Marriage of Unconvenience

“My parents only got married for financial reasons, so I never really saw marriage as anything romantic. Huh,” I said, just now realizing that.

“Well, you two are sure as hell romantic,” Jason said. “You’re so cute my teeth are hurting.”

I blushed and Cara removed her head from my shoulder. We kept getting comments like that, so we must be fooling everyone. I glanced at Ansel, but he was fiddling on his phone.

The pizza finally arrived and we gorged ourselves until we could barely move.

“Okay, this has been a long day,” Jamie said. “I love you all, but I need to go home and not be around people for a while.” He got up and took care of his trash and then headed out. Everyone else but Ansel trickled out after him.

“You’re still going with lying to everyone, huh,” he said as we cleared up the last of the pizza mess.

“I mean, what are we going to say? We got married for money? Surprise, I had inheritance money all the time? I don’t want them to know,” I said. I couldn’t tell him the real reason I didn’t want to tell everyone: I didn’t want them to think less of me.

“You know they wouldn’t judge you. If they were in your shoes, they would do the same fucking thing in a heartbeat.” I glanced at Cara, but she was definitely avoiding looking at me.

“It’s just complicated, Ansel. I have my reasons and Cara does too.”

“Well, I supported it at first, but honestly, I think you need to tell everyone. I won’t betray your trust, because that would be a dick move, but I really think you should tell everyone. At least after you get your annulment. People are going to wonder. Plus, they’re also going to wonder when you suddenly have a ton of money. I think you’re underestimating what they’re going to notice and not notice.” Shit, I hadn’t really thought about that. I guess I just assumed we could play this off, get the annulment and then sort of... not tell anyone and then we could break up but remain friends. Obviously moving in together changed all of that, but the plan could still work. This could still happen without telling our friends we were both greedy gold diggers.

“I can always tell them that I inherited the money and Cara got financial aid. We don’t owe anyone explanations, Ansel.” Cara was still quiet and I kind of wished she would jump in and defend me. She was my best friend and fake wife, after all.

Ansel sighed and put his hands up in surrender.

“I know, I know. I’m not trying to be an asshole, I swear. I just think you should give your friends a little more credit than you are right now.”

I probably should, but I’d chosen this path and Cara had agreed to it with me and I wasn’t going to change things up on her, unless she decided that she wanted to. I stole a glance at her, but she was looking at the floor.

Ansel gave us both hugs, and after he left, things were a little weird.

“What do you think? About what he said,” I asked her after several minutes of silence.

“I don’t know, Lo. I really thought the best thing was not to tell everyone, but now it feels like we’re putting on a show, and I don’t like it. I don’t like pretending to be really married. It’s dishonest, Lo.” Of course it was, but that was the price we were paying for getting the money.

“So are you saying that you want to tell them? What do you think the reaction is going to be?” I had no idea how that would go, and I didn’t particularly want to find out. This plan had been fine so far, with just the side effect of some guilt, but I just didn’t want to see my friend’s faces when we told them that this was all a lie for money.

“I don’t know, Lo. I just... I don’t know.” She got up and walked back to her room and shut the door. This was the most tension we’d had in ages and it made me completely sick to my stomach. This had been the longest fucking day and part of me just wanted to go into my room, watch something frivolous, and go to bed, but I couldn’t leave things this way with Cara.

So I crossed the room and knocked softly on her door.

“Care?” I heard her turn off her music.

“Yeah?” she said.

“Can we talk?” She was silent for a few moments.