The Marriage Contract

by Natasha L. Black

  “Lord, it has been thirty years almost,” Mom said. “Where does the time go? You were such a cute little boy. Five years old and full of energy.”

  She sighed the happy, wistful sigh of remembrance that she always did when she thought about me and my brothers being young.

  “Still here,” I said. “Just older and less cute.”

  “Stop that,” she said. “You are as beautiful as the day you were born.”

  “Anyway,” I said, wanting to move her along, “What’s going on with Mrs. Rizzo?”

  “Well, she has a daughter—do you remember her? Little Alicia?” she asked. The name didn’t ring a bell.

  “No, not really,” I said. “Was she my age?”

  “A little younger,” Mom said. “She’s thirty now. And single.”

  “Ah,” I said, realization creeping in.

  “She just came back to Astoria,” Mom continued, blowing right past my obvious catching on. “Catalina said she was trying to find her a nice boy to go out to dinner with, and I thought I would set you two up on a date.”

  “I see,” I said, shaking my head. “I appreciate it, but I’m going to have to pass.”

  “Oh, but you don’t know her,” Mom said. “She’s the sweetest girl. I ran into them at the grocery store, and she is very, very pretty. Long blonde hair like her mother. Very sweet and petite and respectful. You should go out with her. Just to dinner.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I don’t need to be set up, Mom. Thank you, though.”

  “Matthew,” she said, “you aren’t getting any younger, my son. I just want to see you happy. This girl is so sweet and nice; why don’t you go on a tiny little date with her? Catalina said she remembers you from when she was little. I think she had a crush! It would be so cute.”

  I sighed. “No thanks, Mom. I’m two hours away. Besides, I don’t need to be set up right now.”

  I winced when I said it. I’d given her an opening.

  “Right now?” she asked. “Does that mean there’s someone occupying your time? Are you not telling me something?”

  “I have to go, Mom,” I said. “Break’s over. I’ve got to get back to work.”

  “You would tell your dear old mother if you were seeing someone, wouldn’t you? It would make my heart so happy to hear that,” she said.

  “I love you, Mom. Got to go. Goodbye,” I said, hanging up. I took a deep, long gulp of the beer, emptying it before tossing it into the recycling bin.

  The proposition was looking a whole lot better now. It was silly when it was separated from the situation, but all I needed was one call with Mom to remind me just how ridiculous she could get.

  10

  Chloe

  I hated having to pack.

  It was my last day at the hotel, not by choice. The card I used to reserve the room had been my parents’, and while I still had a little bit of money to fall back on with my secret account, I couldn’t live in the hotel forever. My first check from the restaurant had come in, and Hannah had split some tips with me, but it was going to be a few weeks until I had enough money to strike out on my own and also be able to feed myself, so Hannah and Jordan offered for me to come stay with them.

  It was really sweet of them, and I appreciated it more than they knew, but it wasn’t ideal. They had a baby and it felt intrusive. They were newlyweds with an infant, and there I was, a pampered adult coming to crash in their apartment. But my options weren’t many.

  When I finally had everything packed up, I went downstairs into the lobby and checked out. Then I hopped in the car and GPS’d the address to Hannah and Jordan’s apartment building. They didn’t live terribly far away, only a few minutes in traffic, and I got there not long after, having made only one wrong turn and having to circle back around.

  Hannah met me at the curb and helped me unload the car. When we got into their apartment, I felt safe, like I was actually in a place where I could breathe easily, for the first time in weeks. The guest room, which I believed had been turned into a nursery, had been completely redone just for me. Hannah always loved redecorating, and she apparently had been at it in the two days since we decided I would stay there. The walls were light pink, but there were strands of white Christmas lights instead of a lamp, just like I had when we were kids. My parents had hated that, but it was my favorite thing in the world, and Hannah and I used to shut off the overhead light and stare at them like they were stars.

  Other than the lights, she had put in a small bed, a nightstand, a dresser, a desk, and a television. If I had to guess, she had been planning on getting all of those things anyway and might have had them in storage from when she moved to Portland herself. I appreciated the attempt to make me feel at home anyway and gave her a big hug as I set my stuff down.

  “This is wonderful,” I said. “Thank you. I won’t be taking up your space for long.”

  “Nonsense,” she said. “You are family. Jordan and I both agreed you can stay here as long as you need to. I have to get up in the night to nurse Claire anyway, so it’ll be easier having her in our room.”

  “Thank you, again. Both of you. I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have you.”

  Tears formed at the corner of my eyes, and she wrapped me up in another big hug. I cried softly into her shoulder while she consoled me for a moment and then pulled me away to stare into my face.

  “Come on,” she said. “No more tears. This is going to be fun! Let’s go get something to eat in the kitchen.”

  It was nice to have a full kitchen again. I had only a couple of things in the tiny fridge at the hotel, and I shoved them into hers altogether. Considering my meals at the hotel were all either ordered in or cooked in a microwave, I looked forward to a lunch at a dining room table, cooked on a stove. It was a little sliver of home. The parts of home I enjoyed, at least.

  Jordan was coming out of the bedroom while Hannah cooked, and he smiled at me as he sat down. Claire was asleep in their room, and the door was left open so they could hear her if she cried. I peeked around the corner and could see her sleeping like an angel. A soft smile spread across my lips.

  “I’ll bring her out when she’s awake,” Hannah said.

  “She’s just so pretty,” I said. “It’ll be nice to hang out with her. Oh, that reminds me, I have the night off, so if you guys want to cancel the babysitter, I can look after her.”

  “Oh, you don’t have plans?” Jordan asked. “We wouldn’t want you to feel obligated.”

  “No, not at all,” I said. “I’d love to help.”

  From the bedroom, the baby started crying, and Hannah looked over to Jordan while she cooked. He nodded and got up to go get her. A few moments later, while I was stuffing my face with the fantastic chicken Caesar salad Hannah made, he came back, baby in his arms.

  “Hey, everybody,” Jordan half whispered. “Somebody didn’t want to stay napping with all the excitement.”

  I held out my hands for her, and Jordan grinned. He brought her over and sat her in my arms, and I looked down into her tiny, happy face.

  “Hello there, little Claire,” I said. “You are just the cutest.”

  It was nice holding my little baby cousin, and I was sure I was going to enjoy playing with her and spending time with her as she grew up. However, it did make me think about my future. About how I wasn’t sure I could ever be a mom, especially now. Not with the things I wanted to do or the sudden upheaval of my life and the destitution I currently found myself in. It was just too much.

  “Are you sure you don’t mind?” Hannah asked. “If you’re really okay with it, I’ll call Greta. But only if you’re sure. We don’t want you to feel like you are becoming a live-in nanny or anything.”

  “Seriously, it’s fine,” I said. “I want to.”

  “Thank you, Chloe,” Jordan said. “Hey, babe?” he asked, looking at Hannah. “We only have an hour before we need to be there. Why don’t you let me get the dishes and you get ready?”

 
“Okay,” she said, wiping her hands with the dish towel. Then she came over and pressed a kiss to little Claire’s head and then another one to the top of mine. “Thank you again, Chloe.”

  “No problem.” I smiled.

  It was about seven, and little Claire was raring to go. She was a happy baby and very babbly. I enjoyed playing with her and just holding her in general, but she seemed to want to lie on the floor and occasionally scoot across the carpet. The way their living room was set up, it was three couches that created a kind of natural barrier so the baby couldn’t escape if someone was watching her.

  I flipped on the television for sound and put on a cooking show while she wiggled about. I pulled open my phone to scroll through my newsfeed for a moment when I heard a knock on the door. I expected it was likely Greta, who might not have gotten the memo that she wasn’t needed for the night, but then realized she would have had to have been there much earlier. When I got to the door, I peeped through the hole and saw, much to my surprise, Matt standing on the other side. I opened it for him, and he smiled.

  “Hey,” he said. “Mind if I come in?”

  “Sure. Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, everything’s fine. You got babysitting duties tonight?” he asked.

  “Yup,” I said. “Your niece is adorable.”

  “She is,” he said. “Where is she?”

  I led him back around to the open floor between the couches, and he sat down beside her, tickling her side and in general getting her attention. My ovaries nearly wept at the sight.

  “So, I wanted to talk about our idea again, if it was okay,” he said.

  “Sure.” I sat back down on the couch to watch them. He picked her up and was making silly faces at her as she giggled.

  “I got a call from my mom, and I think it’s a great idea. I know we said we’d take a few days to think about it, but I think I know. After that call especially.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe,” I said. “It could be a fun idea, I just don’t know if I can pull off being a wife, you know? It’s a lot of pressure, and living like that is such a huge change, I don’t know if it would work.”

  “Well, you don’t have to think about it that way,” he said. “It’s only a marriage on paper. We could keep living our own separate lives if we wanted. I mean, we already work together and have different days off usually, so we could go kind of be our own people.”

  I nodded and watched as he laughed with the baby when she gurgled. It was so adorable watching them together that it was pushing me to think about things I really didn’t think I should be thinking about.

  The idea was enticing, at least conceptually. It would be good to use to get Mom and Dad to maybe lighten up a little and have some return to a relationship with them without them trying to force Adam on me. It would help Matt out with his mom. Plus, I liked being around him, and if we decided to have me stay with him while we were carrying on our charade, at least I would be staying with someone that had a big apartment, was fun to be around, and I wouldn’t feel like I was intruding on the lives of new parents.

  But it also came with a ton of potential worries, too. What if we were doing really well right now, but a couple of weeks into our situation, we ended up hating each other? Being in close quarters with someone did that often, and if it happened with us, it would cause me problems with the job that I needed to survive and might even cause problems between Hannah and Jordan.

  And what if one of us caught feelings and the other didn’t? He mentioned possibly seeing other people. What if he brought a girl home and I reacted poorly to it? There were so many situations and scenarios to think and worry about that it almost seemed overwhelming.

  But then, he picked up little Claire and zoomed her around like she was flying while he lay on his back on the carpet. She giggled and drooled, and he laughed. I smiled at how silly he was and how cute it was to see him with his niece.

  “I think, maybe, I still need a little more time,” I said. “It’s just a lot to think about, and I don’t want to rush into it if I’m not a hundred percent comfortable.”

  He looked over at me and smiled, his niece still at arm’s length above him, giggling away as if it were the best thing in the world.

  “I get it,” he said. “Absolutely no problem. You take as much time as you need.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Thank you. Now, I think the little one might have had enough excitement for now. Her mama said she is supposed to be in bed at seven-thirty.”

  “Aww,” he said, pulling Claire to his chest. “But we were having so much fun.”

  11

  Matt

  I was up pretty early and proud of myself. Tooling around the apartment would have been my normal routine, playing video games or scrolling through social media. But today, I felt productive. And in a good mood. Maybe it was actually getting eight hours of sleep or possibly that I had gone a couple of days without alcohol or carbs completely by accident that did it. Regardless, I was feeling alright and spent much of the day cleaning and rearranging things in my apartment.

  The bachelor pad motif in the living room was old. Not just that I was getting older and it was more suited for guys in their early twenties, but it was actually old. Quite a few pieces of the furniture were things I’d brought from my place in Astoria and were at least a decade old. The neon beer sign was older than that. I’d had that in my bedroom at Mom’s house when I was a teen.

  So, I spent much of the remainder of the morning at a furniture store, picking out bookcases and a desk and other things to replace the cheap particle board stuff that I was using currently. Some of the pieces I picked were designed for me to build them, which meant I had something to do in the afternoon before work. The others were loaded onto a truck and sent to my place within thirty minutes of me arriving there.

  I didn’t bother trying to list and sell the old stuff, dragging them out into the hallway with the intent to stick them by the dumpster. Instead, the college-aged neighbor across from me saw the transition and asked if he could have them. So, things just moved from one apartment to the other with little fuss. He was a good kid and had barely any furniture other than a love seat, so I was happy to give them to him for free, even when he tried to pay me. In return, he offered for me to come over and watch a wrestling pay-per-view in a few weeks, which was more than enough.

  Feeling like I had updated my life, done a good deed, and made an actual friendship out of an acquaintance in one morning, I happily sat down in my living room with a couple of heavy boxes and Swiss instructions. I was knee-deep in translating words with lots of umlauts with my phone when I heard a knock on the door. Figuring it was my neighbor, I just called for them to come in.

  “Matt?” Jordan called back from the doorway. He was sticking his head in and seeing the chaos, but I was on the floor, blocked by the couch. I could just barely see him over the top of it, and he hadn’t gotten a glimpse of me yet.

  “Down here,” I called, and he walked up, instantly bursting into laughter.

  “Okay, so should I just assume you aren’t coming in tonight?”

  “No, no, I’ll be there,” I said. “I thought I’d be done with all this before then, but I will settle with just having one of them done.”

  “So, you’ll be late, then,” Jordan said.

  “Someone has jokes today,” I teased.

  “All this aside,” Jordan said, “I actually had a kind of proposition for you.”

  “I told you, I am not going to strip, no matter how well it would improve our clientele.”

  “Well, there goes my dreams of having the worst strip club in America,” he retorted. “No, banana brains, I was going to ask if you wanted to go in together for a gift for Mom.”

  I stopped screwing in the klungerhousen or whatever the hell it was and turned to him.

  “That would be awesome,” I said. “I haven’t been able to think of anything to get her.”

  “Same here. I’ve got nothing yet,” he said,
sitting down and picking up my instruction sheet, flipping it over in his hands.

  “Well, not one of these,” I said. “They are beautiful when they are put together, but I have no idea what I’m doing right now.”

  “Good to know,” he said. “But no, if you have an idea, let me know. We will figure it out.”

  There was a moment of silence as I concentrated on holding one screw in place on one side and twirling it tighter on the other. I grumbled a curse when I dropped it, but Jordan got down to help me keep it in place, and I got it on.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “No problem,” Jordan said, sitting with his back on the base of the couch. “So, it looks like you and Chloe seem to be hitting it off.”

  And there it was. I wasn’t going to get out of it. He knew Chloe and I had been seeing each other outside of work. What he didn’t know was our ruse. I felt bad deceiving my brother, but I knew he would tattle if I told him what was going on. If he was going to know something, it had to be in the story. I could tell him the whole thing later.

  If there was anything to tell.

  “Yeah,” I said, somewhat enthusiastically. I decided to roll with it. If I had to lie to him at some point about this whole thing, I might as well start right then. “We have.”

  “Is there something to that?”

  “I think so,” I said, and he laughed in surprise.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I mean, nothing is official yet, so keep quiet, but yeah, we’re really enjoying each other’s company. A lot.”

  “Well, damn. No wonder you wanted to redecorate,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  He laughed and then realized I wasn’t kidding.

  “Because your apartment looked like it was one a woman couldn’t spend more than a night in, that’s why,” he said. “You’re growing up.”

  I shrugged. No need to argue with him.

  “Eh, maybe,” I said. “I’ve just never felt this way before about somebody, you know? I want to be a better person. Maybe impress her a little, I don’t know.”