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It wasn’t that uncommon for Ophelia to wake up and find Jules in her bed. They’d fall asleep watching a movie, she’d just decide to crash there after a late night study session, or anymore it was because she just couldn’t bring herself to go back to the sorority house.
So it was natural for her to roll over and find Jules beside her. What wasn’t natural was the way she was staring, as if she’d been waiting for her to wake up.
“Hey creeper,” Ophelia said as she sat up. “How long have you been up?”
“Forty-five minutes. I’ve been thinking about something and i wanted to run it by you.”
“Can it wait until I’ve had my–” Ophelia hadn’t even gotten the words out of her mouth when Jules handed her an iced coffee. “Alright. What’s on your mind?”
“I think we should get married.”
Ophelia stared at Jules trying to determine if she was serious or not. All signs pointed to yes.
“Married?” Ophelia scoffed. “We can’t get married.”
“Why not?”
“Oh so many reasons.” Ophelia took an extra long sip of her coffee as she tried to come up with a reason, any reason, why they couldn’t get married. “You’re straight.” If she could smack her brain right now she would, because that had to be the stupidest reason to give.
Jules stared at her. “Seriously?”
“I’m not awake yet. But for real Jules, marriage isn’t this simple thing. It is like a tense, unfunny version of Everybody Loves Raymond, only it doesn’t last 22 minutes, it lasts forever. Or at least until you hate the other person so much you go through a nasty divorce that ends with the two of you in court dividing your beanie baby collection before a judge.”
“It doesn’t have to end that way. We can draw up a prenup saying if we do get divorced we can keep what we came into and then a predetermined person can divide the rest.”
“Why are you so gung-ho about this?”
“They’re going to find the body or at the very least figure out we’re the campus vigilante. If we’re married we can’t be forced to testify against each other.”
“I don’t think that’s a real thing.”
“No it is.”
Jules began to list off all these different cases she’d found in her research and all the other ways that being married could help them after a while she made a really compelling argument.
“If we get married–I’m not saying we are–but if we get married how are we going to do this? Where will it be? When? Are our parents invited? Who’s going to pay?”
Jules rattled off her answers as soon as the words left Ophelia’s mouth. “The courthouse. The end of the month. Of course my father is invited, your parents are your choice. And we will pay, I am not making my father pay for our sham of a wedding.”
“Oh so it’s a sham? First you’re begging me to marry you and now the wedding is a sham?”
“Ophelia…”
“I’m sorry. I just imagined being proposed to would be different than this.”
“You imagined being proposed to?”
“I mean it always ended with me saying no, but yeah I thought about it.”
“You can still say no.”
“How can I say no to my best friend?”
“So you’re saying…”
“Yes, Jules, I will marry you. But I’m keeping my maiden name.”