There Is No End, Only A Beginning | owen joyner x charlie gillespie / chowen

Ch 1: The Deciding Factor

"No, I already told you, I'm keeping my last name! You're changing yours to mine!" Owen yelled, slamming his fists on the table. "We're sticking with Joyner and that's final."

I couldn't help but let out a laugh of disbelief. "You know what? We've been arguing about this for two hours. How about we just flip a coin." I reached in my pocket to see if I had any change, but I didn't. "Do you have one?"

Owen reached into his pocket and pulled out a penny. "Heads we go with Joyner, tails it's Gillespie." And with that, he tossed the coin in the air.

Hi, I'm Charlie. You probably know me as Charlie Gillespie, but things have changed since you last heard of me. So, let's be honest.. You're probably wondering how we got here. Let me walk you through it.

I met Owen in 2018 when we both auditioned for a little show called Julie and The Phantoms. We quickly became best friends, and when we both got a part in the show, he wanted to move in with me since it was being filmed not far from where I lived. We fought a lot, but it was all in good fun. The show was finally released in September of 2020, and it quickly became WILDLY popular. Of course, because of the virus, we were quarantined while we were supposed to be promoting the show, so zoom meetings with interviewers was a regular thing. But in November, we as a cast started to get back together in do a little traveling just for fun (with caution, of course). It started with Hawaii, but we also went to Chicago, New York, and Vegas... Ah, Vegas. Here's where shit started to happen.

You know how there's all those movies and shows where two people get stupid drunk and they get married in a little chapel in Vegas but in the end it turns out that the marriage license is bogus so they were never actually married? Yeah, Owen and I did that last night, but turns out that our marriage license is NOT, in fact, bogus. We are legally married. We were gonna go to a lawyer and get it taken care of immediately, but our friend and cast mate, Madison, joked that we couldn't make it a month. That triggered Owen to make a bet with her that we could probably make it six months. Madison said it would be better if we went all out with it and legally changed our names, got rings, got a new house together and all. So we're screwed, thanks to him.

Now you're all caught up, so let's get back to the moment we're in right now. We are currently in our hotel in Vegas. The coin is in the air. If it lands on heads, I change my last name to Joyner, if it lands on tails, Owen changes his last name to Gillespie. The coin is about to land, but a good friend of ours, Booboo, who is also in our show and was traveling with us all, walked in at that very moment and grabbed it.

"NO!" Owen and I shouted in unison. "You fucked up, dude! Was it heads or tails?!" I yelled.

"Uh, I don't know. I shoved it in my pocket before I could see. Why?"

"That was supposed to be our deciding factor. We don't know which name to go with!" Owen said, sitting in the chair with a sigh.

"Why don't you just hyphenate it? Gillespie-Joyner." He said and I laughed a bit.

"See, Owen? My name gets put first in other people's minds. Gillespie-Joyner." I said proudly.

"You realize that if people are too lazy to say the full thing, they'll just land on Joyner since it's last, right?" Owen said, rolling his eyes.

"Well, see, it's a win-win. Because most people will go with the full thing. I think. And it's only fair if we both change our names."

"Fine. We'll go with Gillespie-Joyner."

And that, is the beginning to our not-so-bogus marriage. This should be interesting.