The preacher blinked slow, then let the lids lift the way a garage door does when it decides company can come in after all. “Gonna ask this once like I mean it,” he pressed, Bible tucked under arm, palms open. “You rushing because a belly’s ticking or because a man’s got a rival and thinks a ring gon’ fix his closet full of demons?”
“No belly,” I countered, chin up, my words walking out with hips. “Just a heart that don’t want to miss its turn.”
Ro slid his fingers through mine and squeezed until our palms remembered we were always supposed to be one. “Ain’t no rival,” he growled, quiet but iron. “Just a life talking loud and me choosing who I listen to.”
The preacher’s gaze flicked to the front door like he could see through the neon into the night. “Y’all just kids,” he challenged, not cruel, just honest like sandpaper.
“Kids who work, who pray, who ride, who bury, who baptize cousins in bathtubs when the church won’t answer the phone, people who pick up the slack of the community officials, and people who want to make their own choices in life.” I answered, pulse in my throat, fear trying to get loud and God pressing a finger to its mouth. “I’m ready to vow. Not because it’s cute, but because it’s right.”
He watched me a breath longer and I watched him back until the air thinned to reverence. “Alright,” he yielded, voice softening around the edges. “If you ain’t playing with God, God ain’t playing with you. Come on, then.”
Tony slunk into the back row like a choirboy with a record, the camcorder in his lap, the red light pointed at the floor like shame. He mouthed, “On your mark”, and my grin betrayed me again. From the entry shadow, a slimmer shape dipped in and kept to the wall—Jinx, hoodie up, tool roll under his arm like he’d married it. He nodded once when our eyes hit and then focused on nothing—listening the way smart men do when a moment should not be manhandled by words.
The preacher set the Bible on the cabinet-pulpit and spread his palms over it like he was warming his hands at a clean fire. “Names,” he requested, eyebrows lifting, not for the paperwork—just so he could carry them home and put them on a shelf with all the others he prayed over at night when the ceiling refused to be a ceiling anymore.
“Roman Zore,” Ro answered, the syllables landing like a key finally fitting a lock.
“Nova Rae Jenkins,” I offered, then felt my lungs stumble on the distance between now and what they wanted to hold next.
“You Christian?” The preacher probed, not gatekeeping, just making sure we knew the language of the room.
Ro scratched his jaw and exhaled with a smirk that did not challenge God, only begged Him to come closer. “I’m learning,” he admitted, eyes sliding to me like I was the class.
“I believe,” I whispered, and felt the words pull a chair out for faith to sit down in. “And I’m stubborn.”
“Stubborn faith still counts,” the preacher chuckled, a smile carving itself into tired cheeks. He opened the Bible and let it fall to a place the pages knew by muscle memory. “Then let’s start with the truth we can carry.”
He lifted his chin and the room steadied. “Marriage ain’t a stunt,” he warned, voice deepening into that rhythm funerals and weddings share because both are doors. “It’s a covenant with teeth. It’ll bite you if you feed it lies. It’ll guard you if you treat it like holy. Loyalty is not a lyric; it’s a whole language. If you ain’t fluent, you gon’ hurt each other. If you learn it, you gon’ build a house nobody can tow.”
Ro breathed through his nose like he’d been running and then found his stop. “I’m fluent,” he vowed, fingers tightening around mine.
The preacher pointed two fingers at both our chests as if he was issuing badges. “Then speak your truth.”
Ro’s shoulders squared and the room got quiet the way a room does when a man is about to put down what he really is. He swallowed, caught my eyes, and everything smoothed. “Look,” he started, and his voice tripped on the first word, then caught its feet and ran. “I ain’t the church boy who knows the verses by the commas, but I know this. Nova Rae Jenkins, I wake up thinking about where you are and I sleep wondering if the world treated you right. I don’t got a last name that buys favors. I got these hands, this back, this bike, and my breath. I’m laying all of it on your altar. On Moms. On Grams. On Dre—July third. On Boo—May twenty-first. On Tasha—February eighteen. On every name the street tried to swallow.” His throatworked; his gaze held. “You mine till death taps me on the shoulder. If the block yell, I’ll still hear you. If the night pulls, I’ll pull back harder. On hood. On God.”
Tony choked around his toothpick so violently his flannel jumped. “Ay—man,” he croaked, wiping his eye with the back of his wrist like a clown who wasn’t happy to be funny anymore.
My knees shook, but my mouth didn’t. I squeezed his hands and pulled my voice up from the place the aunties store extra strength for you. “Roman Zore,” I breathed, and heard the name fit inside me like a lamp finding its plug, “I ain’t the silk-and-roses bride. I’m a woman who knows how to carry groceries up three flights without dropping the bread. I’m a woman who will pray when you cuss and cook when you forget to eat, who will stand in a doorway with one hand on your chest if you come home with fire in your eyes and make that flame choose warmth over burn. Where you go, I go. Where you lodge, I lodge. Your people, my people. Your God, my God. Where you die—” my voice caught and found itself, “there will I be buried, and this vow do the Lord to me and more also if anything but death parts you and me.” My fingers trembled; my spirit didn’t. “I’m yours without a church bulletin telling me to clap. I’m yours because God heard me when I asked for a home and He spelled it R-O.”
The preacher’s jaw worked once like he was chewing on pride, and it tasted good. “That’s Scripture and spine,” he approved, nodding slow. “Now rings.”
Ro pulled the folded napkin from his pocket like it was contraband and laid it on the pulpit. Inside, two thin bands winked in the cheap light, gold shy but game. He lifted mine, and I watched his fingers shake, not from fear—just devotion that finally understood itself. He slid the ring onto my finger as if the bone might complain and he didn’t want a fight. “With this,” he murmured, breath thinning, “I lock it.”
“With this,” I echoed, placing his ring where his pulse could keep it warm, “I keep it.”
The preacher covered our hands with both of his, big and heavy and warm like somebody’s good quilt. “Lord,” he prayed, “bind what’s Yours with a cord that don’t snap. Make their loyalty loud when their voices are tired. Make their home a house for Your name. Put iron in his love and mercy in his temper. Put oil in her lamp and thunder in her prayer. And when the street whistles for them, help them answer You first. In Jesus’ strong name.” His Amen rolled like a drumline.
“Hold up,” Tony blurted, half-standing, camcorder hovering like a timid bird. “Can I—like—just… they gon’ want to show their grandkids the drip.”
Ro shot him a look that would have melted the film if it wasn’t plastic. “Tap,” he reminded, eyebrows up.
Tony slapped his own shoulder twice in a frantic little signal. “Tap! Tap!” He pointed at Ro’s chest and then at me, then at the camcorder red light still off. “Y’all say the part.”
Ro’s smile broke a little at the corner—boyish, yet beautiful—and then he leaned his forehead to mine. “You my wife,” he breathed, the words slipping out like a life raft thrown with perfect aim.
“You my husband,” I returned, vision stinging, voice catching on a laugh and a sob that had decided to share a throat.
The fluorescents flickered once—just once—like heaven blinked. The preacher chuckled under his breath, the sound full of ten thousand baby dedications and three too many funerals. “You may seal it,” he invited, not showy—just right.
