The Marriage Contract

by Natasha L. Black

  “Thank you, Matt,” I said, embarrassed and taking the purse. “Please, come in.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “I don’t want to intrude.”

  “No, it’s fine. Come on in.”

  He walked by me, and the smell of his cologne woke me up a little bit. More memories of the night were starting to filter in, and I remembered how cute I thought he was. At least drunk me had good taste. He was gorgeous.

  “I am so sorry for how ridiculous I got last night,” I said. “I was really drunk. I don’t normally drink, so I guess I didn’t really know where my limit was.”

  “No, it’s fine. I didn’t mind being your sounding board.”

  “Thank you. But it’s still embarrassing.”

  “You have nothing to be embarrassed about,” he said. “I see some real doozies all the time. Seriously, it’s cool. Don’t worry about it.”

  “You’ll have to tell me about some of those sometime,” I said, shocked at myself. Here I was, hungover to hell, looking like someone had beat me up with a broom covered in lipstick and mascara, flirting with the man. I had no shame.

  “Maybe I should,” he said and grinned. Something stirred in me with that grin that I wasn’t proud of. Nor was I proud of my attempt to suddenly develop X-ray vision, failure as I might have been.

  “Well, I really appreciate you bringing that to me,” I said. “Is there something I can get you? A drink or anything?”

  “Actually,” he said, “I was kind of hoping I could bring you out for brunch.”

  “What?” I asked, sure I’d missed something somewhere.

  “Brunch,” he repeated. “I know a place that will help that hangover. I swear by it.”

  I hesitated. I looked like hell, and yet he seemed undeterred. How was that possible?

  “You know what? Give me twenty minutes,” I said.

  “Sure. I’ll go wait down in the lobby.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be right down.”

  “Okay then,” he said, smiling. Then he walked out of the door, and I shut it behind him, breathing a heavy sigh. Was this really happening? If it was, I needed to get clean. Fast.

  Stripping off my clothes with lightning speed, I ran to the shower and turned it on. I had no time to shave, so leggings or pants of some type were going to have to be the order of the day, and my primary concern was not smelling like stale beer. With my hair still wet and tossed into a bun, I threw on some slacks and a cute blouse and some sensible shoes for walking around. Then I grabbed my purse and headed downstairs.

  Matt was waiting on me in the lobby, just as he said he would be, and he smiled when I came off the elevator.

  “I was worried you were ghosting me,” he said.

  “Sorry, tried to get the hair to dry. No such luck.”

  “Well, you look fantastic anyway. Are you okay for a little walk, or would you rather drive?”

  “I’m fine walking,” I said. “Anything to get rid of the calories from last night.”

  He laughed. “As if you need that.”

  I smiled shyly as he stepped beside me, and we walked out of the lobby and into the bright Portland early afternoon.

  Brunch was fantastic, and he was spot-on about it being just the cure for hangovers. The all-day breakfast place was the kind of spot that I never would have gone to in LA. It was trendy enough, sure, but my parents would have pitched a fit if I had been photographed eating somewhere that didn’t require a standing reservation or couture fashion. Hell, just the fact that I was actively eating in a public place was bad enough. Mother always said ladies ate at home.

  Besides the good food, the company was pretty great, too. Matt was easy to talk to, and while I actively avoided bringing up subjects like the ones I had cried to him last night about, the ones we did speak of were fun.

  “So, you and your brother moved here to open the bar and, what, just stayed?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Matt said, between stuffing forkfuls of a combination of waffles and fried chicken in his mouth. It was the most delectable thing I had ever seen put on a plate, and I made sure that I would come back here soon to order it, even if I had to hide away in a corner and eat it by myself. “There are five of us, and the other three were all married with kids. Tom, like I said, runs a software company in Frisco. So, that left Jordan and I. Hannah ended up coming along when she and Jordan announced she was pregnant.”

  “That’s so cool,” I said. “I still can’t believe she just up and left her previous life. She’s my inspiration.”

  “She’s pretty cool,” Matt said. “She makes Jordan happy, which is the only thing that mattered to me. But she was really cool and slid in easily at the bar, too. You’d think she’d been waiting tables her whole life. She’s a natural.”

  “She’s always been good at anything she decided to do,” I said. “Unlike me. I tend to get lost in my own mind.”

  “What is it you want to do?” Matt asked. Unlike every time I had heard that in my life before, there was no judgment to it. No expectation that they already knew what I should do and were waiting to convince me how much better that would be. Just curiosity at what it was I thought I should be doing.

  “I really want to pursue journalism,” I said. “I really like finding out everything about something and then creating a story to tell people about it. I did a lot of it in school, but the expectation for me was not to go have a career on my own, so I never pursued it.”

  “You should,” Matt said, not a whiff of sarcasm in his voice. “Journalism is a noble career. If it’s what makes you happy, you should go for it.”

  I grinned in spite of myself and poked at the fruit salad on my plate. I was trying to be ladylike and had only eaten the eggs and toast along with the fruit, but the more I looked at his plate, the more jealous I became.

  “Well, I am stuffed,” he said. “This place makes the single best chicken and waffles I’ve had since I visited South Carolina years ago. Do you want a bite?”

  I was struck by the situation. I knew with my upbringing that I should decline politely.

  But seriously, fuck my upbringing.

  “I’d love to try it,” I said. “Scoot it over.”

  When brunch was over, I thanked Matt for bringing me and tried to insist on him not paying for it. He did anyway. It was a sweet gesture, and he walked me back to the hotel as we chatted amiably about some of the hidden treasures of Portland he’d found and thought I should know. When we got to the lobby, I heard my name shouted from across it and looked up to see Hannah. She ran forward and gave me a hug.

  “Hey,” I said. “I didn’t know you were coming over. Matt brought me my purse, and we went to brunch.”

  “Oh,” Hannah said. “You went to brunch?”

  “Uh-huh,” Matt said. “And with that, I am heading out. I’ll see you at the bar Hannah. Chloe, it was fun. I hope I see you again soon.”

  “Bye, Matt,” I called as he walked out and then turned to Hannah, who had her eyebrow cocked. “I don’t want to hear it,” I said. “It was just brunch.”

  “Fine, fine,” she said. “Well, if you are done ogling my brother-in-law, I’d like to take you to get a new phone.

  I scoffed. “I was not ogling him,” I protested, knowing I was smiling as I said it. How could I not ogle?

  Hanna just laughed. “Come on, let’s find you a phone and get you on our family plan.”

  “Are you sure about that?” I asked. “I use a lot of data.”

  “So does Jordan,” Hannah said. “That’s why we have unlimited. Come on, I might upgrade mine while we’re there, too. We can get matching pink ones like we did when we were teenagers.”

  “The razors!” I exclaimed, bringing back fond memories of my very first phone, a flip phone from ages back.

  “Exactly. Now come on,” she said, offering her arm. I linked my arm with hers, and we left the lobby, heading deeper into town.

  5

  Matt

  It had been a few days since I’d
dropped Chloe off at her hotel and gotten “the look” from Hannah about it. Thankfully, she hadn’t said anything, and apparently Jordan either didn’t know or was also keeping quiet. I was grateful for that at least, since having to explain that to my mother would have been difficult.

  While staying with me, Mom had been touring some of Portland and had met up with Chloe and Hannah for lunch at one point while Jordan and I were working. It was nice having Mom around, much to my surprise, since she didn’t bug me anymore about settling down, and there was always food sitting in the fridge. Little things that she knew were my favorite, like her lemon bars and a giant bowl of her pesto sauce.

  When it was time to see her off, I was actually kind of sad about it. I sometimes forgot how much I missed Astoria and being home. I greatly enjoyed Portland and had no intention of leaving, but it was nice to get a taste of the home I’d grown up in. As she drove away, I still had a little bit of time left before my evening shift and decided to go get a cup of coffee.

  I wasn’t the biggest coffee drinker in the world, but occasionally the desire would strike for something full of cream and sugar and heavily caffeinated. There was a coffee shop down the street from the bar that Hannah liked a lot, so I decided to head there and bring back a couple of cups for everyone. As I made my way across the street to where the doors were, they opened, and a familiar pair of eyes met mine.

  “Lauren?” I asked in somewhat disbelief.

  “Oh my God, Matt, how are you?” Lauren asked, reaching over to give me a friendly hug. She was flanked by two suspicious-looking women who I vaguely recognized as friends of hers that never liked me.

  “I’m good,” I said, “just grabbing some coffee before my shift. You?”

  “Wedding planning date, actually,” she said, beaming.

  I forced out a smile. “Oh wow, congratulations,” I said, hoping I was exuding enough enthusiasm. The two women on either side of her seemed satisfied and grinned.

  Lauren and I had dated for just a few months before we both called it off. There was no animosity or bad feelings. No fights or disagreements. Just two people who clicked enough to have fun, but not enough to become a couple. After two or three months of seeing each other rather regularly, we kind of petered out, and one day I awoke to a text message that was almost word for- word what I would have typed to her. I hadn’t seen her since.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I have to run, though. It’s been great seeing you.”

  “You too,” I said as she waved and walked away toward the parking lot.

  When she was out of view, I opened the door of the coffee shop and went inside, battling with myself on how I felt about it all.

  As I sat down at one of the tiny tables, waiting for the coffees to be made, I thought about Lauren and her upcoming wedding. My feelings weren’t hurt, I knew that. I didn’t have some long-pining love for her or anything. There were no worries about what we could have had or what we’d missed out on. I was genuinely happy for her. She was a good person, and she deserved to be happy.

  But there was a nagging sensation I couldn’t get rid of. Part of it was loneliness, I guessed. As much as I professed otherwise, it was there, always somewhere in the back of my mind. I was always a little lonely, especially now that Jordan had Hannah. Also, she had found her partner right after dating me, and here I was still playing the field. Or at least, theoretically playing the field. It had been a while since I had been on what I would refer to as a date.

  As a matter of fact, I hadn’t even really been looking. Chloe had been the first girl I’d really noticed since Lauren and I split up. I shook that thought off. Chloe wasn’t an option, so there was no need to bring her into all that. We had a perfectly fine, friendly time, and that was that.

  Still, I was alone, and everyone else was with someone, and I wondered how long I could keep that life up for. My apartment being my place of solitude was one thing. My life being full of solitude was something completely different.

  The barista called my name, and I grabbed the coffees, heading back to the bar with them in one of the little cardboard containers. When I got in, Hannah’s eyes lit up, and she came around the bar to greet me and take hers out of the box.

  “You have no idea,” she said. “I have been craving their coffee for days.”

  “Well, why didn’t you get any?” I asked.

  “Trying to limit her caffeine intake,” Jordan said, coming up to grab his. “Otherwise, it passes on to the baby.”

  “She’s up enough as it is,” Hannah said.

  “I can imagine,” I said. “Well, you’ve got the whole evening shift to work it off with us tonight, right?”

  “Right,” Hannah said. “So, bombs away.”

  Hannah took a big swig of her coffee and shuddered.

  “Good?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “That’s the good stuff.”

  I laughed and shook my head.

  “You alright, man?” Jordan asked, catching me by surprise.

  “What, me?” I asked. “Yeah, I’m good. Why?”

  “I don’t know. Something looked off,” he said, shrugging. “I know having Mom at your place for a few days had to be a bit stressful.”

  “It was fine actually. Nice to have some home-cooked food for a couple days.”

  “Well if you got yourself a –”

  “Don’t even say it,” I cut him off with a raised palm. With that, Jordan held up his hands in mock surrender and walked away, sipping his coffee.

  I went into the kitchen, hoping to be inspired. Humming a song I’d heard on the radio earlier, I pulled out my knives, grabbed the cutting board and a bowl, and began chopping up onions. I was going to figure out Mom’s pesto if it killed me, and one of these days it was going on the menu.

  The bar was pretty chill that evening, leaving me to do more thinking about Lauren and the random meeting with her than I wanted to. I disappeared for most of the evening into the kitchen, working on dishes and sending them out in record time, but coming no closer to figuring out the secret to the pesto. It was almost quiet enough that I could hear the cocktail waitresses take the orders from my service window and get started on the dish before I even got the ticket.

  I put another ticket up and waited for Hannah to come back and give me a new one when I saw her make her way back empty-handed. She walked into the kitchen, exchanging her tray for a new one, and sat down for a moment in one of the chairs I kept back there.

  “Bit slow out there tonight,” she said.

  “Yeah.” I leaned against the wall.

  “Oh, I wanted to tell you thank you for what you did for Chloe. She really appreciated it and wanted me to tell you how thankful she was.”

  “Tell her it was nothing,” I said, wondering if that was the truth or not. “I’ve been there before. I’ve had those nights where all I wanted was to forget and destress and I went a bit too far. If it hadn’t been for Jordan, I don’t know if I would have made it.”

  “Well, she was very thankful anyway,” she said.

  “Good. Glad I could help.”

  Jordan walked over from behind the bar and put his elbows on the serving window. I glanced behind him and saw Cris easily handling the group there.

  “Speaking of Chloe, you won’t believe this,” she said.

  “What happened?” Jordan asked.

  “Her parents cut her off.”

  “What?” Jordan said, elongating the vowel sound in a funny way.

  “Yeah, she had one of the credit cards with her name on it but on their account. She was paying for her car with it, and she got a call this morning saying it didn’t go through.”

  “Wow,” Jordan said.

  “Is she okay?” I asked, suddenly realizing that I was genuinely concerned. “Does she have a way to get around?”

  “She’s okay for right now,” Hannah said, pausing only for a second before she said it. “Chloe was pretty smart about finding ways to have her own independence. She created a
n account for herself years ago and would do cash advances and just deposit them into the bank so they couldn’t trace the money. It was how she ended up paying for her journalism classes in school.”

  “That’s pretty resourceful,” I said.

  “She said she has enough to pay off the rest of the car and keep the hotel for a little bit, but she’s going to need income sometime soon.”

  “Perfect,” Jordan said, surprising me. I turned to him, and he shrugged. “Remember Sarah? The girl we hired a month ago to waitress? She just quit.”

  “No way. She seemed like she enjoyed being here,” I said.

  “She did. Or at least she said she did. But she decided she was going to go back home to Toronto,” Jordan said.

  “That’s where that accent was. It was Canadian,” Hannah said. “I never really talked to her long enough to find out anything about her.”

  “She was nice,” Jordan said. “A little ditzy, but nice. If Chloe can waitress, she can come work here.”

  “That would be perfect,” Hannah said. Suddenly, Jordan turned to me and hit me lightly on the arm.

  “That is if you’re okay with it,” he said. “I know you like to discuss new hires and stay in the loop. Is hiring Chloe alright with you?”

  I didn’t even flinch.

  “Yeah. That’s good with me. Besides, this helps Hannah take care of family. That’s too important to pass up.”

  “Then I’ll tell her,” Hannah said. “She’s going to be so happy!”

  6

  Chloe

  Black shirt. Black slacks. Black sneakers?

  Ugh.

  It wasn’t like I was a fashion expert or that I was conceited about how I looked or anything. I just never really thought about the fact that waitstaff never wore color. It made sense in a way—the job wasn’t really about the person, it was about service. And stains were harder to see on black, which I guessed happened a lot. But the all-black aesthetic just seemed depressing.