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earnestly. “We’ll help you. We’ll get you a lawyer. We’ll find you the best lawyer in town, but please. Get it annulled. ”
    “I’m not getting it annulled.” Ike glares at his parents. “Our marriage is a contract, and I’m not about to break it.”
    “It happens every day in business,” Mr. Hanson says.
    “This isn’t business,” Ike says. “It’s love.”
    “Oh, Ike.” His mother looks at him with pity. “I’ve never seen you so pussy-whipped.”
    Pussy-whipped . This is not a word I know.
    “MOTHER!” Ike pushes back from the table. “This is bullshit .”
    “Calm down,” his father says. “Sit back down.”
    “No, I won’t,” Ike says. “You’ve insulted my wife. I expect better from you.”
    “We expect better from you,” Mrs. Hanson says. “We expect better for you.”
    Ike raises his palms like he’s a traffic officer halting a quickly oncoming car. “Enough,” he says. “I expect your support, no matter what. I expect that my parents, at all times, no matter what , will support me.”
    “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Mr. Hanson says. “We do support you.”
    “But we don’t support this marriage,” Mrs. Hanson says. “And we certainly don’t support . . . her .”
    I’ve been the recipient of much disgust in my life, but I’ve never in all my life felt so . . . small. I feel like I might blow away, and there isn’t even a breeze.
    “You plan everything , Ike,” Mr. Hanson says. “You’re the opposite of impulsive, and so when you do something like this, it causes us to—”
    “I want your blessing,” Ike says flatly. “That’s what I want from you. I know what we’ve done is unconventional, but I love Tami, and I want you to trust that I know what I’m doing, and I want you to accept her into this family.”
    Mr. Hanson stares hard at Ike and prepares to say something, but before he can, Ike’s mother does. “This marriage isn’t blessed,” she says. “It’s the biggest mistake you’ve ever made. And, no, we will not be welcoming this . . . person . . . into our family.”
    An intensely serious Mr. Hanson watches his son, waiting for his response. I see the instant in which Ike decides that by his silence his father agrees with what his mother has said—that I’m not welcome. It comes directly before he holds out his hand to me and helps, almost pulls, me up, so that I’m standing by his side.
    “Her name’s Tami,” he says. “Remember it, because she’s not going anywhere.”

Chapter 4
    “W ell, that was fun,” Ike says grimly as we leave his parents’ house. We’re driving in a big, beat-up white pickup truck with the letters GMC on the front, which is Ike’s other mode of transportation besides the scooter.
    “That was awful , Ike.” He grips the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles are white. I put my hand on his thigh. “I’m so sorry. I—”
    “Don’t.”
    I take my hand back.
    “Not that.” He reaches for my hand and puts it back where it was. “Don’t apologize. I’m the one who should apologize to you. I guess I shouldn’t have told them with you there—but really, I had no idea they’d react this way. They’ve honest-to-God supported every single thing I’ve done before, even things that later proved to be stupid beyond reason.”
    This doesn’t make me feel any better. “What does pussy-whipped mean?”
    A smile breaks through. “Never you mind.”
    “What does annulled mean?”
    His smile fades, and he takes his right hand off the steering wheel and covers mine. “Never mind about that one, either.”
    “It means to cancel our marriage, doesn’t it?”
    “That’s not going to happen. But how did I not see this coming ?”
    Even if Ike doesn’t know the answer to that question, I do. We’d been in a little bubble of happiness all by ourselves for twenty-four hours—it had been all good, and when things are all good, you think they’ll stay that way. But that kind of happiness never lasts—and