, or but’s, I’m there and I am going to help you. What do you think you want?”

“Hey, I’m going to get out of here for a while, okay?” Chris told her. He didn’t want to be part of this conversation and he had things he needed to do.

Stephanie nodded as Loretta rambled on and on about what kind of dress Stephanie should wear. Chris walked down the hallway, ignoring everyone as he had one goal and one purpose on his mind. He found the door that said “Vince McMahon” on it and he took a deep breath. He’d been curbing his anger for Stephanie’s sake, but he’d been planning to come here when he got a free moment. Hearing his mother talking about how Stephanie was her daughter now had brought that feeling of anger pounding back to his chest, stomping its way in.

He grasped the doorknob and went inside. He was glad, Linda was there too. He looked off to the side and saw Shane as well. He didn’t know what Shane’s deal was with the wedding, but since he probably wasn’t coming, he could hear this too. Vince and Linda looked pissed that he had just barged in here and Vince started to stand up.

“Just what do you think--”

“Shut up,” Chris told him in a voice that meant business. Vince looked at him, glared was a more apt word, and then slowly sat down. “You’re going to sit down and shut up.”

“I am your b--“

“I don’t give a damn what you are,” Chris told him. “Yeah, you control my professional life, but I don’t give a damn. You can fire me after what I have to say, I don’t care because I’m going to say it anyways.”

“We don’t care what you have to say,” Vince said.

“Oh, you’re going to care,” Chris said, his jaw setting as he slammed his hands on the desk. “You are going to care and you are going to listen to every goddamned word I’m about to say.”

Vince opened his mouth again, but Chris cut him off. “How dare you treat your daughter the way you’re treating her! Do you realize she’s your daughter, huh? Oh, she’s not perfect like we are, she’s not prim and proper and she doesn’t fit into Connecticut society, who cares! She’s your daughter, you are supposed to love her in spite of things, you’re her parents for God’s sakes! Not coming to her wedding because you don’t like me, seriously, that’s how you want to go about things? What the hell did I ever do to you? I’ve been a damn good wrestler for a very long time, but more importantly, I love your daughter with everything I have. I have been her friend for years, yeah, I know, you hate that too, but I have been there for her when she’s had ups and downs and God help me, I love her. I love her so much that when I picture my future, when I’ve always pictured my future, since the moment I met her, she’s been there. She is my future and I love her and that’s not enough for you! Fine, I don’t care what you think of me, but she’s your daughter, your flesh and blood and you’re snubbing her because you can’t get over something. How dare you make her feel like she’s nothing!

“She’s everything, she’s the best thing that could’ve ever happened in my life and for God’s sake, she’s the best thing to happen to yours too if you would just look at her the way other people see her. Do you know there’s not one person on this roster that doesn’t like her? She’s amazing and everyone likes her, you can’t help it if you’re really around her. But God forbid you actually take the time to get to know your own daughter. But you know what, if you don’t want to come to our wedding if you don’t want to see Stephanie on the biggest day of our lives, fine, it’s your loss. It’s your loss that you’ll never know how wonderful your daughter is or how lucky I am to have her in my life. It’s fine, if you don’t want us in your lives, you don’t have to be in ours.”

Chris walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Shane stared at it a moment, “You guys aren’t going to the wedding?”

“No, we decided not to,” Vince said, glancing at Linda. “We feel it’s the right decision. They can have their wedding, but we won’t be there.”

“Oh,” Shane said.

Sitting in Shane’s suitcase at that very moment was an invitation marked “Yes, I will be attending.”