Page 13 of A Funny Thing Happened…

I turned once more to the sign to verify.

HOURS: 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM. WALK-INS WELCOME!

It was so quiet in the car, I could hear his wristwatch ticking.

I bit my lip, stared out the window at the Pink Rose Wedding Chapel. There did not appear to be a queue.

“I mean, it wouldn’t hurt to ask, right?”

“Do you want to?” he asked. “Is this what you want?”

I didn’t quite understand why his tone was so urgent. Hadn’t we already settled this? Or at least, I had agreed to marry him. Once we could actually safely hold a large wedding without risking the health and safety of our nearest and dearest. Once the pandemic was over. Although frankly, I had come to believe the pandemic, like the poor, would always be with us.

Well, pandemic or no pandemic, life has to go on.

I tilted my head, studied him. “Don’t take this the wrong way because I absolutely want to marry you. But what happened to your insistence that we had to—as in, wasmandatory—to plight our troth before man and God and my mum?”

“That’s still important to me,” Jake said. “I feel it’s important for both of us. But recent events are a reminder there are no…certainties.”

True enough.

He said carefully, “What I’d like to do, if you like the idea, is we marry now, and when we’re through the next wave, when we can safely gather again, we celebrate with our family and friends.”

“Deal,” I said at once. “If you’ll recall, I’m the one who thought from the first we should elope.”

He opened the driver’s door, and I said quickly, “Wait.”

Jake waited, eyes on me.

“Did you just now see this wedding chapel, or did you plan this?”

Jake dropped back in his seat. “That first trip. I saw this place and thought…” His smile was crooked.

“What?”

“Who gets married in places like that?”

I thought it over, laughed. “I guess we do. If they really take walk-ins.”

They really did take walk-ins.

If we were in love, we really were welcome.

And so… We were married.

They say you don’t remember your wedding day. In my case, it’s because it took pretty much all of forty minutes, including our filling out the license and the officiant finding his glasses.

The brief ceremony was performed by the Honorable John Buttermit, a Justice of the Peace, with Mrs. Buttermit acting as witness. The judge was small and wizened with lively black eyes and a snub nose. His missus was small and plump with merry blue eyes and a snub nose. They’d have made delightful salt and pepper shakers—or Christmas ornaments.

When I asked if the Honorable was any relation to the Miss Buttermit who used to work in the local library, he admitted that he was, and that he had recently married his great-niece to her long-time companion.

That was it for the prelims. Next thing I knew, we were standing in the judge’s walnut-paneled study which smelled of furniture polish and lilies—which I don’t like—and Jake’s aftershave—which I do.

We recited our vows.

We all know the words, but they’re different when they’re being said to you.

“Jake, do you take Adrien to be your wedded husband, to love him, comfort him, honor him, and keep him, forsaking all others, for so long as you both shall live?”

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