Okay, so the next day I woke up in bed with the gloriously soft sensation of my alien wife Tess pressing close next to me. A number of interesting thoughts struck me in quick succession. Let's see how well I can list them out.

1) Man, that was the hottest sex I've ever fantasized about.

1b) Especially the third time.

2) I certainly never expected to get married when I came to Vegas.

2b) Can't say that I'm sorry it happened though.

2c) Though Tess and I have a lot of stuff to work out about our future, I guess

2d) Hope that we don't get into a fight about that future stuff

2e) Maybe if we fight, there'll be some good makeup sex - see (1)

3) Gee, my head kinda hurts.

3b) Oh, great, hangover. How much booze did I drink after we walked down the aisle, anyway? How long ago was it I had the Texas Tea? I can't remember.

3c) What was that hangover remedy that Malamud used to swear by? Equal parts gatorade, coke, and... beer? Can that be right?

4) Gut check time. You just woke up in Las Vegas, with a hangover, and remembered you got married last night. To an alien girl. A gorgeously hot, alien girl with a temper to match, far from low-maintenance, and a girl who you have tons of awkward history and baggage with. Shouldn't you be freaking out?

4b) No, it sounds weird, but I'm really not. I don't want to, and I don't think I'm going to.

5) Boy, Tess looks really cute and adorable when she's sleeping like this...

Right then, my mental ramblings were cut off when Tess' eyes popped open, and she shrieked out loud in dismay, which just nicely managed to puncture all of the sweeter and fluffier things I had been thinking about her and how happy I was about what had happened. I turned toward her, not getting too close until the shriek was done, and tried to make a soothing, comforting sound. Not sure how well I did with that, but as soon as Tess caught sight of my face, she clamped her mouth closed and the terrified,.bug-eyed look on her face got a bit less pronounced. Probably she realized how much her reaction was upsetting me and didn't really want to make anything worse develop. "Oh - okay, that's not exactly the reaction that any guy wants to get the morning after his wedding night, I have to admit that," I said to her.

"I... I'm sorry, Kyle," Tess muttered. "I... I just had a kinda disorienting moment of... of remembering what had happened, and not being sure how drunk I was when we... when all of the wedding stuff happened, and doubting if we were ready for any of this or if we're even legally sane for going through with it... and then I freaked out."

"Hmm..." I considered this. "When - umm, when you put it that way, it actually doesn't sound too unreasonable. I... I can wish that you'd picked a slightly less annoying way to express your freakedness," I sighed, and Tess closed her eyes, shaking her head back and forth slightly as if mentally telling herself off for screaming, "and I can't help but wonder how soundproof the walls are in this hotel..."

Just at that moment, as if to prove my point there was a banging on my door. "Hey, lady!" somebody called in a slightly deep, but nasal voice, which sounded like it'd have been good on a sixties sitcom. "Everything alright in there? You're not getting killed or raped or something, is yah?"

Tess snickered slightly at the phrasing of the question. "No, umm, no immediate threat to life or... or limb or anything like that," Tess replied, obviously not quite sure what the equivalent should be for a rape. 'Virtue' was way too old-fashioned for her... and in some sense, her virtue had indeed been compromised last night, though it hadn't been a rape because she'd wanted it at the time. (Or was a wedding vow over the bed an automatic safety seal on a girl's virtue, or something like that? I wasn't sure about the details of Victorian morality or whatever.) "Just... just woke up and remembered who I got married to last night."

"Oh, that," Deep and Nasal replied with a nasal laugh. "Well, I guess that happens a lot around here, but please, could you keep it down? There's a place to get divorces downstairs somewhere I think."

"Hmm," I remarked as faint footsteps indicated that Mister nasal was heading away from our door - probably back to his own room. "I guess that the laws of supply and demand would require those in Vegas too."

"Actually, I think that Vegas divorces are an attraction even for people who didn't get married here too," Tess pointed out. "For similar reason to weddings... no waiting period and little paperwork. If you and your ball-n-chain want to cut loose without having to worry about waiting eight weeks for the state to grant permission, then you can just head to Vegas."

"Hmm... yeah, I've heard something about that," I commented. "Don't think it's quite as easy as all that, but who knows." Big sigh. "Tess... do you want to get a divorce?"

"Umm... oh, god, I don't know," she said. "Should... should I take it from the way you've been reacting that you don't?"

"Err, no," I replied. "I... I love being married to you, Tess - well, it hasn't been that long and probably hasn't given me the best indication of how things will go, but - but I want to be married to you, and... and to find out what it'll be like. I love the idea, and I... I have no second thoughts or hesitation about continuing with this." Beat. "Well, maybe I have a little bit of hesitation, but I'm not letting it overwhelm everything else that I think and feel."

"I... I really don't know what to do," Tess complained. "If... if I wanted you to give up USC to be with me, because we were married... what - what would you say?"

"Oh, Buddha on a bicycle," I swore before I could stop myself. "It... it's a huge scholarship to give up, sweetie. And... and Dad's signed off on the play or pay clause, and I've had to give up all of the other potential scholarships because I said that I was committed to USC, and..." I trailed off. Tess' blue eyes were holding my gaze in an unbreakable way, like there was an alien stun field beaming out of them. (That reminded me of the first big conversation that we'd had after she moved into the house, where she'd joked about hitting me with her 'death ray eyes.') "But... but if you asked, and it was what it took to get this marriage working, then yes, I'd tell Dad that I was pulling out, and then I'd go through with it. He'd... he'd probably throw me out of the house for it, and I'd need to find some way of paying him back eventually, but.."

"Okay then," Tess replied, holding up a hand to keep me from going on any longer. "I... I'm not asking that of you just yet. Just... just wanted to hear what you thought... as a way of measuring just how serious you are about this stuff, I guess."

"Oh." For a second I was a little upset at the hypothetical question - I've never been wild about girls who play mental games. But then, well, I tried to look at things from her point of view for a second, and it kinduv made sense that she'd need to know. "Very serious," I added inanely, though what I was saying now probably couldn't possibly add anything to what I'd demonstrated. "So - umm, what do we do now?"

Tess considered, and then forced a half-smile onto her face. "Well... we go and meet the gang for breakfast - I think something was said about breakfast buffet?"

"Hmm." I considered that. "Well, we're not supposed to meet up with them until nine thirty... and that's nearly two hours away," I pointed out. "Probably would be a good idea to shower and change first. And... and maybe check out? I... I know that Evans would love for us to go back and join them at the House of mediocrity."

"Ohhh..." Tess exclaimed. "No, come on. For... for better or worse, we're married, and this is our honeymoon suite! We... we won't be able to share a room back there at the other place, not unless one of us switches rooms with one of Alex and Isabel, and... and I wouldn't want to ask them to do that if they don't want to." She sighed. "We'll be able to come back and check out before noon, after breakfast... if things work out somehow, but we're not doing it first." She looked around. "I suppose that we could gather up our stuff a little and pack, just in case."

"Hmm..." I smiled. Tess might be running hot and cold about this marriage thing, but that was better than getting an entirely cold shoulder. It also seemed quite in character with her... threaten to take away one of the perks of her bridal state, and she fought harder for it - and to a certain limited extent, for our marriage itself. This could be useful. Now, exactly when should I mention the possibility of wedding presents for best persuasive effect?

"So, let's see," Tess said, sitting up and wrapping the sheet around her, in a prim way that seemed exactly out of a PG-13 movie. "Showering. Are you going to make a pitch in favor of using the facilities together again, or will you let me go first?"

"Ohh," I replied. Let's see... hot sexy shower would definitely be nice, but... but something about the way Tess had said that told me that I'd need to expend an awful lot of persuasive talent to get her to go along with it enough to be worthwhile... and maybe it'd be better to save what mojo I had for a later occasion. Oh, well. "Umm... I won't argue for the showering together unless you really want to." Possible side benefit - if Tess did want to shower together and was expecting to have me pleading and working hard for it, now I'd turned things around and told her that she had to ask for it. "But I don't think you should automatically get first dibs either."

"Hmm." Tess considered that. "That's fair. Flip a coin for it?"

Aww. Either she was playing hard to get too, or she just didn't really care about the shower lovin'. I looked around to see where my pants and my wallet had ended up, and landed on the bedside table next to me, which had a nickel sitting on it. Hmm... I didn't remember either of us putting a coin there, especially not such a small denomination. Oh well. I reached out and picked it up. "Call it in the air, and no fair using your powers," I warned, balancing the tails side on my curved right index finger for just a second and then flipping it into the air above the bed with a smooth motion of the thumb. It glittered slightly as it rose and started to fall.

"Ummm - tails never fails," Tess blurted out, and I couldn't help but smile at the old catchphrase, which had made the rounds in my fifth-grade class. Where had Tess been when she first heard that one? The coin landed flat on the mattress between us - heads up. "Dammit!"

"Don't worry,darling," I said, and leaned over to give her a kiss on the cheek, which she tolerated with fairly good grace. "I'll be sure to leave you plenty of hot water."

"Umm... if you could use up all of the hot water in a hotel this fancy," Tess pointed out, "I would be seriously, seriously worried. Just don't take too long!" She had a point about not being able to use up the water, I guessed. How fancy a water system would a place like this need to have, I wondered? You'd need to accommodate - um, several thousand people, in couples, families, or by themselves - and most of them would want a morning shower or hot bath at around the same time in the morning, I supposed. For anybody to be unable to get one would result in loud complaining, bad word-of-mouth, possibly losing the customer and numerous friends and family to a different place in terms of all future business. They'd have worked out the system so it had a bunch of extra capacity, I guessed.

I made a point of going into the shower and getting out again in less than ten minutes, though I could easily have stayed in for three times as long and enjoyed myself immensely. No time like the very start to impress on Tess that I was capable of being a considerate... husband. (The term still seemed a bit weird to apply to myself.) I hurried out of the bathroom as soon as I was mostly dried off, and Tess hurried right on in after me. I got dressed in something that looked pretty nice and formal - a black sport coat and pants, a pastel-green shirt... (Tess mentioned while shopping for my matrimonial stuff yesterday that she likes the way green accents my eyes.) Did a bit of tidying and packing, making sure that we could get checked out in a hurry just in case, and then, for lack of anything more interesting to do, turned on the room TV and started watching cartoons. Caught about half of a really good Pinky and the Brain episode, and then some Futurama, which I've never thought of as a morning cartoon show, but it was good anyway. Tess was in the bathroom for nearly half an hour herself, with little bits of steam and odd aromas floating out every so often. When she finally emerged, she was wearing a whisp of pink nightie that I hadn't noticed her take into the bathroom, (though she could probably have balled it up and carried it in her hand without my spotting that,) and started looking for more clothes of her own, which kinda dragged my attention away from the fearless crew of the Planet Express. (Yeah, even Leela and Amy Wong. Of course, the fact that Tess isn't a cartoon more or less worked in her favor there.)

Soon Tess was dressed up and looking gorgeous - wearing a dark purple-blue dress that went down nearly to her knees and covered up a lot of skin... but when you looked a little closer you noticed that the fabric was tightly defining everything that it pretended to conceal. (Or at least that's what I noticed.) Her hair was so fluffed, waved, and pumped that it was nearly too much of a good thing, and - well, I'll just say that she looked some kind of awesome. "Okay, we've still got a while before breakfast," I said, "and we're a little bit too dressed up to spend it here in the room. So what?"

Tess considered that for a moment. "We go down to the lobby, get some coffee or other beverages - and take a little walk? Away from the strip a bit, get out of whatever noise and confusion Vegas still has to offer at this time of the morning?" She shrugged, as if she felt awkward about that suggestion. "No - no matter how much time we've spent together over the last year and a half... or the last two days, I - I still feel like I don't know you well enough to be married to you. That's probably silly of me, and even if it were true, it's not like we can really share enough walking around between now and nine thirty to make that much of a difference... but I dunno, maybe it'll help. Are you up for..."

"Coffee good," I told her. "Walking good. Talking with you - is really good." Tess laughed, and she grabbed a purse, and I checked to make sure that I had my wallet in the right pair of pants, (as in the pair of pants that I was currently wearing,) and that it had the room keycard carefully hidden in the credit card pockets, behind my student ID card. Stepped out of the room, rode down on the elevator with three loud and rowdy little boys and their somewhat embarrassed older sister, who was maybe twelve years old with mid-brown hair. She looked at us after the pains-in-her-butt had gotten off, and looked like she was about to ask a question, but didn't. Oh well.

I got a grande cappuccino at the Starbucks express in the lobby, and Tess surprised me slightly by taking a Darjeeling tea with milk and two sugar cubes. (I know that she drinks tea every so often, but since she was the one who mentioned coffee, I thought that she'd take something in the coffee family.) There was already a fairly large crowd out on the strip, whether they were already casino crawling or maybe breakfast buffet crawling, or whatever; I wasn't sure. Tess led the way to a cross street and sighed once we were half a block down it, as if she could finally hear herself think. Maybe she could - though I wouldn't have thought her alien senses had gotten to the point where crowds were really such of a problem for her. "Okay, umm... now I have absolutely no idea what to start talking about," she admitted with a cute pout, and drank a bit of her tea.

"Well, as it just happens, I have a possible ice breaker," I told her. "'Tails never fails.' When was the first time you ever used that - and did you have better luck with it than you did this morning?"

"Umm... oh boy, I'm not sure if I can really remember," Tess admitted uncertainly.

"I'll take an approximation, then," I said. "The first one that you can recall pretty well, if there's one."

She smiled, looking around at everything that was around us. We were coming up on a cross street now, and Tess led the way across, instead of turning at the corner, still somewhat sunk in thought. "Okay, umm... probably when I was in Brownie scouts, when I was - ohh, eight or nine. You know."

Of course, there was always the usual vagueness about ages when it came to Tess and the rest of the 'pod squad' - but I did know what she meant. She was the right apparent age to fit in with other eight and nine year olds. "Hmm... okay, so was this when you were still in Philadelphia, or after you'd moved, to - umm, no, don't tell me. To - Virginia?"

"West Virginia," Tess corrected, but with a bit of a smile on her face that I'd been able to work it out that far. "Little place called Spencer in West Virginia. I... I'm not sure if Ed had any particular reason for bringing us there. Maybe he'd just gotten into some kind of trouble off in Philly, and figured that going somewhere that nobody would expect to look for us would help."

"Hmm..." I considered that. "What what was he doing for work then? Was he with the Army already, or..."

"I - I think he started with them when we were in Spencer - so that's another reason, maybe," she admitted. "Trying to build up that cover identity, figuring that it could be useful as long as he found out a way to transfer himself to somewhere when it was really important - like when we came back to Roswell in the first place." She sighed.

"Anyway, Spencer was a pretty dull place, even counting the Army base just outside town. The Girl Scouting stuff was really important, so it was nearly required that I join the Brownies, but it was pretty fun. Flipping coins was a major pastime among the Brownie scouts." She sighed. "Kendra... no, Kenda Smithers, she challenged me to one flip, with our diaries on the line. I called tails never fails, and I didn't try to use my powers on the flip, but tails carried me through." She sighed. "That diary... actually helped me out a bit over the next few years, getting a glimpse into the private life of an ordinary human girl."

"Wow," I breathed, not quite sure what to make of all that. "Your own diary... you didn't put anything about Ed or the alien stuff in it, did you?"

"No, of course, I wouldn't have been that stupid," Tess agreed. "But... but it was still - umm, there were some things I was very nervous about other girls seeing, because I thought that they'd be able to see I didn't have the same notion of what a diary was for as they did. Actually, I think mine was closer to Kenda's than I would ever have expected." She sighed. "Even back then... the alienation I felt from the world wasn't as strange as I told myself it was."

"Every nine-year old kid feels alienated in some way, I guess," I decided.

"Oh, and what were your issues when you were nine?" Tess asked, and then thought about that a second. "Oh, right, I guess most of them probably centered on having lost your mom, right?"

"Yeah, I guess so," I admitted. "She'd... she'd been the center of my world, and then I had to go and try to put everything back together without her, and for a long time I was doing about as well as all the king's horses were on Humpty Dumpty." Tess snickered... she always found that part of the nursery rhyme really weird, well, I guess a lot of us found it weird that the horses were assigned to help put an egg back together, but Tess said she used to puzzle over that as if she thought it made sense to everybody else but her. "I... I guess that's part of why I'm reacting this way to... to the situation we've found ourselves in," Tess looked up at me in surprise. "I... I know that we don't have kids yet, but - but I know what it's like for a marriage to end in divorce, and I don't want that to happen to either of us. That... that might be a silly reason to stick with a marriage that started in a Vegas wedding chapel named 'Impulsive Hearts', but... but come on, Tess! Yes, we were impulsive, but you didn't seem drunk or that far out of your sound mind yesterday, and this was your idea. You... you practically dared me into it!"

"Are, are you trying to say that I have to..."

"You don't have to anything," I quickly put in. "Just... I thought that you loved me, and you wanted to go through with this. And... and the sex was great, and we had good flashes, right?" Tess nodded slightly. "So - so what happened from then until when you woke up that made everything so much less certain?"

"It... it was never stable in the first place," Tess answered, and I could see tears forming in her eyes. "We... we were just excited enough yesterday that we weren't looking at the real world, neither of us. Just staring at our future through rose colored glasses." I sighed a bit and kept on walking. "But... but I do love you, Kyle. That's the only - oh, I don't know what I'm saying." She let out a quiet sob, and without thinking about it I pulled her into a tight hug. She sighed slightly and nestled into my arms as if that made it all better. If only things were quite that easy.

"It's... it's okay, my darling my dear," I whispered. "Somehow... someway we'll sort it all out."

#

We kept walking around for quite a while - I kept my arm around Tess' shoulders even after she'd calmed down and showed no signs of further crying, and she put one of her own hands over on the far side of my waist, and that almost made it feel as if we were a regular couple. Chatted more about stuff from our childhood... how I pushed myself into athletics because it was the only field in which Dad and I seemed to really connect well, where I felt I could excel. Tess' struggles to find an identity for herself when Ed would only ever give her occasional hints about who she really was and where she had come from, and how he'd trained her to be self-sufficient and self-reliant long before most human kids were used to being alone without babysitters.

We strolled into the lobby of the second-rate hotel pretty much right at nine twenty-nine and thirty seconds, and took about twenty-five seconds to find the buffet. Isabel and Alex, Michael and Maria were all sitting at a table, with four other seats there. "So, what about Max and Liz?" I asked. "They up in their room canoodling still?"

"Nah," Michael drawled slightly. "They're standing in line already." Tess sighed slightly and picked a chair next to Isabel, so I went over to the next seat around. "You two still man and wife?"

Tess shot a frustrated look at Michael. She's never much liked being made fun of. "Definitely." And, as if it needed to be proved, she planted a big kiss onto my face. (Even if she was just doing it to prove a point, I couldn't bring myself to mind.) "Any other questions?"

"Well - umm, if you're really serious about that, I think I'd like to hear the story," Isabel said.

"Well... okay." Being the center of attention and telling stories... now those would have to go into the 'like' column for Tess Harding... or should it be - no, I really shouldn't start calling her Tess Valenti, even in my head, before she says that she wants people to use that name. Definitely not. Could lead to all kinds of badness. "Umm, well, we were wandering around the lobby, and caught sight of the wedding chapel, and just blurted out... oh, I guess I need to tell you something about the way I got the three consequences in the first place." She looked at me, trying to weigh how much detail to go into, about the alcohol and the sex-play in our room and all of that kind of stuff.

"It... well, it was kinduv an exchange of favors," I suggested. "I... I wanted Tess to do something big to help me out, and... and she asked for three unspecified consequences in exchange." Looked over at her. "Umm, don't think we really need to include more about that as part of the story."

Isabel's eyes were a little wider open than usual, but Tess nodded and continued. "Well, I said that his third consequence was to marry me, and then took it back. Not... not quite sure what went through my mind when I did, but..."

"Hey." Someone had tapped me on the shoulder, and I looked up and realized it was Alex. "They'll be at this for a while. Wanna hit the line?"

"Mmmm." I thought about it. Letting Tess tell the story by herself - well, there would certainly be parts of it that I'd want to correct her on, but maybe it was smarter to get myself out of the area for a while and thus block out the temptation, since she probably won't like getting a conflicting source of testimony to interfere. Besides, what did it really matter if Isabel and Maria heard the 'she said' part? There was probably no way to keep that from happening sooner or later, if the girls wanted to discuss it. "Alright, cool."

So we got up and waited for the big hot-foods smorgashboard, (or whatever you call it,) and Michael got up and waited behind Alex. "I... I certainly would never have thought of you as being the first one of us to up and get hitched, Valenti, man," Michael remarked. "Starting to panic yet?"

"Umm..." I turned about, looked at Tess, still talking animatedly to Isabel and Maria, and to Max and Liz who had just shown up with their plates. Smiled peacefully. "No, frankly I think it was one of the smartest things I've ever done in my life, and I just hope... hope that Tess will stick it out with me instead of dumping me on my ass and serving divorce papers."

"Really?" Alex asked. "But... but she seems so confident - and it was her idea." We all stepped a spot forward in line.

"Even so." Sighed, and realized that I didn't feel any nervousness about confiding into the guys - even Michael Guerin - about this. "The confidence is a sham, I think - she doesn't want you guys to tease her about getting foolishly married in Vegas, so she pretends that everything is under control, that she's fine with this and is happy with me. But the reality... is not there yet, as much as I might wish it so."

"Hmmm..." Alex considered that. "Well, if there's anything that we can do to help with the deep issues, then just let me know, 'kay?"

"Umm, alright." I sighed and turned to the buffet. Great stuff. I got a few blueberry pancakes and maple bacon before I suddenly realized that I could score major brownie points by bringing Tess back a plate full of all of the stuff that she'd like best. But... but what to do with all of the stuff I'd already taken? It wouldn't fit with Tess', and I couldn't dump it or put it back without getting told off... there were 'take all you like but eat all you take' signs. Hmm. "Okay, little thing, but there's something you can do for the cause, Whitman."

"What, already?"

"Yeah," I laughed. "Once I'm done, take my plate back, and don't let m'darling bride get up and wait in line herself. I'm going to go through again and collect a pile of treats for her."

Alex grinned. "Now that's using yer noggin, jocko." I looked up in surprise, but obviously he didn't mean any particular insult by that line, so I let it go. Took a few sausage patties, sliced and toasted a big thick piece of homestyle bread for myself, and added a few little sticks of mozarella cheese. Yeah, that should do for the first helping. The pot of oatmeal porridge smelled very appetizing, but it wouldn't fit with all the stuff I had already, and there'd certainly still be some when I went back for my seconds. I'd bet on that. So I passed off that plate to Alex, and turned back to the table, suddenly worried that Tess would have already joined the line. No, she hadn't, although Maria was just stepping up, and I ended up behind her.

"Wait a second, Kyle, what are you do... oh." She smiled. "Got a plate for the wifey first, and now going through for yourself?"

"Umm... the other way around, actually," I said, feeling foolish about it. "Only because I already had some me stuff on a plate before I thought about getting anything for her."

Maria considered that. "Well... the fact that you thought of doing it at all counts for something, I guess." A little bit punctured, I didn't say any more, and Tess turned around and waited silently herself.

"Hmm..." Tess said as I sat down, calmly evaluating the fruits of my labors that I set down in front of her. "Two really big belgian waffles... little bit of ham, and two eggs, over easy." She bent over and kissed the side of my face. "Great, darling, except that there's no..." I slipped a bottle of Tabasco out of my pocket and put it next to her glass of grapefruit juice. "Oh, my, you've thought of everything."

"Definitely a keeper, Tess," Isabel remarked, without any trace of irony. "Ooh, and here comes mine." Sure enough, Alex was walking towards the table with a second plate of his own for Isabel. Of course, Whitman would follow up on my idea - it was right up his alley, after all.

I turned back to my own plate - and immediately noticed something wrong with it. "Hey! Something's missing here. More than one thing, already!" The bacon was gone without a trace, and one of the pancakes had also vanished. Liz giggled slightly, and that was enough to confirm my suspicions. "Tess, dear darling? Did you swipe some of my breakfast while I was off getting yours?"

"Umm... yes," she admitted. "I... I'm sorry, but - well, I was hungry waiting here, and - and there's plenty of food for both of us." She sighed, finished anointing her plateful with the Tabasco sauce and put a forkful to her lips. "You - um, you can help yourself to anything on my plate - erm, if it's not too hot for you, or - or I'll go in a minute and get something for you!"

I thought about that. It was weird how everything that happened was quickly getting evaluated first in terms of what its effect might be on our shaky brand-new marriage. Every decision that I made was filtered through that one overriding imperative of winning Tess over so that she would want to stay my wife. Generally, if we'd gotten married on better terms, I might have argued that it was a man's place to bring back the bacon, (in more than one sense of the word,) and insist that she sit there and let me wait on her. But... but as odd as it sounded, letting her do this thing for me, if she really wanted to - might prove more helpful. "Well, I'm not insisting on it," I said with a fond smile. "You... you don't have anything to make up to me, nobody's keeping score. But if you'd like to get me something, who am I to argue with it?"

"Okay," Tess replied. "But we've both got stuff to eat first. Do you want anything sweet to put on those pancakes?" There were a bunch of condiments and syrups at the table, presumably for just this sort of thing - in case people didn't want to apply them up at the buffet or didn't think of it.

"Umm, yeah, anything with a decent quantity of actual maple syrup?" I asked. Tess started to look at different bottles.

"Oh, we've been through this already," Max realized, looking up from whatever private conversation he'd been having with his Liz-ikins. "No pure maple syrup, but this stuff is half maple and half corn..." he picked up a fancy glass jar with a narrow plastic top nozzle that didn't really seem to match, "and it's pretty good I think." I tried drizzling the thick brown syrup over my two remaining pancakes, cut off a piece of one of them, and smiled. The bread and cheese seemed a bit weird to eat without anything meaty, and I tried some of Tess' ham, decided that I didn't like it that much all tabasco-ed up... and then rediscovered the sausage patties, which had somehow gotten underneath my very last pancake.

"Okay, so, what about a wedding reception?" Maria asked. "Do... do we have to wait until we're back in Roswell for that, or..."

"Ohh..." Tess drawled, looking over at me. "Umm, I kinda figured that this was our wedding reception. It's all on us, of coruse." She took another bite of ice cream covered waffle. "Make sure to try the omelette bar."

It was hard to judge the reaction to that. Maria didn't seem particularly satisfied, but maybe she'd been looking forward to a fancier party. "Do... do the happy couple usually pay for the reception?" I asked Tess.

"Well... most often it's the parents of the bride I guess," Tess stage-whispered back. "But hey - orphan. No parents that are here on this planet, at least. Kind of rules that out. And it's not like we're low on funds."

That last part, probably, she should have actual-whispered instead of just stage-whispered. "Rolling in dough, Tess?" Max hissed back, suddenly looking very annoyed again. "Have you guys been cheating at the tables?"

"Haven't you?" Tess replied sassily. "Isn't that part of the fun of being an alien in Vegas?"

"Naw, neither of the Evanses have unwound enough to use their powers, as far as I can tell," Michael commented. "I've been doing a pretty good job of keeping under the radar myself, and not..."

"Can we please not talk about you-know-what right here?" Liz asked. "Somebody's going to forget and raise their voices - I can just tell."

Well, that put a damper on the whole conversation, something that Liz Parker, bless her great big thumpin' heart, is actually better at than I'd usually like to admit. Tess and I finished our plates, and she repeated her intent to go and get me my seconds. I gave her a kiss thank-you on the lips, mostly because it was a good excuse. Looked into her eyes as she smiled afterward - I was still finding it a little hard to tell, but I think she was feeling honestly pleased and not just putting on a show in front of the rest of the gang.

"Okay, well, we've still got several days left, and I have to say, I'm feeling a little bored with just the casino and lounge acts stuff," Michael admitted. "Is there something a bit more active that we can do while we're here?"

"Hold the phone - Michael Guerin tired of gambling?" Max teased him.

"Well, we could probably take a tour bus out to Hoover Dam," I mentioned, remembering the little girls I'd seen when I was streaking yesterday. "Not sure that'd be less boring that getting your teeth cleaned, though."

"There's got to be other alternatives," Liz insisted, smiling. "An Elvis museum or something."

"I think I'm really in the mood for an amusement park, if there's anything like that near here," Alex decided. There was a good deal of agreement to this remark.

"Oh, somebody has to have thought of that," Isabel decided. "It's an obvious answer to 'what to have the babysitter do with the kids while you're gambling away their house?'"

"Hmm... of course, that answer still leaves the kids without a house after they come back from the park," Maria pointed out, "but yeah. I think there's a punch of pamphlets and attractions guides out near the check-in desk." She smiled. "Assuming we can find a decent park - will the bride and groom be joining us?"

I looked at Tess, except she wasn't there next to me of course, and it took a moment to find her, nearly at the head of the queue for the omelet bar. Just then she looked at me and smiled, and I waved back. This sounded like a perfect way to recapture the romance and impulsiveness that we had both been feeling just yesterday. "Yeah, have to ask the Missus, but sounds good."

"How quickly even the most strong-willed and feckless of us become whipped once that wedding band is on," Michael teased, and Maria inevitably elbowed him in his side. Tess came back with an 'Arizona omelet' for me - diced potatoes, ham, and onions mixed in - really good, even if I'd never heard of one before. Also plenty of bacon, an impressive short stack of pancakes, and some little hash brown potato wedges. That definitely more than made up for what she stole from me. I told her a bit about the amusement park idea before she left to get her own stuff - and she was all over the idea. (Maybe she just wanted to keep me from trying to drag her back into our room for more honeymooning, not sure, but anyway I had fairly high hopes.) Most of the rest of the gang left to line up for their seconds at this point, except Alex, because Isabel had taken Tess' idea about turnabout being fair play. I munched a bit and turned to Alex, who had finished his first plateful by this point, and was looking a little glum about not getting to wait in line next to Isabel and the rest of his friends, truth be told.

"Umm, so... sorry about not telling you about things, man," I said awkwardly. "It'd have been nice to have you as best man, actually. I just... we'd gotten so used to sneaking around, as if going through all of this made things sexier and more romantic, and we thought that some of the gang might try to stop us, and... well, would you have insisted on telling everybody else if we let you know?"

"Hmm..." Alex thought about that calmly. "I... I'm not that sure. Probably you could have convinced me to keep things reasonably private if you'd tried hard enough." He shrugged. "Doesn't really matter, though. What's done is done... and I hope that you and Tess work out any remaining issues and have a great start to your lives together." Pause. "Also, can I borrow a potato wedge?" I laughed and held my plate out for Alex to catch one of the wedges with his fork. "Thankya."

Nobody seemed in any kind of a hurry to leave the buffet before eleven, which was about the earliest that they'd be throwing anybody out, I figured. I asked Alex, once Isabel had finally gotten back, (this two-times round the buffet deal did take a while,) if he'd be willing to consider swapping rooms with Tess, so that we could move back into this hotel with the rest of them and give up our suite further away, since it looked like we'd be spending more time with the rest of the gang from here on out. Tess glared at me a little, like she was angry that I'd put the two of them publicly on the spot, and Alex and Isabel were discussing it in very hushed voices for over a minute, but finally Isabel told us that they'd be able to work it out. Tess turned to me at that point and said that we needed to make sure we could check out before noon, then, and still nobody really knew if there was an amusement park that we could go to.

"Okay, alright, just... I have one more thing I want to get you," I said, and kissed Tess on the edge of the mouth before hurrying up to the fruits and pastries buffet. It took a while to settle on the best item for what I had in mind, but eventually I brought it back and set it in front of her. "They - umm, I wanted to get you some cake for our wedding, but they didn't exactly have cake, so I figured a muffin could stand in for our wedding cake." It was the biggest muffin that I'd ever seen... five, maybe six inches across. "It... it's stupid, isn't it? Worse than nothing - I shouldn't have even tried..."

"No, stupid," Tess replied. "Of course you should have. It was a great idea." She grinned at me, a smile so bright it almost hit me like a physical impact. "Okay, come on, we've got to do this right."

"Do what right?"

For answer, Tess picked up a table knife and concentrated at it. A bunch of little food crumbs from Tess' waffles and eggs that had been sticking to it suddenly fell away, and I realized that she'd cleaned it with her powers. "Now, put your hand over mine..." Suddenly, I realized that Tess was recreating that cliche 'wedding cake moment' - of course. I should have expected that. With the bride and the groom making the first cut in the cake together. It was kind of cool in a way, though also slightly silly. Maybe that fit us well. "Okay, who wants a piece?"

"You're supposed to give Kyle the first taste of it," Isabel supplied helpfully, "feeding it to him with your fingers." Tess turned to stare at her. "Trust me, I know from wedding traditions. And you have to save your slice of the cake - it'll bring you good luck as long as you have it. Keep it in a freezer or something."

"Okay, first things first," Tess said, slicing out a very thin slice of the muffin and tearing off a bit with her fingers. "Does he have to feed me by hand too?"

"Umm..." Isabel blinked in surprise. "Up to you I think."

"I'll be happy to," I put in, realizing that Tess thought the feeding by hand bit was a little silly and demeaning and wanted to give it back. Personally, I thought that being fed by hand was possibly the more embarrassing side - but I didn't really want to mess with tradition, so I let Tess offer me a bit of muffin, (it tasted really good, actually,) and then took most of what was left of that first tiny slice and brought it up to her lips with my fingers. Tess swallowed and considered what was left of the muffin.

"Okay, umm... one slice to keep - but where the heck am I going to put it before we get back home?" she complained softly.

"There are little ice cube trays on the mini-fridges in our rooms," Liz put in. "One of those will keep it well frozen I think."

"Yeah, I'll take it upstairs and put it in your room before I pack up all my stuff," Alex offered.

Tess made a 'hang on' gesture and thought for a moment. "Okay, one to keep. Who else wants some?" All three girls raised their hands, and Alex, so Tess split what was left of the muffin into five. As it was distributed, Tess continued. "Why do I have to switch rooms anyway? Why can't it be Kyle and Isabel?"

"Because you don't really want Isabel to have to pack up all her stuff," Alex said. "I'm a guy, so I don't have much to pack, and you never really got fully unpacked Tess. It's easier on us." Tess considered that, and sighed in acceptance.

"Well, I guess this is our cue to go over and check out of our other room, then," I suggested. "See you guys upstairs."

"Alright, I guess" Michael replied.

"No, come on, time isn't that tight," Liz argued. "It's your wedding reception - you can't split before the cake is even finished!"

"I've been to some wedding receptions like that," Maria put in.

"Yeah, but only when the bride and groom were being whisked off to a private wedding night or to their honeymoon flight," Isabel put in. "They've already had the wedding night, and... well, I guess they're already on their honeymoon too, but they'll be spending the day with us probably. I'd like the happy couple to stick around a bit longer." So of course Tess wanted to stay after that.

Let's see... I've kinduv gone on and one about this breakfast, so let's go over things quickly. Everyone finished their cake, I paid for everybody's buffet out of the craps money, and Tess and I got checked out of our fancy hotel room and she moved into the room that Alex and I had gotten from the start. Max and Liz had gone through the brochures available, and finally asked the front desk clerk about amusement parks. Apparently things were done a little bit different in Vegas - instead of having traditional style amusement parks out on the edge of town, the big hotel-casinos had preemptively built coasters and other theme-park type attractions themselves. The biggest and most impressive was the Adventure-dome, a five-acre indoor amusement park adjoining on Circus circus. Everybody agreed to go and check that out.

Of course, Tess and I both wanted to change clothes for an amusement park afternoon, since we'd dressed up all fancy for breakfast. I got into jeans and an orange-yellow t shirt, while Tess put on blue cotton shorts and a rainbow-dyed tank top which wasn't quite like anything I'd ever seen her in before, but it really suited her and the occasion. I pulled her into my arms for a moment before we left our room. "Do you... is there anything else that we need to talk about, after breakfast?" I asked quietly. "I... I know that you like playing the part of the bride in front of the rest of the gang, but have you come to a decision about whether you'll still want to be my wife after Vegas is behind us?"

"No... I - I dunno," Tess mumbled. "It... I think that I've told myself it's not something I can decide by breaking down the facts and analyzing them rationally. If... if I just throw myself into whatever's happening, soon enough my heart will tell me what the right thing to do is."

"Then... then I think I'm confident," I told her. "Your heart and I have always gotten along fine." She giggled at that.

Most of the rest of the crew had also changed after breakfast - except for Michael and Alex, who'd been pretty casually dressed to begin with. We all set out for Circus circus, which was on the other side of the strip from this hotel and up aways. (Well, not on the other side as in that it was away from the strip like we were, just that we had to get to the strip, and then cross to the other side of the street, you know?) Lot of people watching, quite a few casino crawlers watching us, probably wondering what the kids were doing in bright and summery casuals that wouldn't really fit into any of the casinos, though I don't think many of them would actually throw out anybody who had money to spend over a dress code thing.

So we got to Circus circus, went through the lobby, and waited in line with a bunch of people for admittance to the park. It was an interesting comparison to look at the people who were going for 'the Dome' and think about how they differed from the people that we'd seen in the casinos. A bunch of families with kids, of course - and at least one group of kids who did indeed seem to be with a paid babysitter. Also some teenage or twenty-ish couples, a few couples who seemed to be noticeably older - a bunch of twentysomething babes all going together, (I had to try very hard not to stare too much, with my bride right next to me,) and a few frat boy type guys. No really old people that I noticed... which might just be because they had a bunch of more age-appropriate alternative activities elsewhere in Vegas.

So, we got through - everybody got the one-day passes on hunches, and started exploring the dome contents. "Ooh," Tess exclaimed. "I wanna try the waterfall runner!"

"Okay," I said, putting my arm around her. "But don't get your hopes up - you might not be above the minimum height." A few seconds passed, and I felt a hard pinch at the side of my waist. "Oww, that hurt!"