Madison

“I have to have something,” he says. “If we have to be a secret, I have to have something that's just for the two of us.”

“It's a risk,” I say, trying to sound mature.

“You want it too.” He kisses my finger where the ring should be. Instead, it's on a long white gold chain underneath my blouse. White gold. Pink beryl the color of sunrise. A rare stone most people wouldn't recognize. The ignorant eye would think silver and pink rhinestone. Only the knowing eye, caught by beauty, would pause long enough to see it for what it was.

Nobody can see it at all, of course. Nobody but me and Noah. Well, it isn't the first engagement ring worn in secret under a woman's top.

Nailgun, dressed up as a chauffeur, drives up in a pink convertible Cadillac from 1962 complete with tail fins. There are tourists all over Las Vegas Boulevard raising their cell phones. #PinkCaddy is probably the hashtag on Instagram, but I don't have time to check it out.

“Way to keep things on the downlow,” I say to Noah as he grasps my elbow to ease me into the car.

“Nobody will recognize us in this disguise. Besides, I'm in West Hollywood at a club opening. Lydia found a lookalike. He'll pass at a distance, if the paps are only getting a glimpse in the dark.”

I've come to learn Noah Hammond is the master of disguise, and I'm starting to learn the little techniques that will stand me in good stead in my future life as the secret wife of a rock star.

Today, we're costumed as a couple of tourists from Iowa. Actually, we're disguised as whatever a rock star brought up in London thinks of as a couple of tourists from Iowa. I'm pretty sure Americans in even the smallest towns don't still wear gingham dresses. My wig is blonde and features Judy Garland pigtails.

His beautiful hair is somehow tucked under a wig with a lot less hair— a near-buzz cut in a shade of wheatfield blond that does, I admit, look fairly natural, at least peeping out from under a green John Deere ball cap. His wraparound sunglasses conceal his eyes, and the shape of his nose and cheeks has been adjusted somehow with small removable inserts.

White gold that the casual glance assumes is silver. A rock star the casual glance assumes is a tourist. We're hidden right out here in the open.

“Don't they bother you?” I mean the inserts.

“I'm used to them. They just feel like... pressure. I'm aware they're there, but it doesn't bother me.”

“Does Barbie Strange do all that stuff? Cheek inserts? Wigs?”

“Sure. She's an actress. She knows this stuff better than I do.”

We're rolling. People continue to snap our pictures but not because he's Noah Hammond out for a ride in a pink Cadillac with a mysterious pregnant girl. We're just another sight to see, like the Bellagio dancing fountains. As we move north in the direction of the chapel, the strip changes from the flying saucer of the Fashion Show Mall to the grime of smaller businesses fighting for the leftover scraps of the tourism industry.

“Are you ready for this?” He looks at me, the real me, underneath the Dorothy wig and the gingham.

“You asked me not to doubt you. Don't you doubt me.”

“OK.” He takes a deep breath. “OK.”

“It is OK. Everything's going to be just fine.”

He isn't looking at the strip but at me. He's turned to take both my hands in both his hands. The seats are pink leather and smell new, which suggests they're not the original leather.

“I love you so much,” he says. “Will you marry me?” It isn't the first time he's asking me. It's the fourth or fifth time. I'm starting to catch on that he likes asking.

I put a soft kiss on each corner of his handsome mouth. “Yes.” A kiss on the top of his nose. “I love you too.” This close, I can see his eyes even through the wraparound shades. They're glittery and not from too much sunlight glinting off the skyscrapers on Las Vegas Boulevard.

Kisses in the back of the Cadillac. Soon, we're far from that part of the Strip where people are constantly snapping Instagrams, and I wonder if I should pull off our sunglasses, which tap together as we embrace. Noah's cap slides back just a little. The rock star is peeking out from behind the mask of the farm boy.

“Love you, love you, love you.”

“Love you, love you, love you too.”

The champagne in the cooler is sparkling white grape juice. My guess is the wedding chapel has catered many expectant couples before. Noah pours a flute, hands it to me, pours his own flute. If I'm giving up drinking, he is too.

“I'm not going to be one of those drunken rockstar fathers. Bad enough I have to be a secret father.”

“The secret won't be forever.”

“Just until this fucking movie gets made.”

He had to though. I understand that now. It's too much money, and it isn't just him. For himself, Noah really doesn't give much of a fuck about money. Like many rock stars, he has little understanding of finance. Thank God for Kendall. From him, I've learned to appreciate the value of a level-headed drummer and not just for his sense of rhythm. God only knows what kind of contracts Noah would've signed without his advice. The ones he's signed with his advice are crazy enough.

Profitable but still crazy.

“Honestly,” Noah says. “I'm sorry I ever agreed to do the fucking movie. I know I have to, I know the money's important, but...” The way he strokes my belly through the silly gingham dress sends shivers to the marrow of my bones.

Again, I strive to sound mature. Some people think eighteen's too young to be a mother, but I can do this. Be the sensible one. “You have a lot of people relying on you. If it was just the two of us, we could take off for the end of the world right now, but you're an entire business that creates jobs for dozens of people.”

“Thanks for understanding.” He touches my belly again, giving me another of those delicious little shivers. “And soon there's going to be one more relying on my income. The most important one of all...”

That little special something Noah wants just for the two of us?

It's nothing big. No cathedral, no infinity pool, no underground bunker, no tabloid frenzy. It's a secret, but it's our secret we'll laugh about one day with our child.

And it's magical.

Yeah. Sounds crazy, but it's true. There's magic in a drive-through wedding, if you're getting the secret quickie wedding with the right person. We never get out of the pink Cadillac. Never even really stop kissing.

Only in Vegas, I think.

The words wash over us from a speaker somewhere. “I now pronounce you husband and wife. Let no one tear apart what God has joined together.”