Fake Marriage Box Set

Luke

I woke up before the sun that next morning, feeling good about the fact that I had hopefully won joint custody of my son. The social worker seemed confident in my abilities as a father and was not going to be stopping by anymore unless it was absolutely necessary. I wanted to talk to Quinn; I knew that she was still very hurt by everything that had happened, I saw it on her face the night before during my toast. I left the den and walked into the kitchen, expecting to see Quinn there cooking breakfast, but she was nowhere in sight. My heart skipped a beat in my chest, hoping that she hadn’t left in the middle of the night. I walked over to Jake’s room and slowly cracked the door, peeking inside. He was sound asleep, curled up in an upside-down ball, clutching his stuffed animals. The way that he was sleeping made me laugh quietly to myself as I remembered the conversation Quinn and I had about that exact thing. As I closed Jake’s bedroom door, I glanced down the hall to see light coming from under the master bedroom door. I approached and found it cracked open, so I stuck my head inside and looked around.

Quinn was standing in the middle of the floor, folding a giant stack of her clothes. She had pulled all the boxes out of the closet and reassembled them, filling them one at a time, stacking them next to the door. She glanced up at me and then back down at what she was doing, making sure that the last of her sweaters were packed snuggly inside the box. She had packed for six months, not knowing that it would take a lot less time than that. We still had a few more months left before the court date. But assuming the social worker wasn’t going to stop by anymore, she must have thought she was no longer needed. I could see the pain in her eyes from there, and it broke my heart.

Just watching her put her things away seemed strange, and I could feel a twinge in my stomach telling me that what was happening was wrong. I ignored that feeling, knowing it was that very thing that got me into this mess in the first place. It was that feeling that had coerced me into letting go and letting Quinn get close to me, inside my life, and into my heart. I didn’t like the way the room looked without her touches all over the place. The bookshelf was now mostly empty, and her dresser was bare, with the drawers pulled out. I needed to let it go and push the pain away. This was, after all, exactly what I had wanted from the beginning: someone who would make an excellent fake wife, but would leave when everything was settled, allowing me to go back to the life I had before. I had intended for me to get back my freedom all along, but for some reason, my freedom no longer felt like it was free. I felt terrible that I had hurt Quinn so badly, and I was reeling at the thought of her no longer being there with us, it all felt so wrong and out of touch.

I walked further into the room and looked around, not saying a word. She continued to fold her clothes, silently, her eyes fixed on the boxes in front of her. I took a deep breath and walked up beside her, sticking my hands in my pockets.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m almost done,” she said, quietly. “You can help me get all these boxes out to my car and packed up. This is everything I brought so there shouldn’t be any remnants once I’m gone.”

Her words made my heart hurt, but I turned and started to lift boxes, grabbing her keys from her and heading to the door. We walked quietly through the house as we moved her stuff, not wanting to wake Jake up. On the last haul to the car, I slid my box to the back and took hers, placing it in the last open slot. I dusted off my hands and shut the car door, looking up at her.

“I’m just going to check the kitchen one last time,” she said, letting me lead the way back into the house as if she had never called it home herself.

When we entered, I watched as Jake stumbled from his bedroom and into the bathroom, not noticing that we were standing there. Instantly I felt uneasy and looked for a way to prolong her time. I turned to her hurriedly, looking her in the eye.

“You can stay today, right?” I said. “You know, spend some quality time with Jake before you have to leave. You can leave after he goes to bed tonight so that he doesn’t notice.”

She forced a half smile and shook her head no, confirming that she needed to get out of there. She took in a deep breath, but I could see her eyes watering, and her nose go red. She was obviously holding back tears, and I wanted to reach out to her and hug her, but I couldn’t.

“You know,” she said, taking in a deep breath. “You are right. We don’t need to make this any harder on Jake. It’s better that I go now before the attachment is too intense.”

I nodded my head up and down, thinking about the nights that Quinn and I had spent together. It was the best I had felt in my entire life, but for some reason, I couldn’t shake that all-encompassing fear that weighed down on my chest. It was blinding and suffocating, so I pushed it to the side and stayed the course. Immediately after that, though, I realized when she talked about attachment, she meant between her and Jake, not between us. Or maybe she did mean between her and me, but I couldn’t ever be truly sure about it. Either way, I knew that I had to let her go. Before Jake could come back out, she turned to the door and stopped, looking back at me.

“Thank you for everything,” she said. “For every single special moment.”

I hung my head down, not even able to look her in the eye in the fear that I would beg her to stay. Even after the door had closed, I stood there staring at the ground, unable to move from that spot. The sound of Jake exiting the bathroom brought me to my senses, and I turned, forcing a big smile in Jake’s direction and heading into the kitchen to begin cooking breakfast.

I pulled out the pancake mix, the eggs, and the toast and stood there looking around the kitchen. I immediately realized that the only reason I knew where everything was located was because I’d helped Quinn put it away. I didn’t actually understand at all how to cook any of it. I took a deep breath and tried anyway, ending in complete failure with burnt pancakes, really dry eggs, and toast that just crumbled in my fingertips. Jake giggled behind me, and I smiled, turning to him.

“How about we go get breakfast at the diner down the street?”

“That is probably the safest idea,” Jake said, sarcastically.

“All right, smart butt, go in your room and we can get you dressed and ready,” I said, with a smirk.

When we got inside, I haphazardly went through his clothes trying to find something that matched. When I had succeeded, I figured the hardest part was over, but I was completely wrong. I couldn’t get him to stand still to save my life and kept having to order him back over in front of me every time I let him go. His attention was all over the place, and for a minute I thought I saw a bit of mischief in his eye. Who knew that six-year-olds were so damn squirmy? I seriously couldn’t remember a time where it took Quinn more than ten minutes to get Jake completely dressed, and get him to brush his teeth. She made everything in the house seem so damn effortless, which put me at a serious loss for words. I really never expected all of this to be so difficult, and I was starting to understand Sarah’s frazzled appearance every time I had seen her lately. Maybe after a while, I would get good at it like Quinn was, or maybe I would spend the next couple of years in a perpetual cycle of burnt toast and a half-dressed kid.

When I finally got the shirt pulled over Jake’s head and his Jake over his shoulders, I sat back on his bed, huffing and puffing. Visions of Quinn and her sweet smile and patience beyond compare blew through my mind and I realized something. I wasn’t upset that she wasn’t there to make breakfast or dress Jake; I was upset because I missed her like a sonofabitch and I was just now realizing it. I missed every single little thing about her, including her quirks and the way she scrunched her nose at me when I said something vulgar or rude in an attempt to be funny.

Immediately I started to second guess myself, my heart fluttering strongly in my chest. Maybe I had made a mistake. Maybe thinking that a relationship would tie me down and ruin my fun was way off base. I had let my fear of relationships due to the awful time I was having with Sarah completely cloud my judgment and make me push away the only woman who had ever made me fully like myself. I wasn’t kidding when I told myself that I had never felt that happy or that comfortable with someone before, but for some reason, I tossed the whole thing to the side like it didn’t matter. Commitment was what I was fearing, but in reality, it wasn’t scary at all when I looked at the idea of committing myself to a woman like Quinn. No, not a woman LIKE Quinn, but actually Quinn herself.

I got caught up in this terrible dating scene that was going on, thinking that if I just banged these women, moved on, and never got to know them that I would be safe from getting hurt or dealing with that kind of drama ever again. In reality, when I least expected it, Quinn had come along, and I had fallen for her before I even knew that I could. She had come into my life like a savior, and then I turned around and kicked her right back out when I thought I had everything that I wanted. Obviously, I was completely confused by what I wanted since I was able to watch the woman who meant the most to me walk right out the door. I mean, was dating a different woman every night, swe

aring off attachments, and sheltering myself from any kind of emotion what I really considered fun?

I leaned forward on the bed and pulled my hands over my face, immediately pelting myself with guilt. Oh God, I had treated Quinn with such disrespect and all while in the back of my mind I knew that I had fallen for her, that she was the woman who truly made me happy. I shook my head and groaned, feeling Jake sit down next to me on his bed.

“Are you okay, Daddy?”

“Yeah,” I said, sitting up and taking a deep breath. “Adults can be really dumb sometimes.”

“I know,” he said, happily. “You don’t have to tell me that.”

I laughed loudly, wishing that anything would take the feeling in the pit of my stomach away. Even my son’s amazing little laugh wasn’t making me feel any better at all. I felt like I had doomed myself, pushing away the woman who I truly felt was made for me. I was going to have to either do something about it or decide to move on, hoping that the pain would someday subside.