The Boy from New York City

“Now if I could just have you all sign the papers and we will be finished here.” The judge says sliding the form for us to sign over to make us legally married. Alexzander handed the pen to Jason to have him go first. Though witnesses aren’t usually the first to sign, I’m sure he had a reason in doing so.

Before Jason could even put the pen to the page, the doors burst open with a loud slamming sound. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” It was a voice all too recognizable to any one of us in the room. A voice that I had been praying I wouldn’t hear today of all days. Henry stormed up to us, looking anything but ecstatic. “Would someone like to explain?”

Alexzander was about to go into one of his rants, I could tell, about how it was none of his father’s business and he would do what he liked. But in all honesty, I was kind of tired of hearing it and therefore stepped in front of him. Henry may hate me, but he knows I won’t back down, unlike his son eventually would. “Mr. Leighton, what is going on here is simply-” Yet even I, the bride in this whole scene, wasn’t able to finish my explanation because of Jason interrupting me.

“Is simply a simple wedding sir.” Jason says, raising up the pen in his right hand and wrapping his left around Sara’s waist. “Both of our families have a history of having a tough time with having children. It seems to take a while for everything to work out, you know how it is. We want to have kids as soon as possible and therefore decided to start now. Yet my wonderful fiancé here doesn’t want to have illegitimate children. You know her family; they wouldn’t be so keen to that. So we decided to quietly get married at the courthouse, our closest friends Alex and Sam being the only two to know, along with being our witnesses. Then, in case a pregnancy was to occur before our official ceremony, we will have already been married.” Sara smiles simply, Alexzander grabs my hand and squeezes in fear, I stare at Jason, and Jason chuckles, trying to add ease to the whole situation, and “Obviously this wasn’t supposed to happen, though I guess it’s out now. But if you’ve seen me anything close to a son of yours through Alex and mines friendship you would do your best at keeping this a secret. We really did not want many to know about our eloping.”

Henry looked flabbergasted. He kept opening and closing his mouth, obviously not knowing what to say. Though none of us, except it seems Jason, really did. Finally, his brain managed to connect fully with his mouth and Henry at once responded, though foolishly one might think, “I am terribly sorry for the interrupting. It’s just the tracker I have on the car led me here and I couldn’t help but think the worse, that something-such as a pregnancy-occurred between my son and his fiancé.”

Many things astounded me about his reply. The first is that he said it at all. He out rightly admitted to tracking Alexzander’s car. Now we know who we definitely can’t trust. The second is that, to him at least, I have no name. I am just his son’s fiancé, one at that who would be getting pregnant before marriage. Though neither surprise me, they are still offensive to say the least.

Silence fell upon us as we tried to do anything but yell and scream at the man in front of us. I knew Alexzander wanted to do much more but neither Sara nor I would have let him. Jason glared at Henry, stepping in front of the rest of us, “after that comment, sir, I advise you to leave immediately. Also, I think you’ll find it in your best interest to keep silent about this marriage for now I know a lot more about you then I believe you’d like many others to know.”

A flash of panic crossed Henry’s face as the words left Jason’s mouth. But it was quickly covered by his usual smirk. It was as if he knew we were up to something and wasn’t about to leave just yet. “I will keep my end of the deal if I may be present for the signing. I see that none of the signatures are yet on the paper. Of course, you must know that my keeping your secret has nothing to do with what I just let slipped. I know more people then you could ever imagine a simple tracker on my sons' car—no one would care about. I will, however, keep this marriage a secret as long as necessary, for as you mentioned, you are practically family.”

The judge clears her throat to get the attention back to the papers. Jason turns, and—while holding tightly onto Sara’s hand—signs the line indicated. Sara hesitantly takes the pen afterwards and signs the other line. Alexzander and I lock eyes for a moment, not quite sure how we should let this play out. We don’t exactly want to be forcing our friends into a marriage in such a manner. While handing the pen over, Sarah nods with a smile, assuring us that the way things went down was okay with them. We sign the forms and pass everything along to the judge, who looked quite confused about the whole thing, but let it slide for the time being.

Satisfied, Henry takes his leave, congratulating the newlyweds on his way out. Once the doors close behind him, and a small amount of time has passed, the judge finally speaks up. “I don’t even want to think about what just happened there.” She says, a small smile playing on her lips, “but I will admit that it has been the most interesting wedding I have ever witnessed. Now, you two,” she points towards Jason and Sara, “I can shred this and I’ll pretend it never happened, or I can have you say your vows

The couple mumbles a bit to the side, out of ear shot. Alexzander wraps his arms around me, holding me tightly against himself. The judge looks at us standing there, “and you two, here’s what I need you to sign.” She hands us another certificate and this time we both sign it first before handing the pen off to the returned Jason and Sara.

“So, you guys gonna get married?” I ask Sara while waiting on the guys.

“We will be in a few minutes.” She replies, laughing, “Oh gosh, my family can never know about this.”

“Don’t worry, no one here will tell them.” I assure her. Once Jason signed, the judge led them in their vows. Alexzander once again reaches for my hand, smiling over at me. It was finished, we were married. We were one step closer to our reasons for marriage, and through that, one step closer to our individual freedom.

Once we reached the car, now knowing that it had a tracker, made both of us hesitant to not only sit in it, but drive it. Sure, we were just going home and that was safe for Henry, or any others, to know about. But if they can plant a gps so simply and without us knowing, what else could be a part of this vehicle?

“That stupid, fucking, asshole, piece of shit, useless…” he continues spitting out names for a bit before taking a breath and turning to me. “Why would he go so fucking far? And why, even more so, is he trying to get me not to marry. Or I guess maybe it’s because of who I am marrying, but that doesn’t matter. I hate him. I hate him so fucking much Sam.”

I rest my hand on his should, massaging it a bit to relax him. “I know, but there’s nothing we can do about it at this point. Let’s just go home for now, we’ll figure things out tomorrow.” I lean over and kiss him, hoping that would calm him down a bit, “deep breaths dear, we’ll get through this.”

But even as much as I wanted to believe my own words, I couldn’t. We may get through it, but we may not get through it alive.