NINE

The day before Christmas Eve was the day that Trip and Annaliese celebrated themselves. They met at the mall, as they were pretending to go Christmas shopping as friends. They went to a restaurant where they thought they wouldn’t be seen to exchange gifts.

Annaliese had bought Trip a collection of ebooks she had loaded onto a memory card that she was giving him in a watch box. She thought that would be classy.

Alone in their dark booth. He opened it and said he’d like it more once he could see what books she’d bought him, but he was too nervous to plug it into his phone to look at them just then. He needed her to open her present first.

He handed her an envelope.

Annalise was delighted. No matter how many love letters he gave her, she loved them all. The envelope was fancy, with a wax seal, and felt thick and expensive. She opened it and was confused. It looked like an invitation.

“What is this?” she asked.

“Open it,” he encouraged.

She did and she had to read it several times before she understood what it said. “You want to marry me?”

He nodded.

It was an invitation to Trip and Annaliese’s wedding on January twentieth, the day after Annaliese turned eighteen. It was to be at the courthouse. There would be no guests, no presents, and perhaps no honeymoon.

Annaliese opened and closed the invitation in her hands. “This is because of sex, isn’t it?”

“Sort of,” he answered, desperate not to be misunderstood. “More than anything, I wouldn’t like to give you the impression that I want to have sex with you in a casual way. I want to be with you forever. I feel that offering you marriage is the best way to show you my love rather than ravaging you in the backseat of my car.”

Annaliese was contemplative. “Looking at this invitation, it does sound a little like our wedding night might end up happening in the back of your car.”

“Perhaps, but no matter where it happens, I want you to know that it didn’t happen casually. I want to declare that you are the only one for me and I, for one, am completely ready to spit in the face of the patriarch of my family and say I want only you. Except I’m not the only one who would need to be ready to do that.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Annaliese paled. He was right. She agreed, “I’m not ready. If anything, I’m less ready than I was two summers ago.”

“I know,” he said, touching her knee supportively under the table.

“It’s becoming more obvious every day that I am not really her daughter. I am nothing like her. I’m an arts student and she wants me to study law. Talk about putting a square peg into a round hole, but anytime I try to talk to her about how that path might not be right for me, she is so… unbelievably nice. She says she’ll pay for everything, She says it doesn’t matter if I don’t do well the first time. She says there’s enough time in the world for me to learn slowly if that’s what I need.”

“Annaliese, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this. What would you think of us taking the same degree in university together?” Trip offered kindly. “I’ll go and be a lawyer too and I’ll help you along… every step.”

She groaned. “You don’t want to be a lawyer.”

“I don’t want to be anything. I can’t think of a career for myself. I know one thing, I want to be with you, and maybe if I’m supportive of your mother’s dream for you, we can come out as a couple sooner.”

“If she found out I married you, she’d be so angry. She’d feel like it was a betrayal.”

Trip didn’t exactly go pale, but he went cold and clammy. “I don’t want to put any pressure on you, but what will happen to us if we try to go on like this?”

Annaliese knew what he was talking about. She forgot the exact moment when she had started wanting to go to bed with Trip. It had been so long ago that it had become a hazy thing in her memory. He was right. They couldn’t go on the way they had been, kissing each other when they were finally alone and not doing anything else. They couldn’t break up either. They were too close with every aspect of their lives interwoven.

She put the invitation down between them. “I can’t get pregnant,” she said sternly.

“We’ll be careful.”

“More than careful. My biological mother was seventeen when she got pregnant with me, the same age I am now. If I were to get pregnant, there is nothing in the world that would scare me more.”

He jumped on that. “I’ve been reading about it. If we get started with our preparations now, we can be ready to be very careful on our wedding night.”

She had been about to say more, but the sincerity in his voice prevented her from adding anything. Trip had always been very courteous toward her. She couldn’t believe he would turn into a selfish jerk if he started sleeping with her.

“I want at least the first night to be in a hotel for privacy's sake,” she added.

He nodded. “Okay.”

She hesitated to say more, thinking of her mother and her expectations of her. “And things will go on as they have, still keeping our relationship a secret, except our arrangement will be permanent?”

“We can have a fancy wedding for everyone else when we graduate from law school,” he said softly.

She breathed and ran through different scenarios in her head.

“We don’t even have to get different rings if you don’t want to.” The need in his voice broke her down the rest of the way.

“Let’s get married on the twentieth.”

Trip looked both ways before he bent down and kissed her on the mouth. Thus far, it was the first time he had kissed her in public.