The "chapel" was a storefront wedged between a keno parlor and a hot dog stand, illuminated by a flickering pink neon sign. The man behind the counter, with the face of someone who had seen too many "I do's" slurred between drunks, gave them the news with the monotony of a bus schedule.
"Three-day waiting period for the license. Earliest is Monday."
The disappointment was a physical blow. Marshall paled. Lily clenched her fists, her knuckles whitening under the fluorescent light.
"But... this is Atlantic City," Marshall protested, his voice sounding ridiculously young. "People get married here all the time."
"Yeah, with planning," the woman at the window retorted. "You don't want a wedding; you want a magic trick. And I'm a judge, not David Copperfield."
It was Barney who, with the optimism of a gambler, proposed the solution: the courthouse. A judge could waive the waiting period. They just needed a good reason.
Marshall and Lily's reason—"we're in love and terrified of a real wedding"—didn't make the bureaucrat's list of exceptions. The man behind the desk had a smile as fake as the plastic marble of his counter.
The group settled on a bench in the hallway, an island of dejection in a sea of paperwork. Ted tried to cheer them up. Robin flipped through a gossip magazine with disdain. Barney had disappeared, probably searching for a slot machine.
Alyx sat at the end of the bench, observing Marshall and Lily. She saw how their escape plan was crumbling, revealing the raw reality: they couldn't escape deadlines, rules, consequences, or, deep down, themselves.
"This was a stupid idea," Lily murmured, leaning her head against the cold wall. "We should have known."
"It wasn't stupid," Marshall said, taking her hand. "It was... brave. To hell with the rules, right?"
But his voice lacked conviction. Alyx could see the calculation in his eyes—the calls to their parents, the explanation of another failed wedding, the shame.
It was then that Alyx spoke, her voice low but clear in the hallway's echo.
"In trading," she said, and everyone turned toward her, "there's a concept called a 'stop loss.' A predetermined point where you accept the loss and exit. Not out of cowardice for that day, but to preserve your capital for another trade. To live to fight another day."
Marshall and Lily looked at her, confused.
"What I mean," Alyx continued, choosing her words with surgical precision, "is that maybe the goal wasn't to get married today. Maybe the goal was to test the idea. To see if, in trying, you still felt it was right, or if it was just panic talking."
Lily blinked slowly. "Are you saying we should give up?"
"I'm saying you should decide," Alyx corrected. "Are you here for love, or out of fear? Because if it's out of fear, this—" she gestured at the gray hallway, the bureaucrat's office, "—is just the first of many walls you're going to crash into."
The words hung in the air, harsh but not cruel. They were a mirror Alyx was holding up to them. And in it, Marshall and Lily didn't see Romeo and Juliet. They saw two scared people clinging to a desperate plan.
Ted intervened, his voice gentle. "Alyx is right, guys. Atlantic City isn't a solution; it's a distraction."
It was in that moment of clear, painful lucidity when Barney burst back into the hallway, his eyes shining like the neon outside.
"I've got the solution! A ship's captain. International waters. No waiting, no rules. Just the vast ocean and my connection to a guy who smells like fuel and rotten fish. What do you say?"
The proposal was so absurd, so Barney, that for a second, everyone was speechless. And then Marshall and Lily looked at each other. And in their eyes, Alyx didn't see a resurgence of romantic hope, but something more pragmatic—a final, desperate "why not?" If the system on land had failed them, maybe the sea would offer an escape.
"How much?" Marshall asked, his voice resigned.
The figure Barney tossed out—five thousand dollars—left them frozen. It was madness. It was impossible.
But Barney already had a plan. A plan that involved a game called "Shing Hasabu Shing," his mysterious Chinese contacts, and a confidence in his luck that bordered on psychosis.
"Trust me," Barney said, putting a hand on Marshall's shoulder. "This is what I do. This is what I was born for."
As Barney dragged a reluctant Marshall toward the gaming tables, promising to return with the dowry, the rest of the group was left in the hallway, sunk in a new kind of hopelessness.
Lily approached Alyx. "Do you think he can win?"
Alyx looked in the direction they had disappeared. "No," she said with a certainty that came from a place beyond logic. "But it doesn't matter."
"How can it not matter? We need the money!"
"No," Alyx repeated, turning to her. "What you need is to realize you can't build a future on a gamble, or an escape, or a stinky boat." She paused. "I'm sorry, Lily. But this has become a farce, and you know it."
Lily wanted to argue. She wanted to defend her dream of a spontaneous wedding. But the words wouldn't come. She only nodded slowly as another tear traced the path of the first.
"Then what do we do?" she asked, her voice a whisper.
"What we should have done from the beginning," said Alyx. "Talk. For real."
And so, on the plastic bench of an Atlantic City courthouse, with the buzz of fluorescent lights as the soundtrack, Alyx and Lily had the conversation. Not the one about the move, or the permission. The one about everything.
They talked about the summer, about Lily's letter to Alyx that was never sent. About Alyx's dull, constant pain at seeing them as a unit of which she was a satellite. About Lily's desperation upon realizing she had destroyed not one, but two vital relationships. About Marshall's guilt, his collapse. About the weight Alyx had carried in silence.
It wasn't a duel; it was an autopsy. Cold, clinical, and necessary, exposing every damaged organ to the raw light.
"I never wanted you to be an appendage," Lily whimpered, too drained to hold back. "But I didn't know how to be anything else. Marshall and I were so... loud. And you were our silence, our sanity. And we got used to taking you for granted."
Alyx nodded. The pain was old, familiar; it no longer cut. "I got used to it too," she admitted. "To being the silence. To being the one who held the phone when one of you hung up on the other. I thought that was my place. That sometimes love was being the safety net. Until the net broke, and I realized I was falling too."
It was the most honest confession Alyx had made to Lily in years. And in making it, something unlocked between them. It wasn't forgiveness—not yet. It was the mutual recognition of the wound. An "I too" that echoed in the hallway's emptiness.
When Marshall and Barney returned an hour later, they didn't bring five thousand dollars. They brought an absurd story about a bean-and-chip game, a small triumph, and the certainty that the ship's captain would have probably swindled them anyway.
But seeing Lily and Alyx sitting together, eyes reddened but faces more peaceful than they'd seen in months, Marshall knew something had changed. That the bet had ultimately been irrelevant.
"I'm sorry, Lil," Marshall said, dropping to his knees before her in a dramatic, clumsy gesture. "I couldn't get the boat. We can't run away."
Lily looked at him, and then at Alyx. A small, sad but genuine smile appeared on her lips.
"No," she said, taking Marshall's face in her hands. "We can't. And that's okay."
The wedding was over. Not with an "I do," but with an "enough." And for the first time, Alyx felt that "enough" included all three of them.
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