The Marriage Contract (Anderson Brothers)

“Hello?” Hannah said on the other end. I could hear a baby crying in the background.

“Hey, is it a bad time?” I asked.

“Oh, no, it’s fine,” Hannah said. “Claire’s just being fussy before her nap. What’s up?”

“Well, I need to go somewhere to get some cute clothes, and I have no idea what shops are good. Can you come with me?”

“Sure,” Hannah said. “Let me get this baby down for a nap. The babysitter will be here in about ten minutes, and I can meet you at your place.”

I hung up and went to get dressed, throwing on some of the clothes and frowning at myself in the mirror. When Hannah showed up, we rolled out, getting into her car and heading into the shopping district a couple of blocks north.

About two hours and a half dozen shops later, we had a few bags and a couple of coffees and were getting back into her car to take me back to the apartment.

“So, they haven’t even tried to contact you since you got here?” Hannah asked. “I mean, I know they can’t call you on a number they don’t have, but it’s not like a secret you’d probably come here. A normal parent would ask his brother to get in contact with me to check on you. You’d think.”

“Yeah, you’d think,” I said. “But I don’t really want to think about them today.”

“Right,” Hannah said. “I know how you feel. But we both got out. That’s what’s important. We got out and have good lives away from all that crap. I just hope you know how proud I am of you.”

“Thanks, cuz,” I said. “I’m proud of you, too. If it weren’t for you, I don’t know if I would have had the guts.”

We both smiled, and she clenched my hand for a moment before starting the car.

“Well, enough of the mushy,” she said. “You need to get ready, and then you need to text me when you get home. Even if that’s tomorrow morning.”

I was standing in the lobby when Matt came through the front door. My new outfit was really nice and extremely comfortable. I thought I looked cute in the tight blouse, and the jeans were the kind dancers wore. They stretched like crazy but still had functional pockets. Plus, they made my butt look good, so all around, I counted that as a win.

Matt looked like he was ready for a day of hanging out more than a date, and I was glad I hadn’t gone for the dress with the low neckline. Relaxing a little now that I figured the pressure was off, I greeted him and he grinned, opening the door for me and heading out toward his place on foot.

By the time we got there, Matt looked at the clock and muttered a curse.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I just remembered I sat the food on the counter in the kitchen rather than putting it in the fridge,” he said. “The tiramisu is probably a little melted.”

“Tiramisu?” I asked.

“I’ll be honest,” he said as he got the door open and guided me inside, “I will eat tiramisu over cake or ice cream any day of the week.” He walked immediately into the kitchen and pulled some containers out of a paper bag on his counter. “Nope, still cold. We got lucky,” he said.

Sticking the dessert in the fridge, he got out some plates and made dishes for the both of us. I was only a couple of bites into the pasta and red sauce when I realized I hadn’t eaten something this good in a long time. I looked over at the bag, but it didn’t have a logo on it.

“What restaurant is this?” I asked, tucking my bare feet under me on his couch. We’d skipped the dining room table in favor of the couch so we could get a start on marathoning a new show neither of us had seen yet.

“Dino’s down on Fourth,” he said. “Best Italian food I’ve ever had that my mama didn’t make.”

“It is delicious,” I agreed. “Good wine, too.”

“Ahh yeah, that’s the ‘I-barely-know-wine-bottom-rack-at-the-grocery-store’ brand.”

I laughed. “Seriously?”

He shrugged. “I may own a bar, but all wine tastes the same to me. Now, liquor—liquor I know. Beer I know. Wine? Not so much.”

I giggled. “Me too. My friends always had these expensive bottles back in LA, and they would do tasting parties for them. I just went to drink. They were all varying degrees of dry, but I could bullshit about them with the best.”

“To cheap wine,” he said, offering his glass to mine. I clinked them together, and we both tipped them back.

A few episodes later, and half the tiramisu put away, we were chatting on the couch casually. The show seemed like a bit of a bust, and neither of us was paying much attention to it unless another unexpectedly violent moment happened. It was fun to poke fun at it, though, which we were in the midst of doing when he checked his phone and groaned a bit.