"The Wedding Secret" Superromance Part 4 (End) (Patreon)

"And that's why, Eric Jr., it's important to always be kind... to always go into the world ready to give out love. Because everything you give out into the world, you will one day get in return. Sometimes in more direct ways than you think!"

It was crazy. Here I was on the way with "#2"... and when I looked down into Eric Jr.'s eyes, that one question that had plagued me for the first few years again crossed my mind.

Why can't I just tell him the truth? Why couldn't I tell him about the secret, the secret that one day he would grow up, get married... and change from being a beautiful groom into a beautiful bride that very night.

But when? When would I tell him? When would it make sense to him. Not now, certainly. If I told him now, he'd go blathering about it at school and the other kids would think he was crazy. They wouldn't understand.

We all simply agreed to keep this secret.

Sometimes the names flashed through my head. Barack and Michelle. Vladimir and Lyudmila. Everyone, every political leader, every great athlete that had gotten married... everyone had once been 'on the other side of the fence'.

It had made me approach everything differently. Knowing that this--the Marriage Secret--that this kind of magic was real. It made me more interested in religion, briefly. I'd gone to church for a while. A lot of the big precepts of Christianity seemed... to make more sense. But then, just as quickly, it had stopped. It also made me think about those rough parts of the old testament more, that insistence that married women quietly obey their husbands. It was hard enough being a woman today, to think of how it must have been to be a man 2000 years ago and then suddenly having to be a woman. And yet everyone who had ever given birth, at least through marriage, had once been a man.

All these strange thoughts flit through my head as I looked down into little Aaron Jr's eyes.

"You're going to be so... handsome when you grow up." I smiled at him, patting his head. "One day... you'll make a beautiful lady very happy."

Everything I said, everything always felt like it had the weight of knowledge in a way that it didn't before.

"Eww, gross!" he said. "Girls have cooties!"

I cringed a little inside. "No they don't. Don't say that."

Every day, it was a mystery. How could the entire world keep the Marriage Secret?

And yet, everyday, listening to my son and his stereotypical boy attitudes toward girls for his age, and I understood it a little more.

There were some secrets that you just couldn't tell people. No matter how many people knew the truth.

"Boys will be boys..." I muttered. And then I reached out and took Eric's hand.

"Just a few more weeks," he said, patting my belly. "I hope this one's a girl."

"Let's keep it a surprise," I said, smiling up at him. "If there's one thing I know in life, it's that surprise can be beautiful, no matter how unexpected or how strange it may be..."