Marriage For One

There were plenty of times when I wanted to prod him about Jack, just little questions here and there, but asking him how long he’d been with Jack was as far as I’d gotten.

He looked at me through the rearview mirror in a weird way. “Six years. He doesn’t let a lot of people in, but once you get to know him, he isn’t as bad as he looks.”

I thought he looked pretty great, but I was pretty sure Raymond wasn’t talking about his appearance. He surely possessed a wealth of information on the man who was my husband, but it didn’t feel right to pepper him with questions, so I chickened out. After a few days, I had accepted that I would have to personally experience the ultimate joy of learning about my fake one true love who hated sharing any kind of personal information willingly unless you hounded him about it for quite a while.

One thing I’d learned was that he hated when I asked and answered questions on my own as if speaking for him. That was a good way to get him all frowny and talking on his own. I didn’t think he liked me much when I did that, but then again, I didn’t think he liked me much most times.

I would have liked to think he tolerated me, and I thought that was at least a good starting point.

I, on the other hand, was actually getting used to his Grinch-like ways. The day he gave me a warm and genuine smile, I was going to celebrate with cake. I still didn’t like some things about him, like barely managing to greet people around him and maybe a few other things, but we weren’t in a real relationship so I didn’t feel like I had the right to nag him about any of them. To be fair, I thought it was just his personality. He didn’t go out of his way to ignore people. He couldn’t help it if he had been raised in a stuffy, rich family.

The only time I hated him a little bit in the entire week leading up to the weekend where we’d have to attend our first big event as a married couple was when he gave me his credit card in the kitchen on Wednesday.

“About the event on Saturday—this is important,” he started as he walked into thekitchen, startling me as I was reaching for the travel cups on the higher shelves.

“Jesus!” I sputtered as one of them came a little too close to landing on my face before it crashed to the floor. “What are you doing up so early?” I asked as we both crouched to pick it up. It played out just like in the movies. I was faster than him by a second and closed my hand around the cup just before he wrapped his big hand around mine. My head jerked up and I managed to hit his jaw with my head. All I heard was a grunt and then my cheeks were blazing.

“I had it,” I croaked, wincing and massaging my head where I had hit his surprisingly tough and perfectly shaped square jaw while still on my knees on the floor.

When I peered up again, he was rubbing his jaw as well. I didn’t know what else to add to the conversation when my eyes landed on him—he looked too good to be true for such an early hour even though he’d probably just rolled out of bed. I, however, had to wake up at least half an hour earlier than I was supposed to so I could make myself look somewhat presentable to the world.

Inwardly, I cursed myself for taking the extra ten minutes in bed that morning and deciding to do my makeup at the coffee shop. I tore my eyes away from him and got up on one knee. He extended his hand to help me get the rest of the way up. As soon as I reached for his hand and our skin made contact, we experienced a little zap of electric shock between us. I thought, just to be on the safe side, I should get up on my own, but he was still holding his hand out between us, so I gave it another go.

“I’d like to live through this day—don’t zap me,” I muttered, slowly taking his hand and letting him pull me up. When I was on my feet, I realized I was standing a bit too close to him, close enough to feel his body heat.

“Are you okay?” he asked, looking straight into my eyes with what looked like worry.

A little flustered by his closeness and his hypnotizing eye color, I remembered that I should probably let go of his hand.

“Yeah. Sure.” I took a step back from him, plastering myself against the edge of the counter. “Good morning. Hi.”