Billionaires in Vegas

Clarence calls me and says he’s ready to get to work. He and Miguel hashed it out and decided that I would be the one to formally get this ball rolling by submitting my complaint of annulment to Kathryn. The reason? Because I’m worth more on paper. That’s it. That’s the reason I’m the lucky bastard who gets to serve the love of my life what basically amounts to divorce papers.

I’ve thought a lot about this marriage thing. It’s so surreal so sit here, overlooking a sunny Vegas day, and think I’m married. Right now, I am married. Kathryn is my wife. My life. I never thought the day would come in which I call Kathryn Alison my beautiful, smart, funny, intelligent, witty wife.

I hate everything.

Countless conversations have been had about our future. Sometimes we had heated discussions over candlelit dinners. Other times we languidly spoke while naked in bed. We ramble in my car. She chats about where we’ll be in thirty years while on the phone. I make off-handed remarks while waiting in traffic en route to her place. There hasn’t been a week in our relationship where we haven’t outright talked or at least quipped about our shared future. Naturally, marriage has come up a lot. It’s something we’ve had to seriously talk about due to our backgrounds, our families, and of course the amount of money we both have. Getting married would be a big deal. And possibly messy.

Putting aside our money and properties, however, there’s the fact I know that Kathryn isn’t the marrying kind of woman. I thought I was okay with that until this week. I didn’t need her to marry me to know that she was serious and in love with me. Nah. I get lots of evidence of that from our day-to-day interactions. I’m the fool always out the prove something to her, whether I need to or not.

Yet until this week, I never realized how fuzzy the thought of marrying Kathryn Alison makes me. I never realized how much I might like a wife one day. So I guess I’m having some problems processing this.

So you know what would make this moment even worse?

You know what would fucking suck right now?

Someone knocking on my door. Hard. Furiously. As if they’re about to die.

I know it’s Kathryn. I know she’s hurting. I know she needs me. So like an idiot I tear myself away from my drink in a flash of lightning, and I open that door to find the love of my life ready to leap into my arms and say she doesn’t want an annulment after all. Or that she at least wants to weather this storm with me.

Haha. It’s not Kathryn.

It’s the other woman constantly out to fuck with my life.

“Ian!” My mother practically crumples on the floor, clutching me, her darling only child. I stand there, struck by the absurdity of the situation. My mother, in her Louis Vuitton everything, crying the mascara out of her eyes as she sobs about me, her baby boy growing up and leaving the nest. Like I did ten freakin’ years ago.

“Mom?” I don’t have enough alcohol for this. “What are you doing here?”

She releases me long enough to look at my face, her long, sharp nails threatening to pierce my skin and maybe my eyes. “I had to come as soon as I heard!”

“Heard what?”

She looks at me as if I’m the silliest boy in the world. I hate it when she looks at me like that. “That you got married!”

In disbelief I stand. It’s been two days. Two. Fucking. Days. The only people we’ve told are our lawyers. Yet my mother somehow finds out and flies out to Vegas to be here for this stupendous moment.

“Give us a kiss!” She kisses both of my cheeks and spins around, looking at my empty, lifeless hotel room. “Where’s your wife? Oh, don’t worry, I will leave you two love birds alone soon enough.” Tittering, she hides her giggles behind a white-gloved hand. “You’ve got some grandbabies to make me.”

“Mom!” Exasperated, I flop down on a couch and finish off my morning drink. “How did you even hear about that?”

“So it’s true? Oh, I went by my mother’s hunch as soon as I heard both your and Kathryn’s lawyers were making an emergency trip out here. I heard through your lawyer’s wife, whom I play bridge with.”

“Of course you do.”

“When I pressed, all she would say was that she had to do some last minute research for her husband before he took off. In Nevada law. Regarding marriage.” The grin on my mother’s face could make birds fall out of the sky. “Took me about five seconds to figure that out! You two got hitched in Vegas!”

I sigh. “In a way, you are definitely not wrong.”

“Oh!” I think she’s going to have a heart attack. I’ve never seen my mother this giddy before. She’s been Kathryn and mine’s number one fan since the day she found out we were fooling around. She thinks Kathryn is the daughter she never had. A guy like me should be so happy that his mother loves his girlfriend. Yet my mother is a meddlesome woman—as evident by her being here uninvited. She will find every way possible to make this process even more painful. Probably by bringing up grandbabies every five minutes. Ever since she started going through menopause, she’s become obsessed with me knocking women up. The only time I’ve wished I had siblings is when my mother corners me and demands to know why she’s not spoiling some toddler right now. If I had a brother or sister, I could sick her on them.