Unveiling J.A.C.I.E. (All Time Low Fanfiction | Jack Barakat)

Chapter 6

Our journey to the next show required a rental car, a collection of snacks, and a collaborative playlist. The six hour drive to the venue in Phoenix was going to be a long one, but if all went well, we were going to arrive before I had to go up on stage. We'd both miss soundcheck by a few hours, but at least we'd be there for the show.

Jack was driving while I was in the passenger seat. Although I would be willing to take over at any point, it was more comfortable this way. We were driving down the highway, the music quietly playing in the background to fill the silence. It wasn't an uncomfortable silence. We were both thinking about everything that had transpired in the past 24 hours.

"Hey, Jack?" I finally spoke up after about half an hour. "Do you want to be married?"

Neither of us had directly asked the question yet. At least not as a yes or no question. I'd asked how he felt. I told him I hadn't thought about it before. He bought me a new ring. But we never directly said anything about the here and now.

"I think we did what we did for a reason," he replied, his eyes fixated on the road.

"There's just so much we haven't thought about," I continued, no longer able to hold back what I was contemplating. "Like, what does this mean for us? Will things change? They feel like they should change. But do we want them to change? What if things don't change? What if they do?"

I didn't even give Jack the time to try to react to any of my questions and kept my rambling going. "Where do we go from here? Are we supposed to move in together? We practically spend all our time at each other's places. It won't be much different. But moving in? I don't even know if I'm ready for that. I feel like I should learn how to live by myself first. Is that weird? That's a bit weird, isn't it?

"Is this just it? Are we married now without even remembering it? It's a great story, but I'd love to have some memories of it. And what's next? We never even had a discussion about having kids. Do we want to have kids? How many? When? Because I'm terrified of being pregnant and I don't know if I'll ever get over that fear. What if we don't want kids? What if one of us does and the other doesn't? What if we don't know?

"And, oh my god, my name. Do I change my name? I don't know how any of that works. I've never even had a look into any of that. Am I no longer going to be 'Jacie'? Will I instead be 'Jacib'?"

"Jace," he finally stopped my word vomit and put his hand on my thigh, "take a deep breath. Don't start having an identity crisis."

"It's hard not to." I tried to do as he told me and took a deep breath in and released it slowly.

"As I see it, we have three options." He held up three fingers from the steering wheel. "We get an annulment, we ignore it, or we stay married. All of them come with their own questions and considerations."

I nodded, immediately hating the idea of ignoring it. That was not an option known for working out well. We started this relationship by always trying to be very open about everything. We always discussed how we felt and if we were on the same page. Ignoring such a big thing would only cause it to blow up later.

But marriage or annulment sounded like much bigger things. I knew getting an annulment would affect everything, no matter how much we'd try not to let it do so. For that to work, we'd need to 100% be in it together. But the same went for marriage. If either of us felt slightly different about something than the other, it would all break apart.

"We don't need to decide now," Jack added. "We can take our time to figure it all out."

"But we can't take too much time," I countered, feeling his thumb softly stroke my leg. "Because then we'll ignore it, and I don't want to do that. We need to consciously think about it."