23
She looked so worried, I found myself wanting to go to her and comfort her, to tell her everything was going to be all right, but the truth of the matter was that I had no idea how things were going to be. My lawyer had called me up when I had been out trying to figure out what the fuck I was going to do next, and he had sounded seriously worried.
“Wait, let me just grab a beer first.” I held my hand up to stop him. I had no idea what was going to come out of his mouth next, but I had a feeling it would be a whole lot easier to handle if I was at least a little drunk.
“Could I have a glass of water?” he asked, and I poured him one and handed it to him as I cracked open my own bottle and took a swig. Amaya reached for it, and I couldn’t help but grin as she took a swig, despite the clear annoyance directed at me written all over her face. I didn’t blame her. I’d just hit the bricks out of nowhere as soon as my father had been out of there, but if she knew what had been going on in my mind, there was no way she would have expected me to stay.
I had just walked as soon as I was out of the apartment, driving to the center of the city and walking around for hours until my legs hurt and my body ached, and I knew I had no choice but to go home and rest for a while. It felt as though the world had come tilting out on its axis in the last few hours. I had lain there in bed with her and been so sure, so utterly convinced, that I was in love with her, and the world had seemed a whole lot brighter as I focused on that, on what we could build together as soon as I got up the nerve to tell her. I would have told her that morning over breakfast if it hadn’t been for the rude arrival of my father and the reminder that whatever I believed I was feeling for her, it was only going to end badly for the both of us.
Because my father had believed he was in love, and now his world was falling apart, and he was rounding the corner of his fifth divorce. Five times, he had believed it would work out, and five times, it had broken down despite his best efforts. How many times would he put himself through it before he gave up? Whether it was him or the woman, things always went to shit, and he had fought long and hard and simply proved he couldn’t make love last. And if he couldn’t do it, then I was arrogant to think I had some kind of special key that would make it work for me.
Still, I found myself grinning at her as she handed my bottle back to me, our fingertips brushing for the briefest moment. I remembered last night so vividly, a redo of that night we had ended up married, and I would have gone back and done it all again if it had led to this moment. Despite the uncertainty, despite the doubt, I loved her still. I just didn’t know what the hell to do with that knowledge. Or how she felt about me.
Neil took a long drink of water and then started pulling out papers from his briefcase. He had sounded shocked on the phone, and I had offered to come down to the office the next day to take care of it, but he had insisted this was the right choice, that he needed to speak to both Amaya and me at once.
“Okay, so I was looking over the papers you’d given me,” he began, and he glanced up at the two of us and paused, as though he really didn’t want to be having this conversation and would have done anything to get this over with.
“Yeah, of course.” I nodded.
“In order to set up a trust fund for Amaya’s sister and to confirm the details of the, uh, other contract, I needed to confirm that the two of you were married,” he continued, and my heart started to beat a little faster. Amaya shot a look at me, and I knew she was stunned by the discovery that I was setting up the fund for Jolene. I knew it was a lot and that she had never asked for anything like it in the whole time we had been together, but there was no way I was letting that girl not get taken care of after I was out of the picture. My nonna would have killed me even more than she would for the divorce if she discovered I had just kicked Jolene to the curb at the end of this year.
“So I had to confirm the exact details of your wedding,” he went on. “And I tried to. I went back to the hotel you were staying at and contacted as many of the local registries as I could.”
“Yeah?” I prompted him. He was shuffling papers nervously as though the last thing he wanted was to have to come out with the next part of this. He was never normally this withholding, straight-to-the-point by his very nature.
“And I couldn’t find anything,” he blurted out at last. My heart stopped.
“What?” Amaya demanded. Her voice was a mess of emotion, anger, betrayal, confusion, upset. I knew how she felt, but I couldn’t get a word out.
“Eventually, I started looking beyond the registries that were currently functioning,” he went on, ignoring Amaya’s question. “And I found this one.”
He pulled a piece of paper from his briefcase and slid it across the table toward the two of us. Both of us lunged forward to look at it. My heart felt as though it had slid down all the way into my shoes, and it was taking everything I had in me to stay upright and not just keel over on the spot. Amaya put her hand on my shoulder for support, and I took a swig of my beer, hoping it would take the edge off. It didn’t.
I scanned the document as quickly as I could. It appeared to be a copy of a marriage certificate between the two of us signed by a witness who had presumably been present at the time. I glanced up at Neil again, furrowing my brow.
“Yeah, what about it?” I demanded. “What’s wrong with this?”
“There’s nothing wrong with the marriage certificate,” he told me, picking it up and putting it back in his briefcase so we were both forced to look at him again. “But the company that issued it to you.”
“What are you saying?” I demanded impatiently. I just wanted to know one way or the other what the hell was going on, yet Neil was playing this as though it was a reality TV show and we had another ad break before he could give me the news.
“Fantasy Registry was shut down a few weeks ago for violating marital law in the USA,” he explained, pulling a news article he had printed off from the papers in front of him and handing it to me. “They never had a license to marry people.”
Amaya staggered back from the counter, and I felt as though someone had punched me in the mouth. This couldn’t be happening. There was no way in hell, not after everything that we’d been through together, no chance, no way, no—
“So you’re saying …?” Amaya breathed, clearly putting the pieces together at the same rate that I was. Neil nodded, and then he finally spoke the words I had been praying I wouldn’t have to hear come out of his mouth.
“You’re not married, and you never have been,” he finished up for her in his traditionally brusque manner. I had hired him because he was no-nonsense, but right then, I could have used a little pussyfooting around.
I turned to Amaya and saw she had gone nearly gray. I wanted to reach out and hold her, but I couldn’t. I was rooted to the spot, frozen, and I felt as though the world was splintering to pieces around me as I stood there and looked at the woman I had been sure was my wife. She opened her mouth, lifting her eyes to look at the two of us, from me to Neil and back again.
“We’re not married?”
And as soon as she spoke the words, the situation switched into high gear. This was just about to get seriously complicated.