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After the wedding, we drove straight from the courthouse in Virginia Beach to my father's house in Hampton so that we could break the news. We could've gone to my mother's first, but I was too nervous to see her just yet, and knew that my father would have a much more calm reaction.
Hampton suddenly seemed safer to us since Abraham was in Virginia Beach and we certainly weren't ready to face Adonis's family with our news. Beyond that, we didn't really have a plan.
As we drove, Adonis and I talked about what Abraham might do, and what would happen if he ended the band. "Nah, baby. He ain't gonna do that," Adonis said. "He'll come around."
Whatever we did next, from whether we lived in Virginia Beach or Hampton, to how we would make a living, hinged on Abraham's reaction to our wedding. We knew that we couldn't really make any decisions about anything until we talked to him.
Every now and then, Adonis and I would be derailed from this logical conversation by the knowledge that we'd done it-we'd really gotten married! It was almost like having an out-of-body experience, the way we could see ourselves in the car from the outside, not quite believing that we were looking at a young couple madly, deeply in love and now-in a very weird way-on their honeymoon. We had just done something major, an act that would change our lives forever, and we were still kind of in shock because we didn't know how people would handle it.
"We're married?" I would ask Adonis with a big grin.
"We married, baby!" Adonis would grin back, and then we'd both laugh until the tears were running down our faces.
At the same time, I tried not to imagine what Abraham, Mercedes, and Angelo might be saying or doing right then. I was certain they'd had to cancel their gig in Alexandria when Adonis didn't show up, and I knew they must have been worried sick, not knowing where he was, or if he was hurt or injured. They might assume the worst; after all, Adonis never spaced out or blew off a gig. He was never anything less than professional-until today. But running off to marry me was Adonis's way of putting his foot down and saying "enough is enough" to his father. He was just four months away from his twenty-fourth birthday, and he was ready to assert his independence as a man.
Adonis and I kept worrying aloud about what we would do if Abraham demolished The Delegation, but I didn't really believe that would happen. Abraham surely wouldn't throw away everything that they had worked so hard to create. I didn't know what part I'd have to play in the band, if any, but that was fine by me. I could just keep doing what I was doing, making music in Hampton and earning my own money. If push came to shove, I could just go back to my aunt's place and become a seamstress again, as fashion was one of my next biggest passions, besides music. Either way, I had stood up to Abraham before and I was prepared to do it again.
