To Break a Vow

by Chencia C. Higgins

  She shook her head. “For us grown-ups, it really is that simple.”

  My sigh was resolute. “Toy, the first time I got married, it was to a man I’d known for years and had been in a relationship with at the time, but it still didn’t work out. I learned the hard way that no matter how well you think you know someone, there is always a chance that you don’t really know shit about them. To me, there isn’t a difference in marrying a virtual stranger because Evan turned out to be a stranger as well.” Sitting up, I propped my head on my hand and stuck my tongue out at her. “Besides, you wanted me to ‘cut loose’ and have a good time. I can’t think of anything more fun than getting married in Las Vegas. Hell, with as many people who do it every day, it must be the funnest thing in the world.”

  Toy released a long-suffering sigh and held the ball of fabric out to me. That was her way of telling me that she was done with the subject and wanted to move on. “Here, go put this on.”

  Instantly, I shook my head, not even reaching for the…whatever it was that she shoved at me.

  “I’m not wearing that.”

  “What? Why not? It’s cute, white, and it’s as close to traditional as you’re going to get for free.” Grasping the fabric, she shook it out to reveal a sleeveless, A-line dress in the style of a button-down shirt, complete with stiff collar and lapels. It would have been modest if not for the deep plunge in the front. Traditional, my ass.

  I gave her a look. “Do you honestly think I give a damn about some tradition?” Sliding off the bed, I made my way over to my suitcase, which was zipped closed and sitting on a stand in the corner. Rifling through the few backup outfits I’d brought with me, my eyes landed on a three-quarter sleeve, bodycon midi dress in my favorite color. It was perfect, and I grasped the neckline and lifted it out of my luggage, allowing it to unravel from its rolled state.

  “I’m wearing this.”

  Toy’s eyes bugged. “You’re going to wear a purple dress to get married in?!”

  “It’s not purple, Toy; it’s burgundy, and it’s perfect.”

  Without another word, I changed into the dress, pairing it with the black platform Mary Jane-style pumps that I’d packed for the trip but hadn’t yet worn. After brushing my teeth and fingering my twist-out to perfection, I was ready to go.

  Toy snatched her key card from the coffee table and shoved it into the pocket of her jumper then crossed the room to change out of her rhinestone-covered slides and into a pair of mesh wedges that zipped closed on top.

  “Where’s Tasha?” I hadn’t seen our youngest sister since the entire bachelorette party split up after the Magic Mike XL show ended just after midnight and Toy and I headed back to the hotel. Three hours had passed since then, and it didn’t look like she had been to our suite, since her bed still had that freshly-made look that the housekeepers had perfected. Tasha might have been a neat freak, but she wasn’t folding any sheets into geometric shapes.

  “Her and Gigi went to some waffle place off The Strip. I texted her when you were in the bathroom and she said she’d meet us at the chapel.”

  Giselle, or Gigi, as we in the family called her, and Tasha were often attached at the hip. We had all made the trip out west for her older sister Danielle’s bachelorette party. Danielle was a family lawyer with her own practice and was marrying a local judge in a few days. My sisters and I were extremely proud of my cousin for grinding it out for her career with an almost single-minded focus, and if anyone deserved a happily ever after that included becoming a power couple of black excellence, it was her.

  “Good. Let’s head down; I don’t want to keep Jereth waiting.”

  Toy rolled her eyes but wisely kept her mouth shut. There was no changing my mind about this.

  Chapter Four

  When Everything Just Makes Sense

  The plan was for us to each procure a witness—preferably a sibling since we both had at least one present—and meet back in the lobby of the hotel in one hour. After the seven minutes used in persuading Jeremiah to leave a sleeping Lisa and his warm bed to come stand with me, I spent the rest of the short time showering, shaving, oiling my bald head, and piecing together an outfit from the small duffel bag that I’d brought along for this trip. Settling on a black suede vest over a maroon button-down shirt that I tucked into a pair of black leather pants, I stepped into my black boots to complete the look.

  “You look like a cowboy who does sex work on the side.”

  Laughing, I tugged up the zipper on the inside of my right boot. “You always know the perfect thing to say, J.”

  He fanned his hands out in front of him. “What can I say? The concern I have for my brother’s eccentric attire can’t be suppressed.”

  “You’re hating real hard right now, bruh.”

  “How can I be hating on a nigga wearing leather pants so tight he could sing soprano in the church choir?”

  With a shrug, I stood and straightened my vest before checking my watch and heading to the door of my hotel room. “Say what you want, J, but make no mistake, the ladies love it.”

  He joined me at the door. “I guess I can’t dispute that since you somehow managed to convince a woman you just met to marry your ass.”

  “Wrong again, old man. I didn’t convince anybody to do anything. I asked and she said yes. That’s it.”

  Jeremiah’s face scrunched in contemplation and I knew—without knowing—exactly where his mind had gone, and that place brought forth a fit of anger that had no outlet and a measure of guilt that I didn’t know what to do with. Suddenly, I wished I had grabbed a random stranger to be a witness for me. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt my brother, and there was no way that this—me getting married—wasn’t hurting him.

  “J—”

  He clapped me on the shoulder and shot me a half-assed grin that only deepened my concern. “Hey, let’s go get you married, huh!”

  There was a false note of enthusiasm in his voice that I wanted to call out, but the desperate look in his eyes that begged me to let it go won. Releasing a tense breath, I nodded.

  “Let’s go.”

  Thirty seconds later we stepped onto the elevator, and I whipped out my phone to request a car to transport us to the chapel. We reached the lobby of the hotel quicker than I expected, and my face was still glued to the screen of my phone when Jeremiah elbowed me to get my attention. Following his line of sight, I broke out into a huge grin the moment I laid eyes on her. She stood near a wide column, opposite the front desk, laughing at something her sister was saying to her and looking like something out of my dreams in a dress nearly identical in color to my shirt.

  What were the odds?

  Eating the space between us with long, determined strides, I was nearly upon her before she noticed my approach. Her eyes roved over my frame greedily, widening when she noticed my outfit. My grin stretched even further out.

  “Tonya. You look amazing.” And I meant each word. Falling to the middle of her calves and covering most of her arms and all of her neck, the dress she wore might have seemed modest at first glance but upon deeper perusal I noticed how the fabric molded to her body and hinted at luscious curves, igniting another impulse inside of me—one that I had no choice but to sit on. For now, at least.

  “We’re matching!”

  “We are.”

  “But…how?” She was in pure disbelief.

  “You could call it a coincidence, but I like to think it was meant to be. Unless, of course, you were spying on me.” It was an attempt to tease her, but she flipped the script on me.

  With her eyes on my pants, she murmured, “Hell, I wouldn’t mind a peek or two.”

  Well, damn. That’s the type of shit I liked to hear. Lowering my voice, I leaned in. “You can definitely have more than a peek, though.”

  Painted lips parted fractionally, and I had a vision of them forming a perfect “O” while I slid my stiff erection back and forth between them. Shit! I needed to put one head away and think with the other
, at least until the papers were signed. Never had I given much headspace to the idea of having a wife, despite how hard my father tried to drill the concept into me and my brother’s heads, but now the thought of fucking my wife thrilled me in a way I couldn’t have imagined. Before I could say another word, J cleared his throat behind me.

  “Oh!” I stepped to the side. “Let me introduce you to my brother. This is Jeremiah, but everyone calls him J. J, meet Tonya, the future Mrs. Hawkins.”

  Tonya offered a hand, but he waved it away, instead, pulling her into a hug. “C’mere, girl. The circumstances might be outlandish, but in this family, we hug. None of that handshake business.”

  Her smile was big and infectious when her eyes met mine after he released her. My phone buzzed in my hand, and I glanced down to see that our ride had just pulled up in front of the hotel.

  “The car is here.”

  Tonya turned to face the doors where Latoya had already marched towards without so much as a “Hey, remember me?” for J, but before the woman I had no qualms about pledging forever to could take a step, I caught her arm and lowered my mouth to her ear. What I had to say was meant for her and her alone.

  “It’s not too late to stop this if you’ve changed your mind.”

  Those muddy brown eyes were blank as they swept up to my face, assessing me. Cocking her head to the side, she questioned, “Did you change your mind about asking me?”

  I didn’t even have to think about it. “Hell no.”

  Her eyes crinkled at the corners, cheeks lifting just so. “Then let’s go get married.” Grabbing my hand, she threaded our fingers and we walked out of the building, side-by-side.

  Our first stop was to the marriage license bureau. We completed the application on my phone during the drive and once we arrived, we were able to skip the line and pick it up from the express window. From there, the ride to the venue was short, lasting no longer than ten minutes, but it felt like a damn hour had passed since no one but Latoya was speaking. She carried on a conversation with herself, much in the same way as her sister did, as she prattled on about the statistical rates of divorce and how busy her cousin Danielle’s practice seemed to be. It took everything in me not to question her presence since she didn’t seem to agree with what we were doing, but when Tonya laughed and rolled her eyes, catching my attention and reminding me what I gained at the end of the ride, I managed to hold my tongue.

  When we arrived at the chapel I’d chosen, there were two women who started in our direction the moment we exited the car. After a round of hugs among the four women, Tonya faced me with her arms around the waists of both Latoya and one of the two women who had the same round face and wide brown eyes like her.

  “Jereth, this is my baby sister, Natasha, and that’s,” she nodded at the other woman who bore their same shade of brown but was slim with long legs where the three sisters were buxom with thick thighs, “my cousin Giselle. Tasha, Gigi, this is Jereth and that’s his brother Jeremiah. He’s not single, Gigi.”

  Giselle smirked at Jeremiah, who stood chuckling and shaking his head in embarrassment.

  “I can’t seem to locate a ring on his finger, dear cousin.”

  Surprisingly, Latoya laughed. “Girl, his woman would scratch your eyes out if she knew you were even looking at her man. Trust me; that’s not a problem you want.”

  With her eyes still on my brother, Giselle questioned her cousin. “How do you know?”

  “Because I’ve seen it with my own eyes. She looked ready to come out of a bag on me, and all I said was the man is fine.”

  Laughing, I held up a hand. “You also said you hoped he was her brother.”

  She shrugged. “So? That’s still not enough to want to fight me.”

  J shook his head. “Stop exaggerating. Lisa wasn’t gon’ fight you. She ain’t even get buck; she just didn’t like how you were looking at us like you wanted to eat us alive.”

  Giselle mouthed “Lisa” at Tonya, who giggled in response.

  “Nah, I didn’t want to eat either of you alive. I was trying to get that one,” she hooked a thumb at Tonya, “laid, but would you look at that? All of this time later and she still ain’t been fucked!”

  Damn. She was still trippin’ about that. Eyes wide, I glanced at my brother who was giving me a look that I could read with my eyes closed. Are you sure you want to get involved with this woman whose sister is a nutcase? It was a fair question, and one I’d ask myself if I were in his position, but even Latoya’s little attitude didn’t phase me in comparison to how much I wanted her sister. And to be quite honest, I’d dealt with his own woman’s attitude enough over the years for this situation to be nothing more than a blip on my radar. My shoulders lifted in a shrug, and I squeezed Tonya’s hand reassuringly, just to remind myself why we were all here.

  Tonya shifted her stance and pinned her gaze on Latoya. “Damn, Toy. You’re doing an awful lot for somebody who could have opted out of being here.”

  Latoya jerked her head back, wide, surprised eyes on her older sister. “What? What kind of sister would I be if I didn’t show up at my sister’s wedding?”

  “Surely, a better one than you’re being right now. You said your only goal was for me to fuck somebody? Well, congratulations, bitch! After this ceremony, I will be fucking the shit out of this magically delicious-looking nigga standing next to me. Now, if your issue is something other than that, you can either shut up or take it back to the hotel, but what you won’t do is keep on keeping on with this bullshit you’re on. I love you, but I’ve had enough, and there for damn sure isn’t a forecast for rain on my spontaneous wedding day parade.”

  While Latoya stood there with her lips twisted up, Giselle surged forward and wrapped Tonya in a tight hug, sending her stumbling backward into my chest.

  “I know that’s right, TT! You better regulate up in here!”

  I glanced at my brother and he gave me a solitary nod, saying the same thing I was thinking. Tonya had this thing under control.

  Natasha clapped to get everyone’s attention, and Giselle released Tonya who didn’t move. “Okay! Everybody snap your fingers on three!”

  Brow quirked, I glanced at Tonya who shrugged, a confused smile on her face, and raised her hands in the air with her thumbs and middle fingers poised. “One, two, three. Snap!”

  All six of us snapped on cue then stared at Natasha for an explanation. She peered at Tonya suspiciously.

  “TT. What are we doing here?”

  Tonya glanced at me, then back at her sister. “Tasha, what? Y’all are about to watch me get married.”

  Natasha smiled. “You’re not being hypnotized, that’s good.”

  The other three women burst out laughing and my brother elbowed me none too gently, causing me to shove him away from me. It didn’t make a difference; he came right back and swung his heavy arm around my shoulder, pulling me in close enough to hear him.

  “She thought her sister was under some kind of spell. This shit gets better and better!”

  Admittedly, it was pretty funny but I wasn’t giving J the satisfaction of conceding that. Besides, I liked the fact that this was obviously something so far out of the ordinary for Tonya that her sisters were questioning her sanity. I liked that I caused her to step outside of her normality. It bode very well for the future I saw for us.

  Two couples brushed past our group to enter the building, and I realized that we were still standing outside on the sidewalk. Striding over to the women, I wrapped my fingers around Tonya’s smooth wrist, but instead of gently pulling her toward me and away from her family, I allowed myself to be drawn to her orbit.

  “We could have been married by now.”

  Giselle whistled. “Ooh, girl, he ready!”

  Tonya laughed. “Come on, y’all. Let’s go on in.”

  Inside we were greeted by the smiling face of an older woman who stood just inside the doors at a podium. Lifting a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from where they hung on a thin, silver c
hain around her neck, she hooked them on her ears and eyed our small group.

  “Well isn’t this just a beautiful group of young people? Welcome to I Do With DiDi. Who is the lucky couple, or couples, that brought you all down to see me on this early winter morning?”

  My hand slid from Tonya’s wrist; I raised a hand.

  “That’d be us.”

  “Wonderful.” She stepped from behind the podium and crossed the lobby to a short counter that was covered in thick books. “Why don’t you two step on over here and tell me what kind of ceremony you’re looking for.” She began to flip through each of the volumes, showcasing images from some of the probably thousands of weddings that took place here weekly.

  While the woman, who introduced herself as DiDi, described the different packages, I looked over at Tonya. I didn’t care about any of this shit, and the only reason I didn’t direct us to the local courthouse for a quick audience with the justice of the peace was out of concern for her potential desires. The subtle cringe on her face surprised me. I’d assumed she would have been grinning with excitement, but as DiDi turned the adorned pages and the quickie ceremonies became more and more extravagant, Tonya’s expression soured.

  Squeezing her hand to get her attention, I said, “Hey, we good?”

  She looked up at me, eyes tight, and shook her head. “No. I’m sorry.” She looked at DiDi. “I’m sorry. I’m sure these are very nice packages, but I really don’t want any of this.” Her eyes found mine again. “I’ve done a fancy package before and I’m over that. Do you mind if we do something simple? Just us, an officiant, and our crew of onlookers?”

  I smiled at her like I hadn’t just had a moment of extreme panic when she shook her head. “Of course; whatever you want.”

  “No. It’s whatever we want. This is our thing.”

  Nodding, I looked at DiDi, who was now staring at the both of us over her glasses with a small smile on her face.