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The Triumph Of AJ Quartermaine
Chapter Ninety
Proposal
"How did it go?"
"How did what go?"
"The conversation with Bobbie." AJ demands.
"I think we cleared the air." Carly finally admits. "She knows about Ferncliff, the implants, and me not seeking medical attention to have them removed."
"Oh that is one way of putting it." AJ grabs his sweaty, stinky tennis clothes and is about to make a disaster in the laundry room when Carly stops him.
"Here let me." Carly holds the clothes at arms length. "You were good to me today this is the least I can do to make some of it up." Carly starts the washer adding detergent and lots of bleach and automatically checks the pockets before throwing everything in. After the washer starts agitating she looks down at the paper in her hand and then double takes looking at it again. Her face gets flushed as she stalks back into the kitchen where AJ is pouring a cup of coffee. "So What?! Did you and Jerry play some mixed doubles? Is that why you were late? Swinging more than a racket?" Carly holds up the piece of paper. "Who is Viki and how exactly did she want you to work up a sweat?" Carly flicks the paper at AJ. "Hey give her a call. She sounds cute with that little heart over the last I."
"She must have slipped it in my pocket." AJ protests. AJ crushes the note and throws it in the garbage.
"Oh don't throw it away; if you're planning on getting lucky tonight you're going to need it." Carly crosses her arms in front of her defensively.
"Damnit Carly!" AJ slams the coffee cup to the counter breaking it. He jumps back from the hot coffee. "Don't you get it? Get it at all? What have I been doing for the last year? What have I been doing since I met you?"
"Trying to get in my pants. Well you've been there now I guess it's on to fresh meat."
AJ takes Carly by the shoulders even as she tries to shrug him off. "Sit down and just stay there for a minute."
Carly reluctantly sits at the dining room table and mutters to herself to AJ's back. "Sit... stay." She hollers out. "WHAT'S NEXT? HEEL, FETCH, ROLL OVER?! Well buddy, I don't roll over for anybody and you should know that by now."
"This is not the way I was planning this. But nothing ever goes according to plan around you anyway." AJ tosses Carly a little black jewelers box.
Carly catches the box and sets it in front of her afraid to open it. "Oh Jesus, AJ, what have you done?" The color fades from her face. And she looks him in the eye. AJ slides into the seat diagonal from her.
"Open it."
Carly flips open the box taking a deep breath. Inside are two matching gold bands. She looks up at him scared to jump to any conclusions even the one that seems obvious. "What does this mean, AJ."
AJ gets down on one knee next to her. "What you think it means. Marry Me, Caroline Spencer Roberts Benson. Make our happy family permanent." AJ takes the masculine ring from the box. "Put this on my hand before God and our family. Let the Vikis of the world know at a glance that they have no business putting their numbers in my pocket."
"Cause I'd kick their ass."
"Cause you'd kick their ass." AJ agrees. "And I'd hold your coat."
Carly reaches out to AJ her hand cupping his face as she looks down at him. She shakes her head. "You have no idea what you're asking; what you're getting into. AJ, your family hates me and I hate some of them back. I'm a nut case that finds trouble with a walk in a park. I'd make your life hell. HELL--" Carly laughs with a sob mixed in. "I've already done that."
AJ tenderly kisses the palm of Carly's hand. "Nobody knows better than I what I'm getting into. Carly, our family is what we make of it: You, Me Michael, Jerry, Emily, Bobbie, Lucas, my father. Don't you get it? Marry me or not. I'm nuts for you. And I'm greedy, I want more than a year; I want all of our lives. Hell is what I had before; hell was my life without you in it."
Carly bites her lip. "You know, most girls get a diamond."
AJ laughs and breaths a little easier. He stands and pulls Carly to him. "You aren't most girls." AJ laughs and draws Carly to him kissing her. "You want rugs, tapestries, and then yeah, diamonds too. But I thought that you might prefer for us to pick it out together." AJ picks up the rings. "Marry Me, Carly. Marry me now, tonight this weekend."
Carly exhales in shock. "What happened to in front of our family?"
"Jerry, Bobbie and Lucas are a phone call away. Say it, Carly. Say yes, you'll marry me." AJ insists.
"Yes."
The Quartermaine Mansion.
Cook wraps the last of the things that she'd prepped for the next day and is startled by the rap on the back door. Hesitantly she goes to the back door. She glances out the window first and mutters under her breath as she swings the door wide. "What in the hell are you doing here?"
"Coming to see you."
"Look-- your daughter hasn't called me." Cook shrugs. "You've got nothing to worry about."
"Viki is off on a weekend with some school friends. Johnny came to see me today. Warned me off again."
"Well that was effective." Cook quips rolling her eyes. She goes over to the sink and starts hand washing the crystal.
"I won't be warned off." Judge takes the crystal from Cook's hand and then taking her hand leads her over to the kitchen table. "Not by our kids and not by you. I realized something today, something that I've known all along but I couldn't go another day without telling you. I love you. I have for years. Marry me."
Cook sags back into the chair that JD had kicked back. "Have you been smoking the evidence?"
JD pulls a jewelers box from his pocket. The velvet is worn bare in spots. "I've been holdin on to this years. Ever since Germany-- that weekend before I was suppose to meet you in France. I was going to propose to you then but you never showed up. I kept it in my pocket for weeks. I had it with me when I went to your parent's place looking for you. It's yours; it's always been you." Judge flips open the box showing the perfect diamond within. Not too grand but something too expensive for a new lawyer with loans to repay twenty odd years ago.
Cook snaps the box shut handing it back to JD. "You shouldn't have. Not then and definitely not now."
Their eyes meet and JD studies her silently. He'd known it woudn't be easy but she hadn't said the thing that would end things between them. The mood is broken as the kitchen door swings open. "Woman, have you heard from my grandson, not the hoodlum one but the other, or Carly today?"
"You old wind bag, what the hell are you doing in my kitchen?" Cook slaps Edward's hands as he reaches for the cookie jar. "I've had about enough of this. No more late night sweets for you. Heaven knows it hasn't been sweetening your disposition."
"What would you know about a sweet disposition? Did you read about it once?" Edward snarls back. His eyes narrow as he takes in the stranger in the kitchen. Edward stands up straight and puffs up. "Who is this man and is he bothering you? I'll call security."
"Oh please." Cook rolls her eyes. "JD Porter, Edward Quartermaine."
Edward puts a finger in the middle of JD's chest. "You're the one that has been calling here harassing my staff. It won't be tolerated."
JD puts a finger into the middle of Edward's chest. "And you're the one that has been calling Pete Carter pulling his strings." They glare at each other.
"GET OUT. BOTH OF YOU GET OUT OF MY KITCHEN NOW!" As neither man makes a move but instead glare at each other. "That's it. I'm out of here. You break anything and I'll have your guts for garters." Cook tosses her apron on the table and stalks out of the room.
JD slumps a little as Cook leaves. "Well that didn't go well."
"Things seldom do with that woman. But you must have gotten her flustered. She left the cookie jar unguarded." Edward offers JD the cookie jar. "Cookie?"
JD winces but takes one. "I'm giving you warning right now, Old man. That woman loves me and I love her. We share a child. I'm going to marry her and take her away from all this."
Edward snags the cookie back from JD. "Over my dead body."
"Our son could arrange that." JD quips as he reaches the back door and quietly lets himself out.
Cape Cod.
The house that Bobbie, Jerry and Lucas are staying in. Lucas had crashed out early. Bobbie had held it together until she'd been taking her shower getting ready for bed but then the tears had started and just wouldn't stop. Jerry had found her there collapsed on the floor of the shower sobbing her eyes out. "Oh luv, I was afraid of this." Jerry turns off the water and gathering Bobbie into a bath sheet he carries her into the other room. He gently shushs her and dries her off wrapping her in her robe and then in his arms. He cuddles her close to him laying. "Shhhh Bobbie, it's like what I told you, one of those things that you got to know and then wish you never did. She's okay now, Bobbie. She's out of that place."
"She's... not... okay." Bobbie insists stuttering. "OH Jerry she cut them out of her arm; AJ found her bleeding. And she thought that I okay'd it. That I'd authorize them to do that to her like she was a dog or something."
Jerry squeezes her tighter, so tight she can barely breath. His voice is low barely a growl. "I've seen your signature before, on reports for Lucas, on notes to me. I know that wasn't your signature on the release."
Bobbie pulls away. "I didn't. I couldn't. If I'd even been asked I would have ripped that place down with my bare hands."
"I know, Bobbie. And that is what your daughter is doing. Tearing the place down. Legally and clean. They'll never be able to hurt her again. Never again."
"She told me that she deserved it cause she was a cruddy daughter and a worse mother. OH Jerry I failed her so badly. You knew, you knew all along. You told me not do side with Jason to give her a chance. I messed this up so badly."
Jerry shakes her. "No. And knock it off. I won't hear it. You're a great mum, and you're there for your kids even the bratty one." Jerry pulls her close again. "Don't make Carly out to be a saint in all this, or a martyr. She's a brat. Growing up a lot and that's your influence. Don't minimize it."
"This changes everything." Bobbie sighs relaxing into Jerry's embrace.
"Oh I doubt it. Like I said she's a brat. Look what she did with me and Corinthos. You're the only one to call her on her crap. She needs that more than ever. AJ's enough of a pushover. He'll give her whatever she wants."
"Does that mean you're a pushover?" Jerry looks at Bobbie quizzically. "'Cause you give whatever I want, whatever I need-- including a relationship with my daughter?"
"Am I?" Jerry wonders. "I must be getting soft."
Bobbie reaches between them running her hand down his chest to his waist and below. "Nope. Nothing soft about you."
"Hold that thought." Jerry rises from the bed and goes to the dresser he takes a small object from it and secrets it away in his hand. "When I was a lad working in the mines; I found something. Something that gave me a fever the like I've never felt until I met you. Things were getting better for the family, there was enough to eat and Dad had just sent word that he'd made a strike in Alaska. Finally our fortunes had turned. So I could keep this and save it for the woman I thought I'd never meet. Bobbie, Will you marry me?" Jerry opens his hand to reveal a perfect diamond, large and with a hint of pink-- cut and polished and set into a ring.
Bobbie doesn't even look at the ring but instead looks only into Jerry's eyes. Her eyes close and a single tear trails down her cheek. She opens her eyes again and says softly. "I thought that you'd never ask." She holds out her hand and Jerry slips it on a perfect fit. He lifts it to his lips and kisses it and then her.
"Now where were we?"