A/N: Short little updatelet. A longer chapter is coming-when things are less hectic.

For Susan and her insistent ahem prodding. :D

…0…

Ellie walked back into the bedroom, convinced she had just thrown up everything she had ever eaten in her entire life. Her phone was still lying on the floor where she had dropped it. Earlene's abrasive accent came back to her and she grabbed her head in pain.

A knock at her door made her jerk her head towards the sound, and another wave of nausea hit her. "El?" Craig's voice called.

She jerked the door open and grabbed his wrist to pull him inside. "Hello to you, too," he joked. "What's wrong? Late onset hangover?"

Fishing the ring she'd had on that morning out of her pocket, she held it up to him. "What does this look like to you?"

"Uh…a wedding band?" he tried.

Ellie groaned.

"Was that the wrong answer?" he asked sheepishly.

She sank down onto her bed, her head falling to her hands. Her life had done a complete tailspin and there was absolutely nothing she could do to fix it. The notion of having to go back home and tell everyone she knew; Jesse, Marco, her mother, that she had gotten drunk and married on her way to Vegas…how cliché could she get?

"Could," Ellie's throat clogged. She cleared it before going on. "Could you go get Jay and Spinner?"

"Why?" Craig asked. "Haven't you seen enough of them for the past few days?"

She glared at him. "I don't have time for your hissy fit, Craig. I need to talk to them."

"I'm not-" he began, but she cut him off. "Please."

An annoyed look on his face, Craig walked over and banged on the adjoining door. "Jay. Ellie wants to talk to you." Without even looking back at her, he walked out of the still open door to go get Spinner.

The knob twitched, but the door remained shut. "Yo, Red," Jay yelled through the door, "unlock the door."

Unlocking it, Ellie grabbed his wrists, holding his hands up in front of her to look for any trace of green like there had been on her finger that morning.

Nothing.

"Uh," Jay began, "are you okay?" He actually looked concerned, worry etching its way into his face. "You and Manning haven't been in here smoking something, have you?"

"No!" Her indignation faded as quickly as it flared up. She squared her shoulders and looked him in the eyes. "Jay…what do you remember about last night?"

With a shrug, Jay scratched his head under the band of his ever present cap and smirked at her. "Not a lot. Why? Think we did something…inappropriate?" He waggled his eyebrows suggestively and looked her up and down.

A sound of disgust tumbled out of her mouth. Inappropriate was one word to describe a drunken trip to the alter. But had she been on Jay's arm or Spinner's? "Just tell me if you had a ring when you woke up the morning."

"A ring?"

"Yes," she said. Ellie slowed her speech down, hoping that it would get across the point of how serious the situation was. "A ring. On your finger, or in your pocket maybe? Like this." She held up her own gold band in front of him.

Jay's lips pursed in thought. He took the ring out of her hand and examined it closely. Ironically enough, she wanted him to say he'd been wearing one too just so the whole thing could begin to be fixed. Then it hit her that his having one would mean they were married. Bad idea. Marriage and Jay Hogart did not mix.

He met her eyes again abruptly. "Sorry," he told her in a flippant tone and tossed it up in the air so she could catch it. "Not really my style Red."

"Ugh. You are such an ass."

The trademark Hogart smirk was what she got in response. "So you keep saying. Keep it up and I'll get a complex."

Craig and Spinner walked into the room just then. Immediately, Craig demanded to know what was going on. Ellie all but collapsed onto her bed, head falling into her hands, so he turned to Jay for an answer.

"Red's all worked up about some ring," he told her. "I don't get it. It looks like something you'd get in a box of Cracker Jacks. Nothing to get so worked up about."

"A ring?" Spinner asked dubiously.

A snarky comment was on the tip of Ellie's tongue. Spinner was an okay guy, but he tended to speak without thinking and at the moment, she was not in then mood for that.

Then, however, he dug around in his pocket and extracted a small gold band and held up to her. "You mean like this?"

Groaning, Ellie fell backwards on the bed, hands covering her face. 'This is not happening,' she kept repeating over and over in her head. There was no way, out of everything possible on a road trip, could this have actually come to fruition.

"El?" Craig prodded gently. "What's wrong?"

Her hands fell away and she kept her eyes focused on the ceiling. If she had to look at any of the guys right then she had a feeling she'd start crying. "Oh…nothing," she said. "Just that some woman named Earlene called from a Duckwater wedding chapel to tell me that my marriage license went through."

"Y-your…what?" Craig stuttered after thirty seconds of total silence. His eyes shot to Spinner, to the ring he still had in his hand, and he felt sick.

Jay had been leaning against the wall, observing everything unfolding him like usual. But Ellie's news made him walk forward. Spinner was standing stock still, in complete shock, and he shook his shoulder to pull him out of his daze.

"Marriage?" Spinner squeaked. When Ellie didn't respond he sunk down, all but collapsing on the floor in the middle of the hotel room.

They all went silent again, the full weight of the revelation beginning to sink in. Paige walked in the still open door, talking excitedly about the casino and the pool, not noticing that none of her friends were responding.

"Paige!" Craig yelled. "Will you just be quiet? Please."

She scowled at him, hands flying to her hips. Paige never appreciated being told what to do by anyone, and Craig was no different. "What is your problem?" She followed his eyes to Ellie on the bed, looking dangerously close to tears, to a white and stone faced Spinner on the floor, and then Jay who, for once, was neither smirking nor sneering at anyone. "Okay…" she drawled slowly, "what did I miss?"

"A lot, Princess." Jay looped an arm around her shoulder and she shoved it off. "A whole lot."

…0…