Tessa was a much better dancer than I was, so I mostly followed her lead. She spun and twirled, eyes closed and completely in the moment. I was completely spellbound by her.
The fountains stopped, and she twirled one last time into my arms, resting her head on my shoulder. She pointed over to the replica Eiffel tower in the distance.
“I always wanted to see the real thing . . .” she murmured dreamily. “But I never had the money. Maybe one day . . .”
“Luke, are you even listening to me?”
I’m rudely awoken from my daydream by Brock, still standing there looking disgruntled. He’s already dressed for the day, looking sharp in a pressed suit.
I, on the other hand, look and feel like shit. My head’s pounding, my mouth feels as dry as the desert outside the window, and I’ve got to pee.
I pull myself out of bed and go to the bathroom, as Brock continues to browbeat me. “The phone’s been ringing off the hook all morning. Everyone wants to know about this girl —who she is, where you met her, was the wedding planned?”
Brock laughs bitterly, probably realizing the scale of his work over the next few days.
“I mean, seriously Luke? A shotgun Vegas wedding? What the fuck were you thinking? Jesus Christ, I don’t even know where to start with this one. I let you out of my sight for one goddamn night, and you go and do something like this. Do you know what the board will say?”
He sounds vaguely panicked. I finish up in the bathroom and pad back into the room, still dressed only in my boxers.
Brock takes a deep breath and starts flipping through the large stack of papers he’s holding.
“Okay, I guess we can ignore the tabloids for now. But shit, Luke, even the major business newspapers have been calling, asking if this will affect our acquisitions. I say we sit down right now, come up with a statement that we can start releasing, and then try and see how to get this colossal fuck-up fixed before it causes any more trouble.”
I yawn. “Where’s my phone?”
“Finally, some reaction.” Brock looks relieved.
He grabs my cell from the coffee table and throws it over to me. I catch it in one hand and start swiping.
“Now, you need to start calling around, telling people not to talk to the media until we get this statement—”
I interrupt him. “Relax, Brock, before you keel over or something. I’m not calling the office.”
He stands there, open-mouthed in shock.
I find Tessa’s number on my phone and smile.
“So, everyone wants to know about this girl, huh? So do I, as a matter of fact. I should give my wife a call.”
Tessa
With breakfast finished (and my Bloody Mary left untouched) Claire and I are desperately searching the Internet to try and find out how to annul a marriage.
I’m far too hungover to read and decipher legalese, so I leave the bulk of the work to her. She’s sitting cross-legged on the bed, laptop in front of her, poring over various websites and frowning.
Claire starts reading aloud from one site. “To qualify for an annulment, a marriage must be legally void or voidable. Void means that it is not valid, while voidable means that a court can declare it to be invalid if it is challenged…”
She sighs.
“This all sounds so complicated and difficult. Can’t you just go to a judge or something and tell them it was a mistake? How hard can it be?”
“Isn’t there something that says if I was too drunk to know what I was doing, it doesn’t count? Surely that must be a thing.” I sip on my water, trying to fight through the crashing pain of my headache.
Claire looks at me, then types away on the keyboard again for a few seconds. A couple more minutes of frowning and concentrating, then she lets out a victorious whoop.
“Look!” she says excitedly, turning the laptop towards me. “You’re actually right!”
I try to read the screen, but the letters are blurry and swimming around in front of my eyes, making it impossible to focus on them.
“I can’t read it,” I groan. “Can you just tell me the important parts?”
Claire’s voice grows louder in excitement, her words tumbling swiftly out of her mouth as she reads. “Did one or both of the parties lack the requisite mental capacity to voluntarily enter into the marriage due to the effects of drugs or alcohol?
“That’s it, right? It’s basically saying that you can call it off if you were too drunk to know what you were doing. You’re in the clear!”
She reads on for a few more moments.
“It looks like you just need to sign some forms, and then serve him some documents, then it’s like the marriage never happened.”
I sigh. “To me, it sounds like that’s going to involve lawyers, and lawyers cost money. I don’t actually have any money. Thank God I just landed that new job.”