The Marriage Contract

by Natasha L. Black

  “Great,” I returned her smile.

  “Gotta deliver these drinks,” she said, before she skipped away. I watched her go with a feeling of accomplishment and adrenaline running through me. Maybe my dream and my fantasy weren’t so much fiction as they were predictions. I normally didn’t believe in wishing things into existence, but if it could work, I wasn’t going to turn it down either.

  8

  Chloe

  I had the night off, my first, and I had no idea what to do with it. If I were still in LA, I’d be in a club or doing some other social function that other people who had wealthy parents did. All too often I found myself at them, bored out of my mind and watching the clock. For as much as some other people seemed to enjoy wasting their parents’ money on liquor and skimpy dresses to dance in, I just wanted to go home, get in bed, and read articles by my favorite journalists.

  That was much more my scene.

  At any rate, I felt like I might just do what I normally wanted to and spend the whole day and night watching trashy TV and catching up on some investigative reporting. It wasn’t sexy or exciting, but it would at least let me relax a little.

  The problem was, I didn’t really feel like relaxing. I wanted to do something. I didn’t know exactly what, but something. The problem was Hannah was working the evening shift, and I didn’t know anyone else within a few hours of Portland. What constituted for friends, mostly just other rich people who I spent time with because we ended up at the same functions, were all in LA and would have zero interest coming to Portland. I could call Hannah and do something before she headed into work, but that would only be a little bit of time. The rest of the evening was going to be long and boring.

  I sighed and was about to go change into pajamas and start my Old Lady Evening at the late hour of one o’clock in the afternoon when my phone made pinged a notification. I looked down to see that I had a text message from a number I didn’t recognize, and I opened it. It was from Matt. He was asking if he could call me.

  I typed back that he could and wondered what was up. Maybe someone called out and they needed me to come in after all. I waited for just a few seconds, entering his name into my phone during that time, until the phone rang. I answered it on the first ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, Chloe,” Matt said. “Do you have tonight off?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but I’m not married to it. If you need me to come in, that’s fine. Just give me about fifteen minutes and I’ll head down there.”

  “Oh, no,” he said, sounding like he was holding back a laugh. “Not the bar. I was actually calling to see if you wanted to come to my place and watch some movies and grab dinner. I have the night off, too.”

  “Oh.” I knew there was probably more surprise in my voice than was cool, and I hurried to follow it up lest he think I was put off by his invitation. “Yeah, that would be great,” I laughed. “I don’t know anyone here, and I was just going to watch TV and do a whole lot of nothing as it was. It would be better with company.”

  “Awesome,” he said, sounding happy. “Come on over whenever you like. I’ll be hanging around. If there’s something you want to eat, text me.”

  “Okay. See you in a little while,” I said.

  I hung up and stared at the phone. Was that real? Did that actually happen?

  The first thought I had was that I had nothing to wear. The only clothes I’d packed were lounging clothes and a handful of things I thought might work as workout clothes or pajamas. Nothing cute. I needed to find something cute, and I needed to find it fast. I opened the contacts in my phone and hit the button for one of the three numbers saved.

  “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.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked, noticing that my words slurred a bit. The cheap wine had turned into a couple of bottles, and then had turned into mixed drinks. Matt might have gotten out of cooking that evening but running a bar haunted him. He didn’t seem like he minded too much, though.

  “Just my mom,” he said. “Hannah must have told Jordan you were coming over, and he told her. She’s on my case again about being the only one not married.”

  “Ha,” I said, really feeling the liquor doing a number of fantastic things for my mood. “That sucks for you.”

  Matt wasn’t laughing, and I brought the glass away from my lips to see him staring at me, a goofy, half-drunken look on his face.

  “We should just get married,” he said and laughed.

  “Oh my God, that’s a great idea!” I exclaimed, almost falling off the couch as I sat up too quickly and the world spun around me a bit. “Seriously, my parents would have to back off the whole Adam thing if I was married! And your family would leave you alone. It would work for both of us.”

  “It would be funny,” he said. “Me and Jordan marrying a pair of cousins.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “We should totally do that.”

  He laughed again and finished his drink. Then he looked over at mine and saw it was mostly empty.

  “One more?” he said. “I know it’s getting late.”

  “No more of the mixed drink,” I said. “But I’ll tell you what. I’ll call the rideshare, and you pour us some shots. We can do those until it gets here.”

  “You’re on,” he said. “You have no idea what you’re in for.”

  “Oh, but I do,” I said. “I’m used to shots with kids who do nothing with their life but drink and throw money around. I can put you under the table before I leave.”

  It turned out that I could not, in fact, put anything under the table but a shot glass I dropped. When the alert came in that the car was there, I said goodbye and thanked him for a fun time. I headed out, feeling great, and got into the car. When I got back to the hotel, the only thing I could think about was how fun it would be married to Matt.

  9

  Matt

  Asking Chloe if she wanted to pick up lunch before work was a bit of a risk, but it paid off when she texted back that she did. I didn’t want her to think I was pressuring her as her boss or anything, but I enjoyed spending time with her, and we made each other laugh. She didn’t seem to object, so I headed over and waited in the lobby until she came down.

  She was cute as hell in her tight black jeans and heavy-metal T-shirt. I was pretty sure the band was older than she was by like two decades or more, but I didn’t care if she knew a single song. She was hot. I had to shake the feeling off and concentrate on keeping my cool as she walked toward me. She was carrying a small bag with her, and I figured she had her work clothes in it.

  “After you,” I said, opening the door for her and following her through.

  “So, are we heading to that Italian place?” she asked.

  “Nah, I thought we could grab a sandwich at a little place down the street. Great little hole-in-the-wall deli that only the locals know.”

  We went out onto the street, and as we walked, I kept glancing over at her. I couldn’t stop looking at her. The way she smiled, and the way the sun sparkled off her eyes made me want to pay attention to her instead of the road we were crossing. I very easily could have ended up as flat as a pancake under an eighteen-wheeler if I wasn’t careful.

  The deli was packed, as usual, and we made our sandwich orders before sitting down at a rare empty table. I grabbed our drinks, and we chatted casually about nothing in particular while I worked up the courage to talk about what I asked her to lunch about. She was happily, and adorably, sipping on the straw of a cherry soda, and I figured then was as good as ever.

  “So, our silly idea,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said, her eyebrows rising in recognition. That was a good sign. Part of me worried she had been inebriated enough not to remember it. “Our idea.”

  “It’s insane,” I said, putting it out there first, “but I kind of like it. It would really solve both of our problems.”

  I waited for her to laugh or to dismiss it as a joke, but she didn’t. Instead, she seemed to turn her full attention to it, putting her elbows on the table and her eyes lighting up with excitement.

  “I agree,” she said, shocking me.

  I laughed, trying to keep from being too excited. “You sure you would want to be ‘hitched’ to me?” I asked, doing the finger quotes in the air.

  “I figure if the marriage is going to be fake anyway, might as well be with someone who’s decent.”

  We paused as we stared at each other over the table. Both of us were grinning, and I felt like neither of us breathed for a long, long minute.

  “Are we really going to do this?” I asked. My voice had dropped only a little, but the seriousness was there, just behind the whimsy.

  “Maybe we should take a couple days, see how we feel about it,” she said. “Not because I don’t think it’s a good idea, just to make sure neither of us suddenly realize we’re insane.”

  “Fair,” I said. “Okay. A couple of days. No pressure.”

  “No pressure,” she repeated.

  “Here you go,” the man who ran the deli said as he approached our table. He placed both baskets with our sandwiches in front of us and a giant basket of fries along with it. I was thankful for him breaking the moment, and we dug into our sandwiches, returning to our conversations about nothing in particular while we ate.

  By the time we got to work, I couldn’t stop thinking about the idea. Chloe had gone right into the restroom to change, and when she came out, I was already in the kitchen doing prep work. I didn’t see her for much of the shift as it got busy early and, as it was a weekday, was full of folks coming in for dinner. By the time the dinner rush was over, it was wall-to-wall mozzarella sticks and French fry orders, and I never had much time to come out of the kitchen to do anything.

  My line cook was side by side with me, rolling through the orders with his music blaring. It helped that I didn’t have to talk to him and could just think about the idea while I worked. The more I thought about it, the more I started to see where it could work.

  Sure, it was deceitful, but I knew that when I went back to Astoria for Mom’s birthday, she would be right back to hounding me again. Birthdays always turned on the “before I die” switch for her, where she would guilt the single ones of us about how she wanted to make sure we were all with someone and stable before she kicked the bucket. Now there was only me to catch that lecture, and the last thing I wanted was that.

  Chloe and I could be married as far as either of our families knew and still pursue our own lives and our own stuff. I could keep my apartment of solitude or she could move in or I could help her get her own place. All options were on the table. The idea of having her live with me in the guest room was one that had its own appeal, but I didn’t want to let myself go down that road too far.

  I imagined family get-togethers where we would pretend to be married. It would take a little bit of acting, but I was game. We would also have to do some heavy-duty deception at work, since both Hannah and Jordan would have questions, but that would all resolve itself. We could claim we eloped and didn’t want a reception.

  It could work.

  It did not hurt that she was hot and funny and smart. The two of us having the obligation to spend time together certainly wasn’t the worst part of the deal. And, if she met someone or I met someone, we could always have an “amicable separation.”

>   Not that I thought I would be finding anyone. Not if I had a chance at spending my free time with Chloe.

  I took my break in the first lull of the evening and went outside to get some air. Passing by Hannah, who was heading back in, I had a little bit of privacy out there, and I sat down on the top step with a beer. Strictly speaking, drinking on the job was bad form, but the glass bottles I had in the kitchen with us were going out of date and either needed to be used or tossed since we had the vendor come in and restock us for customer use. I cracked it open and took a long sip. Nothing quite hit the spot on a hot day when I was sweating and tired like a good lager.

  My pocket started vibrating, and I pulled my phone out of it. The contact info said it was Mom, and I immediately worried something was wrong. I hit the Accept button and prepared for the worst.

  “Hey, Mom, is everything okay?” I asked, trying not to panic. She didn’t normally call in the middle of the evening, especially since she knew we were usually at work.

  “What? No,” Mom said, almost laughing on the other end. “Are you at work? I thought Jordan said you were off tonight.”

  I relaxed and sighed. “No, that was last night,” I said. “I happen to be on my break, though. Is there something you wanted to talk about?”

  “Well, if you have a few minutes, yes,” she said. “But only if I’m not interrupting your work.”

  “It’s fine, Mom. Spill it.”

  “Well, do you remember Mrs. Rizzo? From down the street? The blue house with the big American flag out front?” she asked.

  “Yes, Mom,” I said. “They always had good Halloween candy. Why?”

  “Oh that’s right, they did so love Halloween,” Mom said, getting sidetracked. “Remember when you dressed up as Batman? You wouldn’t take that costume off for weeks.”

  “Yes, Mom,” I said, grinning and shaking my head. “That was almost thirty years ago. Is there something more recent about Mrs. Rizzo I should know?”