I loved this! very well written and i adored the steps.

I really enjoyed this. It's cute. Well, no, I don't think cute is the right word. Cute implies shiny pink bubbles and fluffy bunny rabbits. This is reveling-in-its-own-melodrama-so-sweet-its-gonna-g ive-you-a-toothache kind of story. My favorite.

I love the humor-the grey hair, the addendum to step number three, Steve's Steveness (I love his conversation about the ring with Chris: "Do you have a ring?" / "No." / "Do you know where you're going to get the ring?" / "No." / "How much money are you planning on spending on the ring?" / "I don't know." Poor Chris. He really is quite bewildered.) And I laughed ridiculously long at the line about life handing you a spoon and exchanging it for a fork and stabbing something with it. Ongoing jokes crack me up but they can be really hard to pull off because you risk overdoing it. Kudos to you for striking the right balance.

The only criticisms I have are in regards to pacing and clarity. In the beginning, it's clear that the events in each step are happening one after another but a day seems to have elapsed between step 6 and 7? I think you can make that time jump a little clearer. Also, there are a few spots that slow down the flow of the narration ("They continued walking until they reached Chris's apartment..." "He heard the clicking on the other end...") I think you can cut those lines and simply end the scene a little earlier. A couple things aren't a hundred percent clear - why do Chris and Steve have a day in the middle of the week off? Why does Steve ask if Courtney is okay? (side note: "our regular place" sounds awkward. maybe, give the name of the restaurant? I think it's the possessive-sounding "our" that throws me off) How does Chris know Courtney's ring size? Parts of this story are so over-the-top that I can chalk some of the more inexplicable events to the easy-breezy narrative style, but those are a few of the things that left me puzzled.

Overall, a fun story. The dialogue is strong and Steve's a great character. And that part about Desperate Housewives? I can believe that. I know a guy that pretends to only watch Glee because he "just happens" to be in the room when his girlfriend has it on.

AWH

Classica!

Very very sweet, I love how undramatic the proposal was...sometimes it's so obvious the writer is female and trying to make the bf propose in a way that a girl would want...but this is very real and just rite : )

I loved it. I think Chris is so sweet I am so happy that it all worked out in the end.

Oh my gosh! I have a funny story about this oneshot. I saw it before I even read your mermaid story and of course I read it. I thought it was adorably cute but I never reviewed. What a small world! Another story well done! :)

I really liked this story a lot. I loved the way it was organized through "steps." Also the bromance. There's nothing like a bit of good bromance to give a guy confidence in proposing. Thanks for sharing!

Cassandra

I love this! Hope you win!

Aww this is sweet! :) Nice work!

This was so sweet! I love the third step, haha. And I think the last step was a good way to end it. Great job!

That was absolutely adorable. Great job! The only grammatical error I could spy was when you used a bunch of commas in a row in the beginning. Some of them could have been changed to semicolons or eliminated. But that was such a tiny thing. I loved reading this and I wished my boyfriend was like Chris! ].

XOXO

Charlotte

so cute :)

loved it, especially third step! and don't worry, the last one was perfect!

Ri

This was great! So cute and such an interesting read. I hope you win :)

I love your style - you incorporated all the guidelines, but the story is still completely unique.

Very sweet.

Annoyance

(Your story has been added to the contest C2. Good luck)

awe it was sweet