Our journey to the next show required a rental car, a collection of snacks, and a collaborative playlist. The six hour drive to the venue in Phoenix was going to be a long one, but if all went well, we were going to arrive before I had to go up on stage. We'd both miss soundcheck by a few hours, but at least we'd be there for the show.
Jack was driving while I was in the passenger seat. Although I would be willing to take over at any point, it was more comfortable this way. We were driving down the highway, the music quietly playing in the background to fill the silence. It wasn't an uncomfortable silence. We were both thinking about everything that had transpired in the past 24 hours.
"Hey, Jack?" I finally spoke up after about half an hour. "Do you want to be married?"
Neither of us had directly asked the question yet. At least not as a yes or no question. I'd asked how he felt. I told him I hadn't thought about it before. He bought me a new ring. But we never directly said anything about the here and now.
"I think we did what we did for a reason," he replied, his eyes fixated on the road.
"There's just so much we haven't thought about," I continued, no longer able to hold back what I was contemplating. "Like, what does this mean for us? Will things change? They feel like they should change. But do we want them to change? What if things don't change? What if they do?"
I didn't even give Jack the time to try to react to any of my questions and kept my rambling going. "Where do we go from here? Are we supposed to move in together? We practically spend all our time at each other's places. It won't be much different. But moving in? I don't even know if I'm ready for that. I feel like I should learn how to live by myself first. Is that weird? That's a bit weird, isn't it?
"Is this just it? Are we married now without even remembering it? It's a great story, but I'd love to have some memories of it. And what's next? We never even had a discussion about having kids. Do we want to have kids? How many? When? Because I'm terrified of being pregnant and I don't know if I'll ever get over that fear. What if we don't want kids? What if one of us does and the other doesn't? What if we don't know?
"And, oh my god, my name. Do I change my name? I don't know how any of that works. I've never even had a look into any of that. Am I no longer going to be 'Jacie'? Will I instead be 'Jacib'?"
"Jace," he finally stopped my word vomit and put his hand on my thigh, "take a deep breath. Don't start having an identity crisis."
"It's hard not to." I tried to do as he told me and took a deep breath in and released it slowly.
"As I see it, we have three options." He held up three fingers from the steering wheel. "We get an annulment, we ignore it, or we stay married. All of them come with their own questions and considerations."
I nodded, immediately hating the idea of ignoring it. That was not an option known for working out well. We started this relationship by always trying to be very open about everything. We always discussed how we felt and if we were on the same page. Ignoring such a big thing would only cause it to blow up later.
But marriage or annulment sounded like much bigger things. I knew getting an annulment would affect everything, no matter how much we'd try not to let it do so. For that to work, we'd need to 100% be in it together. But the same went for marriage. If either of us felt slightly different about something than the other, it would all break apart.
"We don't need to decide now," Jack added. "We can take our time to figure it all out."
"But we can't take too much time," I countered, feeling his thumb softly stroke my leg. "Because then we'll ignore it, and I don't want to do that. We need to consciously think about it."
"Then we'll take this tour to really find out what we want – from each other, from ourselves, and from our relationship."
I nodded carefully and put my hand on top of his. He slowly flipped his over, letting our fingers intertwine and giving my hand a supportive squeeze. It felt nice knowing that this was something we'd figure out together. But I was still worried. I had been so happy and was afraid it would all come crashing down because of one drunk moment.
"I've gotta call Hazel," I quietly said, annoyed that I needed more support than just Jack's.
He softly nodded, letting me take out my phone and dial the all too familiar phone number. I was surrounded by guys the entire time, I just needed to hear a female voice again. To have some kind of different energy.
"Jacie!" Hazel's voice greeted after three dial tones. "How was your Vegas outing!"
I didn't even take a second to greet her back before I blurted out, "Jack and I got married."
"What?!" she shrieked.
Before we continued our conversation, I had to be honest about one thing. "We're in the car and you're on loudspeaker."
"Hey, Jack!" she immediately responded, acknowledging that he'd be here to hear everything.
"Hey, Hazel," Jack replied with a silly small smile, as if jokingly rolling his eyes a little.
In no time, Hazel went back to the original subject. "Am I supposed to congratulate or is this a fuck up?"
"We don't know, we're figuring it out," I let her know, wiggling my fingers a little in the hand Jack was still holding.
"You guys good though?"
"Yeah, we're good." I looked over at Jack who was luckily still paying attention to the road, my heart filling with happiness and love.
"How did this even happen?!"
I opened my mouth to answer, but neither of us could remember anything. "Another thing we don't know."
"Jacie!" She gasped loudly. "Jack! How scandalous!"
"It's a miracle we even found out," I chuckled, the shame settling in.
"If it weren't for some photos," Jack added, "we'd probably try to get married in a few years, just to find out we already were."
Hazel teased, "a happy little accident, then, huh?"
"Maybe," I agreed, bringing Jack's hand up to my lips and pressing a kiss to his knuckles.
"I hate to do this, but I actually have a meeting to go to right now. But I'll call you later this evening, okay? Then we can properly catch up."
"Okay," I sighed a little.
"Bye, love you!"
"Love you," I mumbled back.
And then Jack and I sat in silence again, just the music faintly acting as a soundtrack to our journey. I was so conflicted. It felt like I was in a metaphorical car, weaving between lanes. Being married to Jack didn't feel wrong. It possibly even felt right. But I also knew it had been an impulsive drunk decision with no rational thought about it.
It took me another hour to speak up about it again.
"Jack?" I started after we played some 'I Spy'. "Do you think we should keep this a secret?"
"Hmm?" he hummed in response.
"Like, just keep it to ourselves for now. So we can figure out what we want before we get all these different reactions from everybody."
"We could do."
"I'd just hate for somebody to say something and get inside our heads," I explained, really hoping he'd feel the same way, "just for everything we have to be destroyed."
"I won't ever let something like that happen." He shook his head and briefly took his eyes off the road to look at me.
"Cause I love you, and I don't want to lose you."
"I'll do anything to stop that from happening." He stressed and then breathed out. "But I think you're right."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, let's take some time for just us two to figure it out."
And then it was decided. We'd hide it from everybody on tour.
We barely arrived half an hour before it was time for me to play my set. Just before Jack and I entered the venue, I stopped us. I took both of our rings and hung them from the thin gold chain I wore on a near day-to-day basis. As long as I didn't wear any low-cut shirts, our rings would be safe, hidden behind some cloth and close to my heart. It was better this way. Then we'd be able to figure this out without external pressure. And we'd be able to find them again whenever we wanted.