It's a Long Story

Chapter 3

(10 years later)

"So what has the newlywed life been like for you lovebirds?" Jimmy asks Noah and I, we are sitting in the middle of the stage on a large green couch, our hands intertwined.

"Well, we have actually been married for almost ten years now, we just renewed our vows and made it public." Noah smiles as he drops our secret. There was a loud gasp from the audience.

"Wait, so you two have been secretly married for ten years now and only now are we all finding out? How-how have you managed that?" Jimmy recovered really quick from our news.

"Well, it was really hard at first, and we both had to have decoy relationships, but we have been together for ten years, and I have never been happier." Surprisingly, my voice stayed steady and calm. I squeezed his hand slightly, in attempt to calm my nerves. He slightly turns his head to look at me and smiles.

"So what was the wedding like? Was it a small ceremony?" Jimmy asks with a chuckle. He is still shocked that we dropped the marriage bomb.

"Yeah, our first wedding was actually a courthouse wedding. Our parents and her siblings were there and it was a Thursday afternoon spur of the moment kind of thing." Noah says, it was a very vague description and it cut out much of the insanity of the wedding.

"I mean to be fair-" I started, and I looked at him almost asking permission to tell the world about the real reason why we got married, and he nods at me, giving me permission. "It was a shotgun wedding." Jimmy starts laughing and the crowd sounds even more surprised. A lot of people were whispering.

"So tell us about that, a shotgun wedding, well what you guys were like in your early twenties and Cate, you got pregnant and then what?" Jimmy is laughing through the sentence.

"Well my dad actually found out about the baby first." Everyone is laughing all around, including Noah. "At the time, I was still living with my parents. I went to the doctors, and my family's home phone number was listed as my phone number, and I had it listed somewhere in my file that my medical results could be left on voicemail... I really regretted that one. Um but I didn't even suspect being pregnant, I was just getting annual blood work done and they ran every test and like bam- I was pregnant. So anyways, they left those results in a voicemail and I was travelling. My dad always checks the voicemail when he gets home from work. So he heard it first. As soon as he heard the message, he called me immediately, meanwhile I was sleeping because it was like midnight in Paris, but I picked up and he was talking really fast and yelling and I was so confused! I wasn't like expecting to get any news on my blood-work so I disregarded the memory. My dad was flipping out so I caught the first flight back that I could and we talked face to face. He was so upset, I had to call Noah to come meet him, and my dad was doing the whole 'if you hurt my daughter, I will hurt you', and my dad can be scary. So we ended up having a whole family meeting about this. Meanwhile, I had never met Noah's parents and he had never met my family. So we are all awkwardly sitting in my dining room and my mom has a notepad and we are trying to figure out a solution. Obviously my parents were still treating me like I was a seventeen year old who couldn't fix her own problems. My little sister, who was like twelve at the time runs in and says 'oooooooh Cate should marry him!' and the idea stuck. For everyone except Noah and I. We were like barely friends at this point and we did not want to get married at all. Anyways we got married on a Thursday afternoon in a courthouse." I explained. The crowd was roaring with laughter.

"So how old is your kid now?" Jimmy asks. This would have been quite the friendly passing question, but he had no idea. I turn to Noah for some help in this one.

"She had osteogenesis imperfecta type II, so she didn't live long past her birth. She uh passed away in our arms. It was really hard, uh especially since we were so young, it took us some time to mourn her, but we uh, we went to grief counselling and we got through it. We did separate for a while, and it was hard, but after about a year of on and off we did get back together and we dated again, we never officially divorced but we never dated before we got married either. So we dated for about three years before we renewed our vows. It was not easy getting through losing our daughter, but we definitely got stronger because of it. Every year for her birthday, we actually donate to children's hospitals. We also spend a lot of time volunteering in the children's hospitals, and since then Cate went back and got her degree and certifications to become a therapist. She works in counselling now and helps other parents get through their children being sick and helping them mourn their lost children." every claps as Noah is talking about our story.