“DON’T THROW UP. Not here. Not now. Not on her,” he told himself. Then he swallowed the Froot Loops that had snuck back into his mouth, no matter how hard he tried to make ’em stay down.

The preacher asked him again: “Do you, Tow-Kaye, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward until death do you part?”

“I guess.”

Cindella stared at him, then at her belly. Her father, sitting in the first row, cleared his throat. So did the pastor. Tow-Kaye thought about what his father told him this morning. “You ain’t gotta marry her, or nobody, for no reason, ever.” He changed his answer. “Yes. I take her to be my wife,” he said, still wondering if maybe his father was right: A sixteen-year-old boy “don’t need to be getting married.”

“And do you, Cindella, take Tow-Kaye to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

She giggled, which made the women in the church lean over and say they knew she was too darn young to be getting married. Cindella saw a few of them out the corner of her eyes—whispering. She couldn’t understand why people were so upset. Marriage was a good thing, wasn’t it? Tow-Kaye and her paid for their own rings, didn’t they? And they were going to finish high school, and work together at the same restaurant this summer. What else did people want? “I do . . . take him to be my husband,” she said, looking over at Tow-Kaye. Smiling and kissing him before he kissed her.

She wanted to jump the broom after the ceremony. Not him. He thought it would make him look stupid, hopping over a broom in front of his boys. So they walked up the aisle, hand in hand—her wearing a beaded ivory gown and him wearing a black tux with a matching cummerbund, when he would have been perfectly fine in a pair of new jeans.

“This the twenty-first century, you don’t have to do nothing you don’t want to,” his father said to him last night after his friends stopped blowing up his cell, asking if he was crazy getting married at his age. So he was kind of glad his father wasn’t here, because he figured his dad would be able to tell for sure that he was having second thoughts—scared to death, really.

When they headed up the aisle, behind the bridesmaids and best man, her friends waved at her like she was a movie star walking the red carpet.

“Stop! Wait! Let us take your picture.”

Cindella stopped. She held on to him tighter than a blind man to a cane. “He yours now,” her best friend, Raquel, said, walking into the aisle, taking too many pictures. “I’ma be next.”

A woman too old to stand up told Tow-Kaye to smile. “And look happy.”

Tow-Kaye wanted to run. To ditch Cindella and his tux and get out of there. But he didn’t, because he loved her. Loved her since he was four years old, when he moved onto her block. Up until fourth grade he called her Cinderella. She had big, light brown eyes and short wavy hair that felt like feathers when he touched it. He kissed her for the first time when they were seven; gave her a yellow plastic ring when they were ten. On his thirteenth birthday he gave her all of his birthday money and said what was his was hers. He wanted to tell her how much he loved her, right there in front of everybody. But if he did, he might just throw up. So he kept walking.

His best friend Mario got to him first. They hugged each other. “This is nuts, man. Stupid. But you stuck now.”

Tow-Kaye’s mother got to him next—kissing him. Dragging him over to the reception line, not noticing that inside he was already calling it quits.

The vestibule was draped in their school colors— purple and yellow—a gift from their friends. Tow-Kaye waved at his boys. Her friends picked at her dress and fussed over her hair. Then four of his friends slid their fingers across their throats and sliced. It was a joke. He knew that. But he didn’t laugh. He kept moving.

Tow-Kaye shook hands with the first guest in the receiving line, then looked at Cindella and smiled. The sun was shining through the stained glass windows, turning her gown mauve, amber, and honeysuckle; making the stones in her tiara glow blue. That’s what made him kiss her. Made his lips stay on her lips for so long that his mom said they should quit it.

He rubbed her belly. “Two more months and I’ll be a father.” Then he rubbed his own stomach, and belched. Right before the wedding he took six tablespoons of Pepto-Bismol, but it didn’t help. His stomach was still in knots.

“You look sick,” his wife said, staring at the dark circles under his eyes, and his dry, cracked lips. Tow-Kaye was light brown. His skin showed everything. “You okay?” she asked.

Before he could tell her what he was thinking— that he was scared, that he didn’t know if he wanted to be married—his mother walked over and squeezed his cheek. “I am so proud of you.” Then she lowered her voice. “I wish he had come.” She smelled his boutonniere, then turned him toward her and straightened his bow tie. “So he could have seen you standing up there . . . doing right by that girl.”

His father didn’t understand. Tow-Kaye had to marry her. He’d promised her. And he never broke a promise, not to Cindella.

“Okay, Mom. Let somebody else hug him.” It was Cindella’s mother talking. She hugged Tow-Kaye’s mom, then hugged him. Other people couldn’t tell how she felt about him, but he knew. She was like his dad—ticked off about the marriage. But she was better at pretending than his father was.

“This is Mrs. Dunkin,” Cindella’s mother said, introducing a woman to her daughter. “She lived up the street when you were little.”

“What you talking about? She still little,” Mrs. Dunkin said, putting a big, fat, wet kiss on Cindella’s cheek, then wiping the lipstick off with her thumb, which was partially amputated.

They stood in the receiving line shaking hands and hugging people forever, it seemed. A woman handed her a twenty. A man gave him a fifty, saying, “And this ain’t no honey-I-got-some-money money, this here’s for you. Pocket change.” The guy smiled, showing off a gold tooth in the corner of his mouth. Tow-Kaye slipped the new bill into his back pocket, hoping Cindella hadn’t seen.

It was like that the rest of the time, people hugging and kissing them. Women handing her cards; men sliding him five-dollar bills. Putting twenties and fifties in his back pocket. He didn’t know people did things like that. But he could use a new iPod and that new Madden game, he thought as he took Cindella by the hand and left the church, asking if anyone had a spoon. “I got some medicine I need to take.”

Tow-Kaye stared out the limousine window. A hoop game was going on in the park. He played every day; most of Saturday. His dad said he could kiss that good-bye. But his mother said he didn’t have to. “Marriage is compromise. You give some, you get some things too.” Only Tow-Kaye wasn’t so sure anymore about what marriage got you, besides a wife and a bad stomach.

He didn’t know who to believe. People said such different things. “Marriage sucks—run.” “Be responsible; take care of what’s yours.” But who’s gonna take care of me? he thought. His mother always cooked for him, washed his clothes, and even made his bed. They were gonna be living with Cindella’s parents now. Her mom was different. At their place, you ironed your own things. Cleaned up after your own self and took turns cleaning the bathroom and the refrigerator, too—even the men. Cindella said she would treat him just the way his mother had. “I’ll do everything for you.” But his boy Mario said if he believed that, then he had a dirt bike that went five thousand miles an hour that he wanted to sell to him.

“They got anything to eat in this car?” Tow-Kaye started opening up compartments and pulling out juice and snacks. He started with peanuts and was into the Doritos before the peanut bag was empty.

Cindella took the bags away. “They make your breath smell.” Then she took out some of the cards and money people had given them, even though her mother said she shouldn’t. He felt guilty, so he dumped his cash into her pile.

Two guys flew past their limousine on motorcycles. Tow-Kaye’s father had promised him one for graduation. Cindella hated those things. He wondered if he’d have to give that up too. He opened up more compartments, pulled out crackers and cheese, sparkling red cider and a corkscrew.

She told him to watch out for the cider. “It stains.”

“You not my mother. Don’t tell me what to do.”

Mrs. Bentley bit her lip, to keep from saying anything she’d regret.

“Relax. You two can make it,” Cindella’s father said. “My parents got married at thirteen.”

“You’re almost sixty,” his wife said. “In your mother’s day, girls didn’t have a future. Making babies, that was their job.” She stared at Cindella. “Things are different now. Girls don’t ever have to get married if they don’t want.”

“But I wanted to,” Cindella said.

Her mother kicked off her lime green heels. “You wanted to. . . .” She was trying not to sound angry. “But you didn’t have to.” She looked at Tow-Kaye’s hand on her daughter’s stomach and asked her husband for some Tylenol. “This is my baby.” She pointed to her daughter. “Our last child.” Her hands covered her lips. Her eyes blinked. “She was supposed to go to college— to London; Africa. You . . . it’s all messed up now.” She sat straight up. “Now we have to use her college money on cribs and binkies, Similac and hospital bills. Jesus. Why us?”

His mother-in-law was the principal at their high school. Every day she’d come home telling Cindella what some teacher or janitor had said about them getting married. “It’s better to be pregnant and young than pregnant, young, married, and then divorced,” she heard a few teachers in the lounge say one day. Her mom agreed with them. One mistake is better than ten. And being a principal, she had seen teenagers make hundreds of mistakes. But until now, getting married wasn’t one of them.

She finally broke down crying. Her husband hugged her and told her crying wasn’t going to change nothing, and that his girl deserved a husband for her baby, not no boy who wanted to stand on the corner or play video games half the night. He leaned over and shook TowKaye’s hand. “He’s more man than some men my age. He always was . . . a good kid.”

Tow-Kaye tied his shoelaces, then stared out the black tinted windows. “I’m responsible. I try to do what’s right, but . . .”

Her mother dug in her purse for Tylenol. “Responsible? Responsible?”

Cindella and her dad both said, “Don’t say it.”

“You knocked her up!” She let everything she had been thinking come out. “Pregnant and married at sixteen. Jesus Christ. What a disaster!” She closed her eyes and reminded herself that she was a principal: she knew better. She was a mother: she needed to do better. But all she could do was cry.

The limo pulled into the park and up to the conservatory. Tow-Kaye could hear the rest of the wedding party from the second limousine jumping out of the car, laughing, and heading their way. Adrina knocked on their window first. “What y’all doing in there, kissing?”

He burped and tasted peanuts, then looked at his ring and wished he could take it off—start the day all over again. “Man . . .” He said it out loud, even though he knew he shoulda kept it in his head. “This is the worst day of my life.”

They stared at him. And something inside him made him say what his father wanted him to say all along. “I’m too young to be married.” His stomach bubbled. “And I hate this suit.” He opened the window for air. “I’m only in eleventh grade. Who gets married at my age?”

Cindella started crying. Her mother started yelling. Tow-Kaye said he was sorry, but he couldn’t do this.

Her dad stepped in. “Driver, let’s take a little ride through the park.” He looked around the car. “What a mess.” So when the car pulled off and they rode deeper into the park, where there was nothing but trails, thick tall trees, and air so clean it smelled sweet, he told the driver to stop. “Come on, boy.” He opened the door and told the women to stay put.

They walked on the gravel and watched dust hug their rented shoes. “Talk to me,” Cindella’s dad said, loosening his gray tie.

Tow-Kaye wondered how much of the pink stuff you could take in a day. He wanted a little more, wanted to get drunk really, and he didn’t even drink.

His father-in-law said it again. “Talk to me, son. You want out? You can get out.”

Tow-Kaye loved Mr. Bentley. Before he ever told Cindella he loved her, he said it to her father first. Tow-Kaye’s father called him every week, but he lived in California and they never did talk about much. Once he got sick with cancer and lost his job, he couldn’t pay for Tow-Kaye to fly out there. Neither could his mother. Which was okay, because Tow-Kaye always had Cindella’s dad. He was the one who taught him to ride a two-wheeler. He was the one who showed him how to use a hammer, how to lay concrete so it didn’t crack. He went to Boy Scout meetings with Tow-Kaye and taught him to fish; told him when to wear a tie: why he shouldn’t eat everything on his plate; how to act if the police ever rolled up on him; and why he always needed to have some money in his back pocket and in the bank, too.

“Be responsible for your actions. That’s what you always taught me.” Tow-Kaye looked at the gravel while he talked. Walked over to a tree and started pulling off the bark. “I’m trying to be . . . responsible . . . trying to do what’s right.”

His father-in-law was behind him, scratching the bald spot in the center of his head. “I love you . . . Gonna love you no matter what you do.” He held on to his shoulder, squeezing it. Wondering if he had screwed everything up for his daughter, for his only son, too. “Maybe I’m too old to have a kid your age. . . .” He took off his jacket.

“You ain’t old.”

He kept talking to Tow-Kaye’s back. “I know kids don’t get married no more.” He loosened his tie a bit more. “The first time I did it, though, I was your age. When she passed,” he said, “I found another one. Emily.” He listened to the birds talking to one another from tree to tree. “I don’t know . . . I figured between me and Emily, and you loving Cindella and her loving you . . . it could work out right.”

Tow-Kaye started walking, slow, so Mr. Bentley could keep up. And he told him what his dad had said. What his boys told him in school, at gym—on the court. Mr. Bentley helped Tow-Kaye out of his jacket. “But this ain’t about them,” he said, holding his coat for him. “It’s about you two.” He stopped. Picked up an acorn and pitched it as far as he could. Tow-Kaye did the same. They walked over to the pond—the one people fished in even though it looked like it was filled with mud. “Sit down,” Mr. Bentley said, ignoring the dirt.

Tow-Kaye stood. “It’s not like I don’t love her.” He took off his tie and cummerbund. “Only . . . I just . . . can’t . . .”

Mr. Bentley stared at the green slime moving across the water like oil. He had to, otherwise he’d cry.

“I can’t stop thinking,” Tow-Kaye said, swallowing in between every word. “Can’t . . . shut . . . my . . . head . . . off . . . you know?” His father-in-law laughed. “Marriage is some scary stuff, man.”

“No lie. I swear.”

The birds got quiet. “All I can think about . . . is . . . is . . . man, I’ma be a father . . . be a husband . . . be all used up before I’m eighteen.” He looked over at Mr. Bentley, then took his time sitting down next to him. “I love her . . . but I don’t know. . . .” He didn’t mean to cry. Didn’t mean to cry so hard he wet up Mr. Bentley’s shirt and got snot on his sleeve. “I wanna be married to her, you know. Wanna be with her forever and be a good dad like you, but . . .”

Mr. Bentley held him like he held Cindella when she was little. He wiped his own nose and cleared his throat and tried to figure out what to say; what to do. But all he could think about was his daughter, how hurt she’d be. And about himself, how this was all his fault. So he said it, even though he cried while he said it. “We can get it annulled. Make it like it never happened.”

The sun was hot and bright, but Tow-Kaye felt a little chilled, so he put his jacket back on. “But I’m having a baby.”

His father-in-law stood up. “You’ll be a good dad.” He looked away when he told Tow-Kaye that he’d always be welcome in their home. “Better not try staying away.” He hugged him so hard the chain he’d given him for his wedding day left an impression on his chest. “I love you, boy. Forever. And nothing’s ever going to change that.”

They started walking, and wiping away what they didn’t want their wives to see. Tow-Kaye picked up stones and skipped them up the road. He thought about food. He didn’t know why. They had walked farther than they wanted; stayed longer than they should, so he knew Cindella would be upset. “Her friends are waiting to take pictures.”

“Let ’em wait.” Then Mr. Bentley said he’d explain everything to everyone—even her, if he wanted.

Tow-Kaye wanted to chicken out. But he couldn’t. “Naw.” He put his cummerbund back on. “I’ll tell her.” Then he thought about something else. That’s what made him stop in the middle of the road. “She’s not gonna want me after this, huh?”

His father-in-law was honest. “Probably not.” But he told him things between her, him, and the baby would be good. “That’s just the way she is.”

They kept walking. Talking. And Tow-Kaye kept asking himself, How am I gonna live without her? How is she gonna make it without me? “You ain’t gotta marry her.” He heard his father say it again.

“Fix yourself up.” Mr. Bentley stopped him. He brushed a spiderweb from Tow-Kaye’s hair with his fingers. He leveled Tow-Kaye’s tie, then bent down to dust his shoes. When they turned the corner, the limousine was sitting there. Tow-Kaye smoothed out Mr. Bentley’s jacket; made his shoes shine again. Then he rubbed dried salty tears from his own cheeks. “Bentleys don’t break,” his father in-law said. “She’ll be alright.” Only deep down inside he wasn’t so sure.

“I don’t know . . . we already did it now . . . got married, I mean.”

He held both of Tow-Kaye’s shoulders. “Don’t stay just to stay. That’s worse than leaving, most times.”

Tow-Kaye looked up the road at Cindella, leaning against the car, belly pocked out. He stared at her girlfriends, who had found her. He knew just what they had been saying: Where’s Tow-Kaye? Girl, he’s acting up already. I knew you shouldn’t a married him.

His knees wobbled. “You think we can make it, Mr. Bentley? Think we’ll be okay?”

His father-in-law took his hand. “She’s my daughter, right?” he said, taking his time heading toward the limousine.

“Yes, sir.”

“And you’re my son, ain’t you?”

Tow-Kaye squeezed his hand tight. “Yeah.”

“I got your back, just like you got hers,” he said. “It’s gonna be hard, I won’t lie to you. You’ll want to run again someday, too. But all the support you need, all the love you want is here. You’re with family. And family’s always gonna find a way to make sure you’re okay.”

His boys pointed, laughing a little, watching the two men coming up the road, holding hands. The girls didn’t whisper when they told Cindella she needed to go set her man straight.

Cindella started running his way. She knew he was scared. But he was hers and she loved him. And she knew he had leaving on his mind; but staying was something they were both really good at, so she figured it could work, had to. So she ignored her friends, the hard gravel between her toes, and her mother saying she’d ruin her gown.

Cinderella. That’s what he thought when he saw her coming toward him, brown and beautiful.

“I love you,” he said, holding her tight. “You’re my wife.”

“I love you too,” she said, right before he kissed her, right before the sun turned the stones in her crown the color of the ring he gave her in fifth grade—golden yellow with flecks of red.