Jasper nodded, accepting what I’d offered without pushing for more reassurance than I could give. Then he was opening his door and stepping out onto the sidewalk, moving like a man who’d made a decision and was sticking to it.
By the time I’d made it around the front of the truck, Jasper was already on the sidewalk, waiting with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on mine. The difference registered—two weeks ago, he would have waited for me to come around, would have let me open his door, would have made sure I was ready before he moved.
I came to stand beside him, not crowding but not keeping my distance either. “Ready?” I asked, the single word carrying more weight than it should have been able to.
Jasper nodded once, tight and definitive. “Ready.”
We went in together.
The courthouse interior was exactly what the outside promised—fluorescent lights, scuffed linoleum, the stale smell of bureaucracy that was the same in government buildings everywhere.
A woman sat behind a desk in the corner, typing something with two fingers, her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. She looked up when we came in, did a quick assessment ofour faces, and then pointed toward a door at the end of the hall with the confidence of someone who’d given these directions a hundred times before.
“Patsy’s in there,” she said. “She’s finishing up a birth certificate. Just give her a minute.”
We found Patsy in the county clerk’s office—a small room with a counter that divided the public space from the working area. She was a compact woman in her fifties with short gray hair and the unhurried competence of someone who’d been doing this job since before we were born. She looked up when we came in, glanced at the clock on the wall, and then nodded once.
“You’re the Reynolds-Arnold,” she said, making it not quite a question. “I’ve got your paperwork right here.”
She pulled a file from a stack on her desk and opened it with a practiced motion. The papers inside were official-looking—cream-colored card stock with the county seal at the top, lines for signatures, spaces for dates and witnesses.
“Now,” Patsy said, settling her reading glasses on her nose, “we’ll need to confirm a few details before we proceed.”
What followed was the least dramatic ceremony I’d ever witnessed—Patsy reading questions from a laminated card in the same tone she’d use to notarize a deed or renew a vehicle registration, no flourish, no fuss.
She asked if we were here of our own free will. She asked if we understood the legal implications of marriage. She asked if either of us had been married before.
We answered yes to the first two, no to the last one. Patsy nodded, made a check mark on her form, and then pushed two copies of the certificate across the counter.
“Sign at the bottom,” she said, pointing to the line with a pen that had probably witnessed a thousand life-changing moments. “Both of you.”
I signed where she indicated—my name in my careful block printing, the date beneath it. Jasper did the same beside me, his handwriting quicker and looser than mine, with a small flourish at the end of his name that I’d never noticed before.
Patsy collected both copies, added her signature with a practiced motion, and then stamped them with the county seal—a heavy thunk of metal on paper that seemed to echo in the small room.
“There you go,” she said, sliding one copy back across the counter. “You’re married.”
Just like that—no music, no audience, no moment where the air changed or the ground shifted. Just Patsy with her reading glasses and her official stamp, and the two of us standing at the counter with our signatures still wet on the page.
I picked up the certificate and looked at it for a beat—the plain paper, the official seal, my own signature in the corner. Something settled behind my sternum—not quite relief, not quite pride, but adjacent to both. A weight lifting, a door opening, and something that I didn’t have a clean name for.
I folded it once along the crease Patsy had indicated and put it in my jacket pocket. Jasper watched me do this with an expression that was trying not to be amused and losing.
“Really?” he asked, one eyebrow raised. “That’s where it’s going? Jacket pocket?”
I shrugged, feeling the warmth of his attention like a physical thing. “Safe there,” I said as I patted my pocket, keeping it simple.
Jasper shook his head, but he was smiling—the particular smile that made something in my chest loosen without permission.
We said thank you to Patsy, who had already moved on to whatever came next in her day—no congratulations, noacknowledgment that what had just happened mattered to anyone beyond the paperwork it generated.
Outside, the morning had warmed slightly, the thin line of clouds to the east breaking up to reveal patches of blue. We stood on the courthouse steps with the main street of Black Butte laid out in front of us—the bakery, the feed store, the Watering Hole Tavern with its faded sign and covered porch.
A woman passed with a grocery bag, glancing at us with the curiosity of someone in a town small enough that new faces stood out. Jasper waited until she was halfway down the block, then turned to me with a look I couldn’t quite read.
“Decker,” he said, just my name, the single syllable carrying more weight than it should have been able to.
I turned toward him, not sure what was coming next, and then Jasper stepped in and kissed me—brief and deliberate, his mouth warm against mine for just a second before he pulled back.
