The Marriage Dare

When I pull up, my mother is already opening the door, but I take a second to text Monica and tell her that when she gets here, she can just come inside. The smile on her face is huge. “You really need to come see us more often, honey. You’re getting too used to staying in a hotel.”

I pull her into an embrace. “I like my hotel, Mom. I can get food delivered whenever I like.”

She snorts. “It’s not as if we live on the moon out here. You could have whatever you want delivered.”

It’s a fair point. My dad appears behind her, and I hug him as well. “How are you, son?” he asks.

“I’m really good. I swear. In fact, I’m probably the best I’ve ever been.”

My father’s eyebrows raise to his hairline. “Really? Because I could’ve sworn I saw a video online of you punching some guy in the face.”

I laugh as we walk into the house together. “If you’d heard what the guy said, you’d have punched him too.”

“Tell me,” he says, “and I’ll let you know.”

“I’ll get to that,” I say, handing my father a bottle of wine that I’ve brought with me. “I have something else that I want to talk to you guys about first.”

My parents share a look which confirms all my fears. They’ve heard about the marriage, and right about now they’re wondering if it’s true. But my mother smiles and takes the wine from my father. “Well, take a seat,” she says. “I’ll pour this, and we’ll talk about it.”

I let myself relax in one of the large comfy chairs in my parents’ living room while my father helps her with the glasses. It’s a nice red wine that I’ve brought. Generally, I’m not a wine guy, and neither is my dad, but we’ll drink it for the sake of my mother. Wine helped her rediscover the joy in life after she recovered from her illness and things were looking up. She’s become quite the connoisseur, and I have to keep her on her toes with what I bring her when I visit.

“This is quite good,” she says as she enters the room. “Not the best thing you’ve ever brought me, but close.” She winks as she hands me the glass.

“Well, you have to keep me on my toes,” I say. “I can’t be slacking off on my wine game.”

My parents both sit across from me, and suddenly I feel like I’m in some kind of interview. “So.” My father levels a look at me. “What do you have to tell us?”

I take a sip of my wine and clear my throat. “I need to invite you both to my wedding. I don’t have a date yet, but you’ll be the first to know when we do. It will be soon.”

My mother looks at me like I’ve grown a second head. “So it’s true?”

“What are you referring to?” I need her to be specific. There are so many things that the media has been saying, that I don’t want to just say a blanket ‘yes’ when she could be talking about anything.

“I saw the pictures of her with the ring on but I didn’t want to assume.”

“It’s more than that, actually. We are already married,” I say. “We signed the papers three days ago.” I swear all the oxygen gets sucked out of the room. A deadly silence is in the air, and both of my parents are staring at me in disbelief. They really didn’t think that this was real.

“Are you serious?” my father asks.

“Yes.” I let the information sink in.

“And her name is Monica Blast?” my mother asks. “Please don’t tell me that it’s the same Monica Blast that is the daughter of that monster.” She looks at me with concern and pity, and I try not to be angry. I don’t want pity.

She thinks that I’m doing this to satisfy some childhood dream. Maybe I was, but not anymore. “I know you thought you liked her when you were a kid, Daniel. But she was horrible to you. And you know what her family did to us. What would possibly possess you to do this?”

Because of the nature of what my family has gone through, we’ve always been able to be honest with each other. And so I decide to be honest with them. I tell them the truth: that I didn’t expect to encounter Monica, and it started out as an endeavor for revenge. What quickly became apparent, is that neither Monica nor I were the same people that we thought the other one was. And that we were more well matched than we ever could have imagined.

So what started out as an endeavor of shame and humiliation, has turned into an endeavor of love. We haven’t said it yet, but that’s what I feel. I feel it in the silences in our conversations, and in the way we touch each other when we’re not in the throes of passion. I feel it in the quiet moments when we don’t have to talk to be comfortable. “I love her.”