“Yeah, he got worse when he was hammered,” she admits, and then leans her head back against her enormous chair. “He’s pretty great. It’s weird, you guys. Did you know he’s opening a comic book store? Out of the three of us, I’m the one who should be hitting that with the fist of God. I mean, he’s hot and tall and ridiculously derpy, which you know is totally my kryptonite. But we were already coordinating the annulment while we waited for the limo to pick us up after the ceremony.”
This all feels a little surreal. I was expecting a weekend of sunbathing, drinks, dancing, and best friend bonding. I was not expecting to have the best sex of my life and wake up married. I twist the ring on my finger and then look around, realizing I’m the only one actually wearing one.
Harlow notices it, too. “We’re meeting the guys at one to head to the chapel for the annulments.” Her voice has weight, bite, as if she already knows my situation has the added layer of feelings in the mix.
“Okay,” I say.
I catch Lola watching me. “That doesn’t sound like ‘okay,’” she says.
“What was Ansel saying to you in the hall?” Harlow asks. Her judgment is like another person sitting in the circle of chairs with us, glaring darkly at me with arms crossed over its chest. “He kissed you. He’s not supposed to kiss you today. We’re all supposed to be mildly horrified and then start constructing the funny details about that-one-time-we-all-got-married-in-Vegas that we’ll share for the next thirty years. There’s no sweetness or kissing, Mia. Only hangovers and regret.”
“Um . . . ?” I say, scratching my temple. I know Harlow will put her foot down at the mention of feelings in a situation like this, but I have them. I like him.
I also like the way he looks at me, and having my mouth full of his. I want to remember how he sounds when he’s f**king me hard, and whether he swears in French or English when he comes. I want to sit on the couches in the bar again and let him talk this time.
In a weird way, I think if we hadn’t gotten married last night, we’d have a better chance of being able to explore this, just a little.
“Jesus, Mia,” Harlow says under her breath. “I love you, but you’re killing me here.”
I ignore her pressure to reply aloud. I have no idea how Lola will react to my indecision. She’s far more live-and-let-live than Harlow is and falls somewhere on the spectrum between Harlow and me in terms of comfort with casual sex. Because of this, and because none of us has ever had a spontaneous wedding to a man from another country—this really has to be funny someday—Lola is likely to be more measured in her responses, so I direct my answer to her.
“He says we could . . . stay married.” There. That seems a decent way to try it on.
Silence reverberates back to me.
“I knew it,” Harlow whispers.
Lola remains noticeably quiet.
“I wrote myself a letter before we did it,” I explain, wanting to tread carefully. Of anyone in the world, these two women want only what is good for me. But I don’t know whether it will hurt their feelings to learn how oddly safe I feel with Ansel.
“And?” Harlow prompts. “Mia, this is huge. You couldn’t have told us this first?”
“I know, I know,” I say, sinking back into my chair. “And I guess I told him, like, my entire life story.” They both know the significance of this and so they don’t comment, just wait for me to finish. “And I talked for what must have been hours. I didn’t stutter, I didn’t filter.”
“You did talk for a really long time.” Lola looks impressed.
Harlow’s eyes narrow. “You’re not seriously considering staying married,” she says, “to a stranger you met last night in Vegas and who lives over five thousand miles away.”
“Well, how can it not sound shady when you say it like that?”
“How would you like me to say it, Mia?” she shouts. “Have you completely lost your mind?”
Have I? Yes, absolutely. “I think I just need more time,” I tell her instead.
Harlow stands abruptly, looking around as if there is someone else in the lobby who can help convince her best friend that she’s lost the plot. Across from me, Lola simply studies my face, eyes narrowed. “Are you sure about this?” she asks.
I cough out a laugh. “I’m not sure about any of it.”
“But you know you don’t want to annul it right now?”
“He says he won’t annul it today anyway, that he promised me he wouldn’t.”
Her eyebrows disappear beneath her bangs and she leans back into her chair, surprised. “He promised you?”
“That’s what he said. He said I made him swear.”
“This is the most ridicul—” Harlow starts, but Lola interrupts her.
“Well, the guy just won some points with me, then.” She blinks away, and reaches to put a calming hand on Harlow’s forearm. “Let’s go, sweets. Mia, we’ll be back in a little bit to pack up and head home, okay?”
“Are you kidding me? We—” Harlow starts, but Lola levels her with a look. “Fine.”
In the distance and through a set of glass doors, I see Oliver and Finn, waiting for them near the taxi stand. Ansel is nowhere in sight.
“Okay, good luck getting unmarried,” I say with a little smile.
“You’re lucky I love you,” Harlow calls over her shoulder, chestnut hair flying around her as Lola drags her away. “Otherwise I would murder you.”
THE LOBBY SEEMS too quiet in their wake, and I look around, wondering if Ansel is watching from some dark corner, seeing that I haven’t gone along. But he isn’t in the lobby. I have no idea where he is. He’s the only reason I stayed back. Even if I had his number, I don’t have my phone. Even if I had my phone, I have no idea where I left my charger. Drunk me definitely needs to keep better track of things.
So I do the only thing I can think of: I head upstairs to the hotel room, to shower again and pack, to try to make some sense out of this mess.
One step inside and flashes of the night before seem to invade the room. I close my eyes to dig deeper, hungry for more details.
His hands on my ass, my br**sts, my hips. The thick drag of him along my inner thigh. His mouth fastened to my neck, sucking a bruise into the skin.
My thoughts are interrupted by a quiet knock on the door.
Of course it’s him, looking freshly showered and just as conflicted as I feel. He moves past me, into the room, and sits at the edge of the bed.
He rests his elbows on his knees and looks up at me through hair that has fallen into his eyes. Even partly filtered, they’re so expressive I feel gooseflesh break out along my arms.
Without preamble or warm-up, he says, “I think you should come to France for the summer.”
There are a thousand things I can say to address the absurdity of what he’s offering. For one, I don’t know him. Also, I don’t speak French. Tickets are ungodly expensive, and where would I live? What would I do all summer living with a stranger in France?
“I’m moving to Boston in a few weeks.”
But he’s already shaking his head. “You don’t need to move until the beginning of August.”
I feel my brows inch up. Apparently I told him every single detail of my life. I’m not sure whether I should feel impressed that he remembers it all, or guilty that I made him sit through so much. I tilt my head, waiting. Most girls would say something here. A gorgeous man is offering something pretty amazing, and I’m just waiting to see what else he wants to say.
Licking his lips, he seems comfortable with the knowledge that he hasn’t given me something I need to respond to yet. “Just hear me out. You could stay at my flat. I have a good job, I can afford to feed and shelter you for a summer. I work really long hours, it’s true. But you could just . . .” He looks away, down at the floor. “You could enjoy the city. Paris is the most beautiful city, Cerise. There are endless things to do. You’ve had a really hard few years and maybe would be happy just having a mellow summer in France.” Looking back up at me, he adds quietly, “With me.”
I move over to the bed and sit down, leaving plenty of distance between us. Housekeeping has already changed the linens, straightened the chaos we created; it makes it easier to pretend last night was someone else’s life.
“We don’t really know each other, it’s true,” he concedes. “But I see your indecision about Boston. You’ll move there to get away from your dad. You’ll move there to keep marching forward. Maybe you need to just hit pause, and breathe. Have you done that even once in the four years since your accident?”
I want him to keep speaking because I’ve decided that even if I don’t know him well enough to be in love with him, I love his voice. I love the rich mahogany timbre, the curling vowels and seductive consonants. His voice dances. Nothing could ever sound rough or sharp in that voice.
But as soon as I have the thought, I know it’s wrong. I remember how he sounded when he was perfectly demanding last night:
Put your hands on the wall.
I can’t wait much longer for you to get there, Cerise.
Show me how much you love to feel me on your tongue.
I don’t have an answer for his offer, so I don’t give one. I only crawl up to the pillow and lie on my back, exhausted. He joins me, lying shoulder to shoulder until I curl into him, sliding my hands up his chest and into his hair. The shape of him triggers a muscle memory: how far I have to reach to wrap my arms around him, how he feels against my palms. I press my nose into the rope of muscle between his neck and shoulder, breathe in the clean smell of him: hotel soap and the hint of ocean that pushes through.
Ansel rolls to face me, kissing my neck, my jaw, my lips just once but he lingers, eyes open. His hands slide down my back, over the curve of my ass to my thigh and lower, to the back of my knee, where he pulls it over his hip, fitting me to him. Between my legs, I can feel how much I want him. I can feel him, too, lengthening and pressing. But instead of taking it anywhere, we fall asleep.
When I wake up, there’s a piece of paper on the empty pillow. He’s left his number and his promise to be there the moment I need him, but he’s gone.
I WONDER HOW many thousands of drives from Vegas to California have been like this: hot wind whipping through a beater car, hungover women, regret hanging in the air like a single flat chord played the entire drive.
“I need something greasy to eat,” Harlow groans, and Lola pulls off the freeway and into a Denny’s parking lot.
Over grilled cheese and fries, Harlow says, “I don’t get why you didn’t just start the annulment process while we were there.” She pokes a fry into ketchup and then drops it on her plate, looking queasy. “Now you’re going to have to go back there, or go through this complicated process out of state. Tell me every detail so I can stop wanting to slap you.”
Objectively Ansel is amazing, and the sex was clearly ridiculous, but she knows I’m not such a swooner that good sex is enough for me to make such a rash decision. So it comes down to the letter, really. I never kept a diary. I barely write letters to Harlow when she’s overseas visiting her father on set. But I read that other, post-accident letter so many times the paper became as delicate as a dried petal, the ink nearly invisible. Letter writing for me is seen as this weird, sacred occurrence, and even though I’m not sure it’s the right idea, I’m giving it the weight I think I intended when I wrote it.
“What are you going to do?” Lola asks when I’ve finished telling them every sordid little detail I can remember about the night.
I shrug. “Spend from now until September trying to understand why I wanted to marry this person. Then probably get an annulment.”
Chapter FIVE
LOLA DROPS ME at home. I find my little brothers in the family room playing Xbox, and Dad hands me a glass of wine as soon as I step out onto the veranda.
“To our brilliant daughter,” he says, holding his own glass aloft. He smiles indulgently at me before pulling Mom close to his side, and the sunset behind them creates a beautifully backlit silhouette I’m sure he would be thrilled to see in a framed photograph. “I trust that your last wild weekend was perfect, and, as your father, I don’t want to hear a single thing about it.” He smiles at this little joke, and I would probably find it funny were our history not so perilous. “Here’s to hoping your future from here on out is nothing but focus and success.”
I clink my glass to his halfheartedly and watch his face as he looks me over. I’ve showered twice but still look like death warmed over in my black T-shirt and torn jeans. His eyes move across my mouth, down to my neck, where I’ve tried to cover the bite marks and red splotches with a gray jersey scarf. Dad’s smile turns quickly into a look of disgust, but he doesn’t seem to have noticed my wedding ring. Carefully, I slide my left hand into my pocket to keep it that way.