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.He showed no signs of relenting no matter how much Selena argued, begged, or cried.Then, on April 2, 1992, I woke up in a Corpus Christi hotel room to the sound of someone pounding on the door.I had seen Selena the night before and spent the night in Corpus because we were out until late.My hotel, the Gulf Beach II on Surfside Boulevard, was on the other side of the harbor bridge from the city, and I usually stayed here whenever I visited Selena.We felt safer and more secluded if we were on the other side of the bridge from her family.In fact, nobody we hung out with in Corpus ever crossed the bridge much, so I didn’t have to worry about somebody seeing my car and word getting back to Abraham that I was in town.I had the feeling that he probably drove around to every hotel in Corpus Christi, Texas, looking for Selena and me whenever she wasn’t home at sunset.For that reason, she never spent the night with me.Selena had been valiantly keeping up her performance schedule despite her disagreements with her father—she was a professional, and she knew that her family’s livelihood, as well as her reputation, depended on her showing up to do the gigs Abraham booked for the band.I knew that Selena was due to leave early that morning for a show in El Paso.I didn’t have anyplace to be, so I had decided to sleep in and leave at checkout time.The pounding on the door continued; I opened my eyes and glared at the hotel alarm clock.It was just after ten o’clock.The hotel maid must be knocking on the door, I decided, thinking I’d checked out.“No, not right now,” I yelled without getting out of bed.“Come back later.Checkout is at noon.”The knocking continued, more insistent now.“Come back later!” I shouted again.“Don’t you see the sign on the door?”More knocking.Grumbling, I got out of bed, yanked on my jeans and looked through the peephole.It wasn’t the maid.It was Selena.My first thought was that something must have happened with her father.I fumbled with the lock and got the door open.“What’s the matter? Why aren’t you in El Paso? Don’t you have a show? Did something happen?”She was crying too hard to answer.I just held her for a while on the bed, feeling her body tremble against mine and trying to coax her to talk about whatever was going on.Finally, Selena sat up and started telling me that she couldn’t stand to be apart any longer.“I don’t want anybody to be in our way,” she said.“Let’s get married right now.”Stunned, I just stared at her.“Wait a second.I love you.I want to be with you.You know I want to marry you someday.But why do we have to do it like this, right now?”“There’s no other way,” she said, and started crying again.“We have to elope.”I felt all twisted up inside.Half of me knew that she was right, while the other half of me was worried about what she would be giving up to do this.I wanted to marry Selena.But I also understood, from being with her when she saw a wedding scene in a movie, or a picture of a bride, how much Selena had always dreamed about her glorious wedding day.She always talked about what she would do when she planned her own wedding, every detail, right down to the invitations and the cake.If we eloped, that would never happen.“No, no, no,” I told her.“I don’t want to get married behind everybody’s back.We can figure out a way.It’s just going to take some time for your dad to get used to the idea.”“He never will,” she said.“You’ve seen how he is!”I kept resisting.In the back of my mind, I was terrified that if we got married in a hurry without that fairy-tale ceremony, Selena would always regret our relationship.“You’ve always wanted a wedding,” I reminded her, smoothing her hair and pulling her closer.“I don’t want to cheat you out of that white gown and the bridesmaids and the flowers.You’ve dreamed about it all your life.You want your family there, all around you.You want your father to walk you down the aisle.”Selena broke in, stopping me cold.“That’s never going to happen, Chris.”And when she said that, I believed her.“All right,” I said finally.“There is nothing that would make me happier than to marry you.What do we need to do?”“We can go to the courthouse and get married,” she said.“We can do that right now.It’s the only way he’ll ever leave us alone, Chris.Then we can be together.”“Okay,” I said.“Let’s do it.Let’s get married.”I couldn’t believe that those words had come out of my mouth.Married? Me? I was only twenty-two years old! But what else could I do? Selena was right.We loved each other, and there was no way that she and I were ever going to be together unless we were married.Abraham wouldn’t be able to stop us from seeing each other if we were legally husband and wife.I loved the sound of that word, “wife,” as I looked at Selena and repeated, “Come on.Let’s go get married!”I’ll never forget Selena’s smile when I said that.I could just feel all of the pressure and stress leave her body as she watched me get dressed for the courthouse.I had nothing to wear but a T-shirt and jeans; Selena was wearing a skirt and boots.“I couldn’t wear my best clothes,” she admitted shyly.“Otherwise my dad would have suspected something was up.”On our second wedding anniversary, Selena and I started talking about renewing our vows after five years of marriage.We would have a real ceremony then, we promised each other.Selena bought a wedding dress and started cutting out pictures of floral arrangements she liked for our centerpieces at the reception.She even ordered a wedding registry book with a gold metal plate on it.The book had our names embossed on it, along with the date of our wedding: April 2, 1992.She had it all planned out, and it would have been a beautiful ceremony.It almost breaks my heart to think about it now.At the Nueces County Courthouse, Selena took control and all I had to do was go with the flow.I wasn’t scared, but I felt a little numb, as if I were in shock from making such an abrupt decision—one that would no doubt have consequences I couldn’t even predict yet.I never would have known what to do, but Selena just kept asking questions and the clerks at the windows explained what steps we needed to take.We were lucky in that the clerk agreed to waive the standard waiting period for a marriage license—probably because nearly everyone in Corpus knew who Selena was by then.We paid what we needed to pay, signed the necessary papers, and then stood in front of the justice of the peace, who said a few words.Then, bam, we were married, just like that.It was crazy.I couldn’t believe that I was actually in this room with Selena, saying wedding vows.Those moments went by so fast, yet I knew that the way I felt about her at that very moment was going to be the way I felt about her forever
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