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The cellphone in Troy’s hand stares up at him tauntingly. He’s sitting on a barstool in his apartment, with his hand hovering over his parents’ phone number. He has to tell them. He knows that. You have to tell your parents when you get married.
Of course, typically parents are told before the wedding, which is the whole thing holding Troy back from this phone call.
He briefly considers if he can wait a month and tell them when they’re in town for his birthday, but he quickly decides that their reaction can only be worse in person, especially if they’ve been kept out of the loop for a whole month.
His finger hits the call button and he groans in the empty apartment. The ringing he hears as he brings the phone to his ear tells him that there’s no going back.
“What’s up?” his dad answers casually, the same way he always does when Troy calls.
“Hey, dad. Is Mama there?”
“Yeah. You want me to put her on?” he asks.
“Uh, actually—” Troy scratches his temple. He knows his dad will know something is up. “I had something I wanted to tell both of you together.”
His dad is quiet for a moment. “Is this good news or bad?”
“Good,” Troy says confidently. Then he realizes his parents might have a different opinion and amends, “Well, I think it’s good news.”
“Okay… Is this serious?”
As much as Troy didn’t want to make this call, now he’s kind of wishing he could speed it up a little bit. “Yeah, look, could you put Mama on the phone?”
“Is Gabriella pregnant or something?” his dad asks, completely ignoring him.
“No, dad.” And then Troy does briefly consider that Gabriella agreed to marry him uncharacteristically quickly. “I mean, I don’t think—I feel like she would have told me…” he mutters. Then he shakes the thought from his head, a little annoyed at himself for thinking it. He knows Gabriella would have told him. They had a whole conversation before going through with the marriage—she wouldn’t keep that from him.
“Okay, okay,” his dad says, bringing Troy back to the present, “I’ll get your mom.”
The line is quiet for a bit, and Troy resolutely does not think about the conversation at hand. He knows it’ll suck—he doesn’t need to work himself up anymore than he already has. He has a plan—tell them, let them have their moment of irritation, then move on to lighter topics. It’s the last two items that are a bit up in the air.
There’s a rustling on the line. “Okay,” his dad’s voice comes through, “you’re on speaker.”
“‘Kay, so…” Troy closes his eyes and takes a breath, and his leg’s bouncing a mile a minute. He knew he would have to tell his parents. Gabriella had even asked him beforehand if his parents would be okay with missing it, and he’d said yes. He just had to get this part over with. Just because they’d be okay with it eventually didn’t mean they wouldn’t be mad about it now.
His dad’s voice breaks the silence. “You’ve got our full attention, Troy.” He knows something is up—his voice gives that much away.
“So… I got married.” It comes out more as a question, his voice trailing up at the end. He cringes in anticipation of their reaction, but he’s met with silence. “You there?” he tentatively asks.
It’s his dad’s voice that speaks first, of course. “What?” he asks pointedly.
Troy stands up, not being able to sit any longer. He paces the small studio apartment. “I got married,” he says with an ounce more confidence.
“Yeah, I got that.” Well, it’s not the angriest Troy’s heard his dad before, but it’s certainly up there.
“To Gabriella?” His mom asks.
“Obviously,” he answers without thinking.
His mom stutters a moment before asking, “How did you manage to talk her into that?”
Troy tries not to be offended. It’s a fair assumption. Her tone catches him off guard, though—usually it’s his dad giving him a lecture, but then he supposes he’s never gone off and gotten married before. He was probably about due for a joint lecture at some point anyways.
“Well,” Troy says, “it was actually her idea.”
“Was she drunk?” his dad asks.
Troy rolls his eyes. “No.”
“Were you drunk?”
“Dad. No.”
His dad scoffs and mutters out, “I’d rather you were drunk. At least it’d make sense.”
Troy sighs. Of course that’s his dad’s opinion. “Dad—”
“Is she pregnant?” his mom asks.
“Dad already asked that before you were on speaker.”
“And?” she asks expectantly.
He sighs again. “No, mom. We just did it. We didn’t think about it before—”
“Obviously,” his dad says.
Troy bites his tongue and takes a breath before he says something he’ll regret. He reminds himself that he knew they would be upset. He doesn’t exactly have personal experience, but he imagines most parents don’t take too kindly to their kid running off and getting married. Especially when they’re eighteen, he supposes.
“So,” his mom starts, letting out an audible breath, “what happened?”
He can hear his dad start to say something, but his mom must stop him from talking, because his words are quickly cut off. Troy can picture the look on his face regardless.
“You know we went to Laguna Beach last week? Well, we were having dinner—” he embellishes the story to make it family-friendly “—and I may have told her we should get married.”
“I thought you said this was her idea?”
His mom gasps. “Wait, you proposed?”
Troy pauses and leans back against the kitchen counter. He ignores his dad’s question entirely. “No, not really. I just kind of said it. You know? ‘I love you. We should get married someday.’” He cringes a little at having to recount the story. It’s not a bad story, by any means; it’s just a little sappy to be telling his parents. He skips most of the details. “And she said, ‘yeah, let’s do it.’ And… yeah. We talked about it and then we did it.”
His parents take a moment to process. His mom must still be reining his dad in, because she’s the one who speaks first. “What about her mom? She didn’t want her there? I thought they were close.”
Troy scratches the back of his neck. “Yeah, they’re… I don’t know. It’s complicated. Her mom’s kind of going through some stuff.”
His dad speaks. “You seriously got married? Like legally married?”
“Yeah.”
“This has to be the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.” He sounds dumbfounded, which is a step up from angry, at least.
“Thanks,” Troy says flatly. “I was calling to let you know, not to get your opinions. It’s already done; we can’t exactly go back and undo it.”
“I mean,” his dad says, “you could get it annulled if you really want to.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
His dad groans in frustration. “Oh, my god. If you don’t know what that word means, you’re too young to get married.”
“Do you want to go back and undo it?” his mom asks, a softer tone than his dad.
Troy pushes off the counter, back to wandering the room. “No, why would we want to do that?”
His dad cuts in again. “Because you’re eighteen, Troy!”
Troy rolls his eyes. “I’ll be nineteen next month.”
“Seriously?” His dad sounds entirely unimpressed. He groans again, and then everyone is silent for a moment. “Well,” his dad says in some sort of attempt to bring the conversation back around, but no words follow.
Troy flops onto the bed, staring at the ceiling. He told them, which was the point of this call, and now he isn’t sure what else to say. Troy knows he’s an impulsive person—and he knows that his parents know that just as well as anybody—but even he can admit this is probably the most impulsive thing he’s ever done.
He’s sure his parents will come around once they process it. He still hasn’t fully processed it himself, so really he can’t be too harsh on them.
It still would have been nice to have a bit more support.
After another moment, his dad finally says something with a bit more collectedness in his voice. “Where are you guys living?”
Troy sits up. “My apartment.”
“Is that place big enough for the two of you? It’s barely enough room for you.”
His dad isn’t wrong. It takes all of two steps to get from the bed to the kitchen, and practically another two to the shower. But, “I mean, she was practically living here already.”
“Mm. Guess that doesn’t surprise me.”
Troy doesn’t know what to make of the comment.
“Well, congratulations.”
The fact that it’s his dad’s voice surprises Troy, but he just blinks and says nothing. Part of him wonders if more is coming, but he hears his mom take a breath and congratulate him too. It’s stilted, like they’re saying it out of obligation, but it’s something, he figures. At that, he feels a small bit of relief and allows himself a small grin. “Thanks,” he says, and his voice says it all.
And then suddenly his mom is gushing about how “my baby is married,” and while he can hear her tearing up over the phone, he can also hear that her voiced is strained, with the remnants of an awkward tension over the phone. His dad seems content to let her go on, and Troy takes what he gets with a smile.
“Is Gabriella there, or?” she eventually asks.
“No.” Troy’s hand finds its way to his hair. “She’s at her mom’s telling her.”
His mom gasps softly. “You didn’t want to do it together?”
“God, no,” he says, his eyes going wide. Then he catches himself and sighs. “I shouldn’t say it like that. Her and her mom have been fighting a lot, and I don’t want to get between them.” He sighs. “I offered to go, but she said she’d rather go alone. Plus, this way we got to tell all three of you at the same time.”
“What are they fighting about?” his dad asks, always the practical one.
“Her mom’s work. Some family stuff. It’s complicated.”
“Oh,” his dad says. “I hope they can work past it. I know how close they always were.”
“Me too. Their conversation can go one of two ways, and I’m hoping… I don’t know. I’m hoping it works out.”
They talk a bit more, though nothing near as noteworthy as Troy’s announcement comes up. Before he knows it, he’s been on the phone for over an hour. The conversation has gotten comfortable enough that he doesn’t want to wrap it up, but he really needs to make an early dinner before heading to work for the evening.
They say their goodbyes, and his parents even offer their congratulations again, and he ends the call feeling a bit lighter than he had before.