When It's Real
By Missy
SERIES: When It's Real
PART: one of one
Author: Missy
Email: lasfic@yahoo.com
RATING: PG-13
PAIRING(s): Big Rosie/? (You'll See)
DISTRIBUTION: To LW, Kai, and FG so far; any other archives are welcome to ask (Please Email Me), but disclaimers must be included, my email left intact. send a URL, and provide full disclaimers as well as credit me fully. Please inform me if you are going to submit my work to any sort of search engine. Please do not submit my work to a search engine that picks out random sets of words and uses them as key words, such as "Google"
Please contact me in order for this story to be placed on an archive, or if you want know of a friend who would enjoy my works, please email me their address and I will mail them the stories, expressly for the purpose of link trading. MiSTiers are welcomed! Please do inform me that you'd like to do the MiSTing, however, and send me a copy of the finished product. I'd also love to archive any MiSTings that are made of my work!
DISCLAIMER: Laverne and Shirley, of course, not my property and belongs to its creators.
CATEGORY: Romance/Other
CANNON/SPOILERS: Milwaukee era, California Era; alt cannon
FEEDBACK: PLEASE?!
SPOILLER/SUMMARY: Rosie learns what real love is made of.
NOTES: For Kath's Unusual pairing challenge.
****
When It's Real
You Know It's Real
-Cher,
The Power
****
He knew her birthday.
And what she liked for dinner. The color of her eyes. He knew her mother's name, and what kind of flowers she liked. Where to kiss her, and how hard, and for how long.
So that's what love was like.
She hadn't ever believed in it before, having inherited a mother who had primed her from a young age to aim at the stars. To look beyond the filthy windows and broken streetlights outside of their apartment.
To marry a doctor.
The woman had been exceedingly disappointed when her little girl had joined the Angora Debs; collectively, that gang had as bad as a reputation one could have in '50's Milwaukee.
Never, though, had she felt comfortable among them. They were all such foolish romantics (except for DeFazio, who just had no class). She remembered being a little girl and laughing when someone told her the story of King Edward's abandoning his throne for Wallis Simpson. To her gang, who hadn't been more than infants at the time, this was the height and epitome of romance.
They didn't understand that love was for suckers.
She had married right out of high school; Ogden was an efficient Med Student with an efficient bachelor's apartment, which he turned in for a swanky mansion at her heeding.
They had chick, tasteful outfits, which they wore to chick, tasteful dinner parties, after which they had chick, tasteful sex (she had learned through high school that, if you concentrate hard enough, you can have an orgasm with anyone).
She was bored out of her skull. Worse than that, there was a great, yawning emptiness inside of her chest, a blackness that had seemed to swallow whole her reason for existing.
Something forced her to gravitate back to her old stomping ground; to her old friends. To the dirty streets and the wilting trees of Knapp Street.
No one had warned her about it; that when love happens to you, it's like a fistful of quarters smacking you in the head. It hurts so much that you want more.
He was the boy who had shellacked her ponytail in high school; a little brat with a big mouth. One afternoon, after fighting with DeFazio (nothing new) she stormed out of the apartment. He came upon her crying on a park bench.
"What's the matter with you?"
"Nothing." She held her head with pride as tears rolled down her chin.
"Rosie...you're angry a whole lot."
"What's it to ya?"
"Do you ever think...you're angry cause you're not happy."
"I'm damned happy. I'm rich."
"Happy people don't cry." She shot him a murderous look, "OK," He had shrugged, zipping up his jacket. "Happy Birthday."
Happy Birthday. He had remembered. The only person to do that, except for Ogden (No, he hadn't; his tasteful, efficient secretary had).
That had started things. She was shocked by how high of a moral code he had, and they didn't do so much as kiss for weeks.
Talking. They talked all of the time, off in the corner of The Pizza Bowl. She hadn't ever bothered to get to know someone like him before, and doing it was a revelation.
They held hands. She hadn't even done that as a teenager. And just doing that filled her so utterly that she smiled with joy.
Her mother had told her that smiling ruins your face.
By then, she knew that her mother was a liar.
She left Ogden in the winter, without even a fight; she sold what was hers. Enough to get a modest house. Everyone who knew her was incredibly confused. Her behavior had changed. Her SOUL had changed.
It was frightening to everyone but her, for he had given her the strength to be fearless.
He courted her for an entire year before getting engaged, then another year of engagement. How nice it was, not to manipulate, or seduce. Love came to them too easily, and when she found herself standing before an altar beside him, it was real.
And that night...
No one had told her that the sweetest things were worth waiting for.
***
She smiled to herself as she sat on their porch. Four years had passed since he had opened her eyes. Their little boy was walking, now. They had a little house in the suburbs that they took care of together.
She had discovered that the core of her being revolved around so much more than this small world. She had discovered her inner activist.
The tiniest bit of her felt sorry; sorry that DeFazio had fled the city when she married him (they had had their chance). She was married to a stunt man, now; Christmas cards arrived every December, faces smiling hollowly up at them.
And the fairy tales within her, the ones that had been suppressed for so long, unfurled, and breathed.
"Whatt're you looking at?"
She didn't have to turn around to feel him there.
"Lookin' at the stars."
A long pause lingered between them.
"Y'Know...I couldn't see 'em, before. In the city."
"With Ogden?"
"Yeah."
He paused before he asked her.
"Rose?"
"Yeah, Len?"
"I love you."
It wasn't strange to respond, for, in all of the years that had passed, one thing remained true between them. "I love you, too."
After all, it was the truest thing she knew.
The End
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