Marriage of Unconvenience

“Yup, my wife. My wife who has decided that there’s something wrong with an entire continent just because there might be some dangerous animals. There are dangerous animals in the US too.” Now I was the one who wanted to shove a pillow in her face.

“Anywhere else. Anywhere other than Australia,” I said, and she sighed heavily.

“Fine, crush my dreams.”

“Isn’t that also my job as your wife?”

“Stopppppppp.”

Monday we went to my local bank to get the paperwork notarized. I wished we could get the marriage certificate, but that wasn’t going to happen because of bureaucracy. I just wanted my damn money.

I took our wedding dresses to a shop to be cleaned and preserved. Who knew if either one of us was going to wear them again, but they were special dresses and I didn’t want them to be stained and stinky forever.

I got some more job rejections and had another interview, but the company was a little too hardcore about pushing sales and memberships and even if they’d given me an offer, I wouldn’t have accepted. Plus, the pay was crap.

“No one wants to employ me,” I said, resting my head on my arm. Cara and I were out with Kell and Lane as sort of a double date. Sort of.

“You just need to find the right place. All you need is one to give you a chance.” Well, that wasn’t happening yet.

“It’ll be fine. You’ll find something. Have you thought about maybe volunteering somewhere that could potentially turn into a job?” Cara said.

“Like where?” Honestly, I was up for suggestions. In my mind, I knew that I could live on the inheritance money for a while if I needed to, but the idea of not having a job and a steady source of income, even with the extra money, made me feel like I was going to break out in hives.

“A library maybe?” she said.

“I could try that. I’ve also thought about maybe getting something that’s more part time, so if I did that, then I could still work at a job. The idea of anything other than full time terrifies me.” I wasn’t going to blow this.

“That sounds like a good idea,” Cara said, brushing my shoulder with her fingers. She’d been doing that a lot lately. Or maybe I was just noticing it now? I wasn’t sure. It definitely seemed like she was taking more opportunities to touch me.

“Seriously, really smart,” Lane said. “I’m not sure if I’d do that if I got a pile of money. I’d probably blow it all on bags.” Lane had an entire closet just for her purses, including many that were vintage and probably worth some dough. Right now she had a designer bag slung over the back of her chair that I didn’t need to look up to know it was expensive. The purple of the bag almost matched the purple streaks in her dark hair that she’d recently added. Lane also had an obsession with dying her hair any and all colors.

“If you had to save your purses or me from a fire, you’d pick the purses,” Kell said, pouting.

“Oh, babe. You can rescue yourself. The purses can’t. They don’t have legs, or a way to carry themselves. They’re helpless.” She cradled her bag like a baby in her arms.

“You see what I have to deal with?” Kell said, gesturing to Lane, who was now cooing endearments to the bag. “How is marriage going so far for you two?”

We were still keeping up the pretense that we were a real couple, and it was less difficult than I expected.

“I don’t know, Care, what do you think?” I said, putting my arm around her.

“It’s pretty great so far,” she said, leaning into me.

“I can’t believe you’re really together, this is so wild,” Kell said, and Lane put her bag back on the chair to stop Kell’s long red hair from getting dragged through her plate of spaghetti. Kell was always ending up with food in her hair or on her shirt. She carried extra clothes and detergent pens in her bag at all times.

“Is it?” I asked. Lying to my friends did make my gut twist with guilt. But they’d jumped on board with everything so quickly, that it almost didn’t feel like lying sometimes.

“Yeah, I mean, you’re best friends and then you say you’re getting married. With like, no dating step in between.” I looked at Cara and shifted in my chair.