“This is so big,” I breathe, looking around the room that I just walked into, eyeing the walls with wide eyes and a dropped jaw. “I thought this was an apartment.”
“It is an apartment,” Penn laughs, walking into the room behind me with his hands on my shoulders. “Do you like it?”
“Yeah, but it’s… Penn, it’s huge,” I inform my boyfriend, continuing to eye the large living room space that I just walked into. Our TV and couch and all of our stuff is already moved in and set up thanks to Penn’s dad giving me a graduation present, which was hiring a huge team of movers to move all of our stuff into the apartment for us. The Shaw family has a way of overdoing graduation presents because Penn’s present to me was this apartment and it’s incredibly large, looking over the city. A new city. Seattle. I mean, I know that graduating college is a really huge accomplishment but this huge (and probably super expensive) apartment overlooking all of downtown Seattle is just insane.
“Well, there’s two bedrooms and one of them has a master bathroom but then there’s another bathroom down that hallway. And the kitchen takes up a lot of space because it’s pretty huge and considering how much you love food, I thought that’d be a nice addition.”
“Two bedrooms?” I echo, turning around to look at him and since he was so close to me, our faces are pretty close together now. “Why do we need two bedrooms?”
Penn gives me a look with one raised eyebrow and then wraps his arms around my waist. “Well, we’re going to be living here for a while, probably, and… I don’t know. I know we haven’t talked about it very much at all but maybe in a few years or something, we could consider starting a family or something.”
“Oh,” I say, finally understanding what the second bedroom is for and then I grin, stepping into my tippy toes to press my lips to his. “That sounds amazing.”
“Really?” He wonders. “I figured that you’d be hesitant considering your father and everything.”
“I’m not,” I assure him. “You’d be an amazing dad. You’re parents aren’t exactly stellar either- you know we won’t be like them though, right?”
“Yeah, of course,” He nods, kissing me again. “We’ll be great parents.”
“Totally,” I giggle. “But, I mean, not for a while. I’m starting at the Academy next week and I have to establish my career for at least a few years before I can take off enough time to have a baby.”
“I know,” Penn agrees. “We’re not ready yet but it’s just something to think about farther down the road. Anyway, there’s also a gym downstairs that’s exclusive to residents here and in the gym there’s a dance studio. Well, people use it for like, yoga classes and stuff but when they’re not using it, you can go down there and practice stuff. I may have splurged a little on this apartment and got the one with an office so that I can work.”
“You can’t just put a desk in this huge living room or something?” I wonder with a small laugh, waving my arm around to show him how large the living room is.
“Well, I could have done that,” He agrees, pressing his lips to mine again but this time, he doesn’t fully pull them away. “But you’re very distracting, you know.”
“I’m not that distracting, you’re just easily distracted,” I defend with another small giggle, wrapping my arms around his neck to pull my lips to his again. “Did those movers unpack everything?”
Penn nods, grabbing my hand gently in his to lead me through the large yet oddly cozy living room down the hallway. Penn had flown up here a few times to help the movers to make sure that everything was perfect but he didn’t bring me with him because I was finishing up my exams and he also wanted it to be a surprise. He shows me where the hallway bathroom is and then he shows me that there’s also a hallway closet.
“This is the extra room,” Penn explains, opening one of the doors. It was a plain white room with nothing inside of it, looking completely stark and boring. “We can use it for something but I didn’t know what you’d want to put in there. Since I get my office, you can make it whatever you want.”
“A guest bedroom,” I decide, hardly even having to think about it all that much. “Stella insists on staying here once the tour is over.”
“Is she still on Broadway?” Penn asks me.
I nod. “Yep. And she’s on Broadway until the end of the month but after that, she’s going to come visit. That’s okay, right?”
“I don’t see why not,” He shrugs.
At the end of last year, Stella had a performance as part of her dance courses there at Julliard and there was a Broadway scout there who insisted that Stella go to auditions. When she did, she got one of the main dancing parts in the musical, Chicago. So after she graduated a semester early from Julliard, she started doing Broadway musicals which is super amazing for her. After this musical, she says that she’s going to take up singing lessons, hoping for a better part if she can do both dancing and singing.
Speaking of my friends, Mason and Brian are still together and they just graduated from Berkeley like they had planned. They’re moving back to be in Los Angeles again since both of their families are there and they missed home even though they weren’t incredibly far away from them or anything. Mason got a major in tourism and event planning so she’s going to be a wedding planner, hopefully, she’ll start her own business after a while. At least, that’s what she wants to do. Brian got a major in computer science so he’s going to start his job as a computer programmer. They’ll need to stay up here in Seattle sometimes too because I absolutely refuse to go too long without seeing some of my best friends. Sure, I made some friends while I was at UCLA and they’ll come visit too or I’ll go visit them but Stella and Mason are like sisters to me now.
“I think a guest room is the best option considering how many friends we have and how many of them will want to come and visit at some point. Not including Ana and Jo as well.”
“And your mom will probably want to come too,” Penn adds. “We may need more than one guest bedroom.”
I laugh and roll my eyes at him. “My mom has a job and she’s very serious about it. I doubt that she’ll take off time to come visit.”
After my father was arrested, it took a very long time for my mother to gain my trust again. She got help with a psychologist and she also went back to school for accounting, which is what she’s doing now, she’s an accountant and a pretty good one, actually. She lives in her own house now and is totally independent from Chase’s help. I think that she’s even repaid him for all of the help that he’d given her at the beginning. It took a lot of convincing for him to take the money, but she was very stubborn about it. Anyway, she still lives in Oxnard and Jo, being twelve now, is going to be going into seventh grade after this summer.
As for my father, we got a letter in the mail about three years ago saying that he was stabbed in prison. They never gave details about it, but he died after the attack, which was a major relief for everyone. I felt kind of bad for being happy that a man was dead but thinking about all of the terrible things that he’d done to us and the fear that we were living in, even with him in jail, was awful so him being dead honestly made everything easier for everyone. There’s no paranoia about him getting out on parole or anything like that anymore, he’s just gone. It’s over.
“Okay, so moving on, this is the office,” Penn announced, opening the door across from the guest bedroom to show a small-ish room with a huge bookshelf covering the back wall but there’s barely any books on the shelves yet and then there’s a desk sitting in the middle of the room that has nothing on it except for a framed picture of me and Penn from a few months ago and then another framed picture of Penn and Ana. Then, there’s a small couch in the corner of the room that looks like it could fit two or three people on it.
“It’s cozy,” I comment, walking into the room and sitting down on the couch. “So I’ll sit here all of the time and distract you from your work with like, a strip tease or something.”
“Or I could just lock you out,” He suggests, walking over to me as he leans over me and presses his lips to mine again. “After the strip tease, of course.”
“Of course,” I giggle, pulling him onto the couch on top of me as we start to make out on the couch.
As we’re leaving his office, I notice his UCLA diploma hanging on the wall in another frame by the door. He got his diploma two years ago when I was just finishing my sophomore year and while I finished school at UCLA, he got a job at a therapy center in LA for two years and luckily, they also have an office here in Seattle so he just transferred instead of having to find another job. Now that I’m also graduated, we obviously moved away from LA for a fresh start. Away from his disapproving parents and my mom although I miss her, I think distance will be good for us. And we wouldn’t have been able to see the Space Needle from our bedroom window if we stayed in LA so it’s definitely worth it.
“So, are you ready to see our bedroom?” Penn wonders as we get down to the last door in the hallway.
“Yeah, I’m ready,” I laugh with my hand in his much larger one. “Please tell me that you didn’t make it super ugly or anything though.”
“I promise that you’ll love it,” He assures me with a grin. “But you have to close your eyes first.”
“Okay then,” I giggle, putting my palms over my eyes so that I can’t see anything at all. I hear the door open softly and then Penn puts his hands on my shoulders, guiding me into the room. The first hint that I get that tells me that we aren’t alone is a stifled giggle from somewhere in the room that I can easily identify as Jo’s giggle.
I’d said goodbye to her yesterday when Penn and I left for Seattle but I didn’t think I’d see her again for at least a month or so considering she still lives in Oxnard with our mom. Since she’s on summer break though, I told her that she could come stay with us for a while after we got settled in.
“Can I look now?” I wonder, expecting just Jo and probably my mom to be there in the room with us.
“Yep,” Penn confirms, taking his hands off of my shoulders just as I drop my palms from my eyes and then I hear a group of people shouting “SURPRISE!”
Blinking around, I see a bunch of people. Stella, Mason, Brian, my mom, Jo, Ana, Chase, and my two best friends from college, Emily and Amanda. They’re all holding balloons and/or streamers, cheering around us.
I start laughing as tears of joy fill my eyes but they don’t actually fall onto my cheeks. “Oh my gosh,” I grin, looking at all of the people around me, specifically Stella and Mason, who I haven’t seen in a really long time since we’ve been so busy with exams and graduating from our separate schools and for one of us, performing on Broadway. We talk on the phone a lot, but we haven’t seen each other in person since Christmas.
“What are you doing here?” I wonder excitedly, running over to them and wrapping them both in a bug group hug, jumping around in a big squealing mess of girly excitement. “Stell, don’t you have a stage to be on?”
“The show will go on,” She assures me with a grin. “I have an amazing understudy that will do my job perfectly tonight but I have to be back tomorrow morning. But I would not miss this for the world!”
“Yeah, we’re totally here for you, Sienna,” Mason confirms.
I frown in confusion at their excitement to be here for our move-in day. “Well, we’re just moving in. You can come see the apartment anytime, you know.”
They both give me wide eyed looks that means that they know something that I don’t so now I’m super suspicious. “What are you guys not telling me?”
“Nothing!” They both say in unison.
I know that I’m not going to get anything out of them so I turn around to where Penn is talking to Ana, who is now 21 years old, just a year younger than me. He’s facing my direction so when I look over at him, he notices and looks up at me as well.
I walk over to him and his sister with a suspicious glare. “What’s going on, Penn?” I ask him.
“I threw you a surprise house-warming party,” He informs me with a small laugh as if I just asked the most ridiculous question ever. Ana giggles and then walks away to start a conversation with somebody else in the room. “I thought that was obvious with all of the ‘welcome home’ balloons and the banner and everything.”
“Well, I got that part,” I inform him. “But those two seem to think that something else is going to happen as well.”
He looks behind me where I’m pointing at Mason and Stella who are in turn, giving him sheepish and apologetic smiles. “Your friends are just weird,” He justifies.
“Do Emily and Amanda know too?” I wonder.
“Know what?” Emily uses this moment to pop into the conversation from absolutely nowhere. “What do I know?”
“There’s nothing else going on, Sienna,” Penn laughs again. “I just thought you’d like to see your friends again before we move all the way to Seattle. You should just accept my slightly romantic gesture instead of questioning it, you know.”
“Oh!” Emily seems to finally understand what he’s trying to hide from me so she makes it obvious that she does, in fact, know exactly what Penn is hiding from me. “Now I get it.”
Penn wraps an arm around my waist and quickly pulls me away from Emily before she can spoil the surprise because she’s very terrible with keeping a secret (which is why it’s so surprising that Penn told her whatever his plan is) and we’re standing kind of in the middle of the large bedroom now. The bed is off to the side so everyone is in a big group on the other side of the room and I guess everybody else knows exactly what’s going on because they all look excited about something.
“Well, I guess trying to make it a surprise didn’t work too well,” Penn mutters. “So I’ll do it now. I was going to wait though.”
“Do what? What are you talking about?” I wonder cluelessly.
He laughs and leans forward, because now we’re facing each other, kissing my forehead. “You’re adorable when you’re clueless, you know.”
“I am not,” I protest. “Tell me what’s going on. Pretty please?”
“Okay,” Penn agrees with a nod. “Just let me talk for a minute and then I think you’ll understand what this is about.”
“Fair enough,” I say and then I prepare to listen to Penn explain whatever is going on because I’m confused and slightly worried about this whole thing but mostly nervous and also kind of excited.
He clears his throat awkwardly, knowing that he has the attention of every person in the room as he begins to speak. “Sienna Mast, when I first met you, I thought that you were just another student that just is really easy to scare and it was funny. But after a while, I realized that you were special. You were strong and brave in ways that most people would never even begin to imagine. And I started falling for you but I knew that it was wrong because you were a student in my class but it didn’t really stop me from noticing every little thing that you did. It didn’t stop me from falling in love with you. In these past five years, you have made me incredibly happy. Probably the happiest guy in the world, actually. I would do anything for you- I would give you the whole world if I could [He already has given me the world and so much more but I don’t say anything because I feel like I’d ruin his speech so I keep my mouth shut] and I love you so much. I love you with everything that I have, and I always will. I can’t imagine my life without you in it.”
“Oh my, God,” I gasp because I finally understand what all of this is about. Why my mom and Jo are here, why my friends are all so excited. I understand it all. And with that insanely amazing speech, I start crying and then as I realize what’s about to happen, I start crying a little harder and wipe my damp cheeks with the backs of my hands.
I even let out another, louder gasp as I watch Penn start to sink lower to the ground as he gets on one knee and looks over at Jo who quickly scurries over to him and hands him a small black box. He thanks her and then she steps back towards our mom, who is tearing up as well along with almost everybody in the room but my eyes aren’t on them. I can’t take my eyes off of Penn. He opens the box to display a beautiful diamond ring and says one last sentence. “Sienna… will you marry me? Please?”
I don’t even need to think about it, I just start nodding and once I find it in myself, I say “Yes. Of course, yes!”
He grins excitedly and then stands to his feet again, pulling me into a warm embrace as everybody starts to cheer enthusiastically around us and then Penn presses his lips to mine and then we’re kissing and I haven’t really comprehended the situation completely yet.
Penn just asked me to marry him. And I just said yes.
“We’re engaged,” I mumble against Penn’s mouth.
Penn laughs and pulls away from me as he holds up the box and takes the ring out, taking my left hand in his. “We are,” He agrees, slipping the gorgeous ring on my ring finger.
“I love you so much, Penn Shaw,” I inform my fiancé with a giddy little giggle.
He pulls me into another tight hug. “I love you so much too, Sienna Mast.”
I hug him back as hard as I can, drying my cheeks on his t-shirt. I think after all of the crap that I’ve been put through so early in my life, I can’t believe how well things turned out for me. I have amazing friends, an amazing and slightly functioning family, and a super incredibly perfect fiancé who loves me no matter what and who I love no matter what.
After so much suffering and hard work, I finally believe that everything is going to work out. I finally see our happy ending becoming a reality and that is all that I have ever wanted.
THE END