It Starts Here / 𝗯𝘅𝗯 (✓)

24: Toothpaste and laughs

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Thirty-one years old

Outside Mr. Vuong's front door, Ares stands with his arms down his sides, his fists unable to rest—clench, unclench, clench, unclench. It's a Wednesday. It's early summer. Ares is thirty-one years and five months old and nervous. Ares hasn't been this nervous standing outside Felix's childhood home since he was there with a blue eye and busted lip.

He raises his arm to knock, but changes his mind and continues to walk back and forth on the step. After a few minutes of pacing, Ares stops, exhales loudly and raises his arm again, but then the door opens and Felix's dad is standing there in the doorway. 

Mr. Vuong doesn't seem too surprised to see him standing there which means, Ares realizes embarrassingly, that he must've seen him pace back and forth through the kitchen window. But then he smiles at him and Ares almost forgets why he's this nervous in the first place.

"Ares!" Mr. Vuong greets, his hand on the doorknob, the other finding Ares' arm to squeeze it. "It's good to see you, son! Did you just come from your parents of?"

 Ares smiles back, awkwardly letting his arm fall when he realizes it's still in the air. "No, I was planning on going there next. I was just...in the neighborhood, that's all, and thought I'd drop by."

Mr. Vuong frowns at him. "Nobody is ever in this neighborhood, what would you be doing here anyway?" He opens the door wider, and asks, "Do you wanna come in? We can't have you walk around my front door any longer, people might not recognize you with all that beard. Can't have anybody calling the cops on you."

 Ares laughs awkwardly. "You saw that?"

"I think everybody saw that." 

Mr. Vuong gestures for Ares to get inside, mercifully ignoring the flush in his face, and waits for him to take off his shoes before he leads him inside the living room. 

"Did Felix tell you to come check up on me?" he asks, glancing over his shoulder. "He keeps telling me to get outside, away from the TV." He sighs and shoots a look at the said device. "But that's my favorite way to spend the time."

Ares sits on the couch when Felix's father gestures for him to do so, shaking his head with a laugh. "No, he didn't." He pauses. "Actually, Felix doesn't know that I'm here."

Mr. Vuong sits down in the chair across from the TV with a groan, the one Ares remembers him also sitting on when he was thirteen. He looks over at Ares, chuckling, "You make it sound so serious. What is it?"

Ares tells him, "I'm planning on proposing to Felix."

It's a Wednesday, in the start of the summer break, and Ares has gone to Felix's dad's house to ask him for permission to marry his son.

When Ares called Sara and told her that he would do this, she was all over the idea. "Really! He's going to love that, Ares," and Ares was so confident it was the right choice he'd made until he told Kit and he said, "You're really going to do that?" which wasn't the reaction he'd expected and when he told Rupi and she laughed, "Better hope he says yes," his anxiety worsened. 

Maybe he should've told Sara last. Then Mr. Vuong wouldn't have had to watch Ares walk back and forth in front of his house, biting his nails.

Now, Mr. Vuong slaps the armrests of the chair he's sitting on and laughs. "That's fantastic, son! Congratulations on that! When are you telling him?"

"Well," Ares says, clearing his throat, "the plan was to ask you and then–"

"Wait," Mr. Vuong interrupts, now frowning and Ares suddenly feels stupid. "You're asking for permission? From me?"