by Vivian Wood
She waves an impatient hand. “Now that I’m looking at you, you’re wearing the same clothes as you had on last night—”
“We got married,” I blurt. Dumping the coffee into the coffee maker, I hit the button to start brewing. Then I turn to her, my cheeks pink. She is the perfect caricature of surprise right now, her eyes wide and her mouth forming an O of shock.
“You… you…” she stammers.
“Married your brother last night.” I wince at how formal that sounds. “We didn’t actually like… consummate or anything—”
Luna launches herself at me, her hug taking me by surprise. “You’re my sister for real now!” She tightens her embrace. “When you went through losing your family freshman year of college, I made myself a promise that I would make you part of my family.” She pulls back, her eyes bright. “I never expected you to actually join my family, though!”
And that’s it. The mention of my family makes me push out of her hug, turning dead eyed. “Don’t talk about my family.”
She bites her lip. “I know you don’t like to bring them up—”
“It was a mistake!” I start walking away from the kitchen, feeling all this anger building in my chest. “Marrying your brother… it was a fluke. Your brother knows it. I know it. We’ll get an annulment. End of story.”
And with that, I stalk out of the living room, livid. At Luca? Certainly. And at Luna, yes.
But mostly at myself.
Chapter Four
Luca
“So basically, an annulment and a divorce are different because…”
My attorney’s voice drones on through the speakerphone on my office desk. I have cobbled together a collection of awkward chairs in the dark little room, adding a desk that is buried somewhere under the avalanche of paperwork. My phone sits precariously on top.
Behind the scenes of The Attic is a mess, yeah. The office is a disaster, from the peeling black paint down to the fourth-hand furniture. It’s hard to find things in the cramped area back here. And don’t even get me started about the troubles of doing liquor inventory in the storage room. But just thinking about taking a day off of work to tackle all of it — and it would take a whole day at minimum, I think — the idea is just unbearable.
I lean forward in my chair, trying to pay attention to what my lawyer says. Pinching my brow, I reach for the bottle of aspirin that I keep in my desk drawer. Somehow, I am still fucking hungover.
And still married, it seems. I tried to get the paperwork back from the chapel and the lady in the office practically laughed me out of the damn place. So here I am Monday morning, trying to make head or tails of the marriage system.
“So what do you think?” he asks.
Drinking the last of the water from a huge bottle on my desk, I sigh. I toss the water bottle in the corner, on top of the already-overflowing recycling bin. “I’ll be honest with you, Dan. I have no idea what you just said. What I can tell you however is that Cate—”
“Is that the girl that you married?”
Wrinkling my brow, I frown. “Yeah. Cate is Catholic. So divorce is like… the last option. I don’t want to deal with explaining to her how much easier it would be. If you had met her, you would feel the same.”
On the other end, there is a moment of silence. “All right, Luca. Whatever you say. Unfortunately, annulling a marriage takes time… at the very least it will be a month from the day that we sign all the paperwork.”
I rock back in my chair, forgetting that its back is broken. I’m not a small person. So when I lean back and snap the chair’s back, all six foot three inches of me is thrown to the ground. Hitting the ground with a soft thump, I groan.
“Are you okay over there?” Bradford calls from the storage room. It’s the next room between here and the bar After that, the room opens up into the huge dance floor and the stage. Behind there are a few dressing rooms and a locker room for the staff.
“Yeah!” I call, dragging myself up. I refocus on the phone. “Are you still there?”
Dan clears his throat. “I am.”
Perching on one corner of my desk, I stare down intently at the phone. “When can we get the paperwork we would need?”
“Let me see… just looking at my calendar here…” He clears his throat again and there is the faint sound of papers being shuffled. “I think I could messenger over two sets of paperwork by Friday at noon.”
“Great,” I say. I’ve said that word so much in the last twenty four hours that it has ceased to have any meaning to me. “I’ll look for your packet to arrive.”
“There is just one more thing.”
Bradford pokes his head into the office, arching a brow. He’s carrying two cases of vodka and silently asking me something, but I hold up my hand to ask for five minutes. He huffs and vanishes from the doorway.
Where Owen, the third proprietor of this business is, no one knows.
“Of course there is,” I say.
Dan chuckles. “You’ll just have to pick a reason for the annulment. There’s a proscribed list that you have to choose from. Things like… are you related, is one of you mentally incapacitated, were you under duress… there’s some wiggle room for fraud…”
My breath leaves me in a whoosh. “Jesus. It’s not fraud or bigamy, that I know of. Maybe mental incapacitation…”
“If you can just let me know which, I can get the paperwork started.”
A loud crash comes from another room. “Shit. I’ll have to let you know later. I’ll text you, okay?”
“All right.”
I hang up, grinding my teeth. When I told my two best friends about our ‘wedding’ the morning after my little wedding fiasco, they laughed in my face. As a matter of fact, they are still laughing. I thought that would be the worst thing I had to face, but it looks like it’s not over yet.
Heading out of the office, I pass the storage room with its shelves stacked high with boxes of liquor, cups, and napkins. The hallway into the front of the house is narrow; I pass the iPad on the wall that’s supposed to stay charged so that employees can clock in. The charger lies on the floor and the iPad is dead.
Stooping to plug it back in, I sigh. My head is still fucking aching which isn’t helping things at all. Among the many bad decisions I made in Las Vegas, I regret giving myself a hangover almost as much as getting married.
When I poke my head around the corner and look down the bar, I don’t immediately see the cause of the crash. I see the gleaming copper-topped bar and the tall bar stools on one side. And on the other I see the bar fridges, the iPads that we use for cash registers, the towering display of liquor bottles…
And then I spot it. We usually keep our spare stemware and glasses in racks at the far end of the bar. Apparently not only has Bradford broken a glass, he has actually managed to rip one of the racks off the wall and tumble to the ground with it.
Shit.
Jogging over to where he is just picking himself up off the floor, I survey the scene critically. “Are you okay? Watch out for all that broken glass, man.”
Bradford brushes some glass out of his chin-length blond hair, pulling a face. “I’m okay. I just broke five hundred dollars of stemware though. Pulled that rack right out of the wall.” He sighs. “That rack took so much work to put up in the first place. Remember?”
Looking at where he ripped it off the wall, I nod slowly. “I do. That rack was the first piece of hardware we installed when we bought the place, I think.”
“Yeah. Aww, memories. We were just babies then.” He purses his lips.
I chuckle. “It was only three years ago.”
“Still!” he protests. He shakes his head. “Ugh. Look at this mess, would you?”
I wave him off. “Go home and change. This place needs a bar manager tonight but I’ll bet that whatever you were doing can wait until tomorrow. I’ll clean up this glass.”
“Are you sure?” he asks, wrinkling his face up at the mess.
“Yep.�
� I wave him off. “Go ahead. I’ll see you at…” I check my watch. “Around six?”
“Okay. I love you, never change, byeeee!” He manages to squeeze all three of his favorite phrases into a single breath as he disappears into the back hallway.
If I bring Cate on to work here, will that be a problem? I mean, it’s not ideal — ever since the second time I saw her, I have carried this distaste that I just don’t know how to shake.
I was driving an SUV packed to the gills with Bradford, Luna, and all the ski gear we would need for the weekend. We pulled up outside Cate’s shabby little house to wait for her to come out. When she finally emerged, she was obviously still in the middle of a full blown fight with her tired-looking mother. Cate stopped and turned on her mom when she was just steps from the SUV.
I tensed. Cate raised her voice. Her mother just listened, smiled sadly, and then forced a sweater into Cate’s hands. Cate shook her head but she allowed her mom to hug her. I turned away; my own parents couldn’t give a rat’s ass about Luna and I. They were too busy yachting in Greece to pay that kind of attention to us.
When she got in the car, Cate had the audacity to grumble about her mother being overbearing. God, she had no idea how precious that sort of relationship was. How when I was younger, I dreamed of having parents who cared about me even a little.
And Cate complained about her parents? No. No way.
Just like that, my brain jumped tracks. I might not have been nice before, but from then on I stopped pulling my punches. I tried to get Luna to see that she could pick a better friend than Cate, but to no avail.
So I deal. Or at least I did… until last weekend. How fucking stupid could I be?
Sighing, I go back to work.
Chapter Five
Luca
I’m sweeping up the last little bits of glass when a woman’s voice interrupts me. “Did you have an accident here?”
Stiffening, I look up. There is Madisyn Montgomery herself, looking as good as ever. With skin like rich brown mahogany and a spotless white dress that hugs every curve in just the right places, she looks utterly edible. She’s all smooth legs and toned arms as she takes off her sunglasses.
It’s too bad that she’s actually toxic.
My brows hunch. I’m a little bit at a loss for what to say to the woman. She gleefully announced our broken engagement on social media — without even bothering to inform me that we were done.
I only found out after the fact that she invested a good chunk of the money deposited in our joint account. And by invested, I mean she bought into a pyramid scheme. Not only that, but she bragged to her friends about how I was her personal ATM.
My fists tighten. Since I found out that bit, I’ve maintained a careful wall of silence, despite the fact that my ego was pretty bruised.
I end up just saying her name. “Madisyn…” I realize that I probably sound more than a little shocked at seeing her.
Pull it together, self.
She looks around the whole bar, putting her sunglasses inside her white leather arm bag. “You’ve redecorated. I like the black and gold motif. It reminds me of my hometown of New Orleans.” She titters, tilting her head and fake cheering. “Go Saints.”
I frown at her, leaning on my broom. “What are you doing here, Madisyn?”
She gives me her most saccharine smile. “I came to invite you personally.”
She’s playing a game. One where she holds the answers and she expects me to puzzle them out of her. I’m definitely not in the fucking mood for this.
“You have ten seconds to tell me what you are fucking talking about, Syn.” I rest the broom against the bar. “I’m still pissed at you for ending things like you did, by the way. And I would love to get the fifteen grand you owe me, by the way”
Madisyn has the decency to blush at that. “I’m sorry about that. Not the money, but the engagement ending. I’m especially sorry about announcing it on Instagram first. I just didn’t want the news to get out before I told people.”
I speak the language of Madisyn. What she means by that is she wanted the likes that poured in from all our friends when she declared us over. I narrow my eyes.
“Five seconds, Syn.”
She rolls her eyes and shifts back and forth on her stilettos. “Okay! Okay.” She fishes something out of her purse and hands it to me. I accept the plain piece of card stock from her, turning it over to read the calligraphy.
“Save The Date,” I read. I glance up at her, my brow drawing down. “Mr. Reginald Jackson and Miss Madisyn Montgomery would like you to reserve March 14th for their wedding day—“
I glance up at her again, confused. She pets her long dark hair and purses her lips, the look in her eyes saying eat your heart out.
“Syn, what the fuck is this?” I ask.
She smiles haughtily. “Reggie asked me to marry him and I said yes. I thought that you would prefer to be told in person. Apparently you like to be told big news.” She gives a pouty little shrug.
“I was under the impression that we weren’t done,” I growl. “That’s the pattern. You leave, you make a big deal about it on social media, then you sneak back in. I just deal with the blower to finances and social esteem. It’s been that way for four years, Madisyn.”
Syn flutters her eyelashes. “Well, this is me, telling you. It’s final this time. I’m really with Reggie. Look.” She flashes an enormous diamond ring at me, looking proud. “It’s two carats and princess cut, because Reggie says I’m his queen.”
It takes everything in me not to ball up the save the date invitation and throw it back in her smug face. “I see,” I say, jaw clenched.
I expect to feel anger. After all, anger and disappointment are the usual breakup feelings. But instead I feel a weary sort of relief.
Dating Madisyn was like going to a theme park. It was exciting for a while to ride the rollercoasters and eat the junk food, but after a couple of years, I just feel queasy and sunburned.
As she gushes about her new man, all excited to have something to rub in my face, I just sort of feel bad for whoever she fooled into proposing to her so soon.
“It’s only a month and a half away, because we are just so excited to tie the knot. Don’t worry, though…” she says, her expression indulgent. “I made Reggie agree that we were going to invite you. We’ll even throw in a plus one… not that you’ll need it, probably…”
A thought occurs to me. It’s maybe not the best idea I’ve ever had, but standing there in a staring contest with Madisyn, it seems better than just taking whatever she hands me.
“I will need it,” I say, showing her my teeth when I smile. “I’ll need a seat right by my side. Where else would my wife sit?”
I swear, Syn’s smugness drops away faster than an atomic bomb. “Come again?”
“My wife, Cate?” I speak slowly to antagonize Madisyn. “You do know that I got married, don’t you?”
“I—“ She shakes her head, looking chagrined. “No. I hadn’t heard.”
My smile curls into a grin. “Well, we’ve been playing it very low key. Anyway, I will need that plus one, okay?”
“Oh… okay…” Madisyn seems to shake off her stupor. “Well… I should probably get back to Reggie. He likes to know where I am.”
“Uh huh.” I’ll just bet he would love to know his future wife is here, rubbing her upcoming nuptials in my face. “Sounds good. I’ve got this save the date so…”
She gives me the most fake smile ever and then practically bolts out of the bar. I watch her go, grinning.
That is, until I realize that Cate didn’t exactly agree to me using her as a pawn in my war against my former fiancée. In fact, Cate didn’t agree to my telling Madisyn that we got married.
Oops.
Maybe if I make a fuss over things, it’ll take a couple of months for our annulment to go through. Or maybe I can convince Cate to help me.
It’s unlikely, given that we pretty much hate each other. But i
t can’t hurt to propose the idea to her… even if I never proposed the actual marriage.
I shake my head and go back to sweeping, puzzling over how I’m going to talk to Cate about it tomorrow.
Chapter Six
Cate
When my alarm clock goes off, I’m already awake. I reach over and silence it with a slap of my hand to the plastic case. Groaning, I sit up, disturbing no less than three cats and one very large Doberman. They all stretch, the Doberman whining when I move a cat closer to her and get out of my tiny twin bed.
“Don’t start with me today,” I tell her. “I can’t be late to work, not even for more pets. Although if I just didn’t go, my quality of life would probably be better…”
My job absolutely sucks. Not only do I sort of hate being forced to smile as I make coffee, but three people quit last week so I was forced to do the work of multiple people for the same pay. I also had to trade shifts with everyone that still works at the shop to even get the weekend off, making all kinds of deals with the devil.
“Work sucks,” I say. “Then you die. Hopefully you get to buy a house first but there are no guarantees. Right, Shaggy?”
Shaggy whines and shoves her head under my hands.
I scratch her behind an ear and then turn to the other twin bed. Carmine, my seventy seven year old Italian roommate, is already long gone. He made his bed neatly, but the two dogs and one cat sleeping on it don’t care. They probably made themselves at home as soon as Carmine left.
Getting together my shower tote, a clean-ish towel, and my shower flip flops, I shuffle down the hallway toward the bathroom. My grandma is sitting outside the bathroom, waiting in her floral bathrobe.
“Ernest is taking forever!” she shouts at the closed door. She rolls her eyes and looks at me. “Hello, darling.”
“Hi Grandma,” I say, juggling my towel and my tote. “I’m guessing I shouldn’t even ask if the shower downstairs is free?”