The Prenup: a love story

by Lauren Layne

“Didn’t you move into your current place like two years ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to get a new ID with your new address within like, ten days of moving?”

  “Also yes.”

  I gasp in mock dismay. “Colin Walsh. You are not the rule follower I thought you were!”

  He rolls his head slightly to give me a baleful look. “You, of all people, who were there on my wedding day, know that an out-of-date ID is the least of my worries when it comes to following legal technicalities.”

  True. Very true. I hold out my hand. “Let me see your ID.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m bored. I want to make fun of your picture.”

  He rolls his eyes but complies and pulls his ID out of his wallet.

  I study it. “This is so weird.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re not smiling in your photo. I barely recognized you without your usual cheerful grin!”

  He attempts to snatch it back, but I pull it out of reach and study it closer. “Let’s see, hair, black. True. Eyes, blue. Yup. Height and weight seem about right. And ooh, you used to live in Midtown. How was that?”

  He doesn’t bother to respond.

  I tilt my head at the ID, trying to figure out why it seems a little off to me, even though the info is all correct, save the outdated address, and the picture is about as decent as a DMV photo can ever be.

  Then it hits me.

  “This isn’t a driver’s license,” I say, turning toward him. “It’s just a photo ID.”

  “I know.”

  “Where’s your driver’s license?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  I sit up straighter. “What do you mean, you don’t have one? Everyone has one.”

  “Not in New York, where almost nobody has cars.”

  Fair point. In California, it’s almost unheard of not to have a car, even in a city with good public transportation like San Francisco. In Manhattan, almost nobody has a car.

  “Still,” I say. “There’s a difference between not having a car and not being able to drive a car because you don’t have a license. Did you let yours expire or something?”

  “Never had one,” he mumbles, starting to pull his phone out again.

  I grip his wrist. “Wait, you’ve never had a driver’s license?”

  “I’ve never had an American driver’s license,” he clarifies. “I had an Irish one. In my teens.”

  “Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Are you telling me you haven’t had a valid driver’s license in over ten years?”

  He shrugs, but I don’t let it go. “You seriously haven’t driven in over ten years?”

  “That is correct.”

  “But—” An awful thought occurs to me. “Oh. Colin. Is it because of your parents, because of how they—”

  “No,” he interrupts. “Their accident was just a couple of years ago. My aversion to driving in the States started long before then.”

  “How. Why? This makes no sense to me.”

  He lifts a shoulder. “It’s just … when I first got here, I was fully aware of just how daunting driving in New York was for people new to the city.”

  “True. I grew up here, and it still terrifies me,” I admit.

  “Precisely. Now imagine if you grew up driving on the other side of the road. Let’s just say Manhattan was not exactly the type of place I wanted to practice driving backward.”

  I tap his ID against my palm for a moment then hand it back to him.

  “That’s it?” he asks sarcastically. “No more snide jokes?”

  “No more jokes,” I say pleasantly. “Do you have any plans this afternoon? And tomorrow?”

  “I don’t think so. Why?”

  “Because, hubby. You and I are going Upstate for a little weekend getaway.”

  “No.”

  “Non-negotiable,” I say pleasantly.

  “Why would I agree to that?”

  “Because you owe me,” I say, not above playing the Rebecca card. “For failing to mention you were engaged. For three weeks.”

  He hesitates, as I knew he would. His starchy moral code won’t let his conscience off Scot-free on that one.

  “What’s Upstate?” he asks warily.

  “Wide open roads.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “Oh, I think you already know,” I say, standing up as my number is finally called. But just in case he doesn’t already know, I turn back and give him a wide smile. “I’m going to be the best driving teacher you’ve ever had.”

  Colin’s groan follows me all the way to the counter of the DMV.

  CHAPTER 22

  SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12

  “I cannot believe I let you talk me into this,” Colin says from the passenger side of our rental car.

  “Don’t you want to learn how to drive?”

  He hesitates. “I suppose. I just don’t understand why it has to be an extended nightmare.”

  “By extended nightmare, you mean weekend getaway?”

  “Same damn thing,” he grumbles.

  I smile because I’m beginning to think he enjoys our banter every bit as much as I do.

  “Okay, so since we left in such a hurry—”

  “Whose fault was that?”

  “I didn’t have time to put a road trip playlist together—”

  “Thank God.”

  “But, lucky for us, I do have all my workout playlists downloaded onto my phone, so we’ll have something to listen to. How do you feel about Madonna?”

  “I prefer quiet.”

  “Don’t be grumpy just because I don’t have any Irish jig music ready to go.”

  “Irish jig music?” he says, giving me an incredulous look.

  “Fine, what do you like to listen to?”

  “Well, according to you, ‘Danny Boy’ on repeat.”

  “We can download ‘Danny Boy.’ Here,” I say, fishing my phone out of the center console and handing it to him. “Have at it.”

  “Madonna’s fine,” he grumbles. “What’s your passcode?”

  “My birthday.”

  To my surprise, Madonna’s “Holiday” begins playing mere seconds later.

  “You know my birthday?” I ask, changing lanes to get around a semi.

  “Apparently.”

  “How?” I press.

  “Oh, you know,” he says, dropping my phone back into the console and stretching out his legs in the passenger seat. “I have multiple calendar reminders set up. Every year, I agonize what to get you. I finally decide on something extremely sentimental but chicken out before I give it to you, so I have a decade’s worth of gifts carefully tucked away in my closet for when I get the courage to tell you how I really feel.”

  “So hilarious,” I say in my best Irish accent. “Really though. How do you know?”

  “We just spent nearly three hours in the DMV together,” he says. “Ample opportunity to see your date of birth.”

  “Oh. Right.” I glance over. “Except I was in the DMV too and didn’t memorize your birthday.”

  “I didn’t memorize it, I just … remembered it.”

  “Fine, fine, but to even the playing field, when is yours?”

  “March seventeenth.”

  I’m delighted. “St. Paddy’s day! Really?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Damn. So when? Damn it, man, don’t make me beg.”

  He sighs. “May. The second.”

  “May second,” I repeat, trying to store it away in the spot of my brain that remembers details, which honestly, is not a big part of my brain. “You’ll be … thirty-four.”

  “Thirty-five.”

  “Shoot. I was close though!”

  “Congratulations. Are you going to tell me where exactly we’re headed?”

  “Hudson Valley. There are a bunch of cute little towns up there, but we’re staying in one actually called Hudson. You been?”

  “No car, remember?”

 
“Yeah, but the train drops off right there. You and Rebecca never take any getaways together?”

  “We’ve been busy.”

  “With what, world domination? Surely even you can find time for a vacation.”

  “Not unless I’m kidnapped, apparently.”

  “You weren’t kidnapped. Think of it as an extended driver’s ed conference.”

  “That I didn’t ask for, nor express any interest in.”

  “Don’t act like I dragged you to the car. Obviously a little part of you wanted to get out of town.”

  “Or a big part of me didn’t want to deal with your badgering if I resisted.”

  That too.

  “Oooh. I love this song.” I reach out and turn up the music and proceed to show him just how well I know my Madonna lyrics.

  “God save me,” he says. “It sings.”

  Yes, and passably well, thank you very much. “Open Your Heart” is my all-time favorite Madonna song, so I know every word.

  I hold my right fist out in a microphone shape and extend it to Colin, who, shockingly, does not play along, so I bring my “microphone” back to myself and belt out the chorus.

  He thumps his head back against the headrest.

  “I should have gone with ‘Danny Boy’ after all,” Colin says, raising his voice to be heard over the music.

  But I’m pretty sure there’s a slight smile playing around his lips. He can deny it all he wants, but he’s having a good time.

  Also, I make a mental note to learn all the words to “Danny Boy.”

  CHAPTER 23

  SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12

  “Right side, right side,” I command gently, and Colin corrects the car immediately.

  “Sorry,” he mutters.

  “Don’t be, that’s why we’re here.”

  “And where exactly is here? These roads are barely paved.”

  “I’m not really sure.” I look around at the trees surrounding us on either side. “I have a college friend who moved Upstate a couple of years ago, and she suggested we come out this way.”

  Jocelyn had assured me it’d be unlikely to see any other cars or people since it’s mostly farmland, and so far she’s right. There’s nothing but Colin and me, trees, sunshine, and a car going about fourteen miles per hour.

  “How’s it feel? Just like riding a bike?” I ask, glancing across the car.

  He frowns. “The mechanics came back relatively easily. Adjusting to the right side of the road is a bit harder than I expected.”

  “You’ll start to get used to it,” I say with confidence, adjusting my sunglasses. “We can take as long as we need. And let me know if you change your mind and want some music after all.”

  “Do you promise not to sing?”

  “I do not.”

  “Silence sounds fine,” he replies.

  I let him have his silence for once, partially because I can see that his knuckles are white at their ten-and-two position, and partially because I’m genuinely enjoying myself. There’s something surprisingly lovely about driving down a dirt road, the sun beating down through the windshield, and no one else around for miles, save for the person sitting beside you.

  I wonder if this is why people used to go on Sunday drives back in the day. To achieve this perfect sense of contentment from driving for the sake of it rather than to get somewhere.

  Colin makes a right hand turn down yet another deserted road then surprises me by being the one to break the silence.

  “Can I ask you something without you getting mad?”

  I snort. “Are you sure you’re engaged? For having a wife and a fiancée, you know remarkably little about women.”

  “Can I ask the question or not?”

  “You can ask. But if it’s a jackass question, I make no promises about my resulting anger level.”

  “Your job,” he says, glancing over at me briefly. “What is it?”

  I look at him in surprise, both because he’s never really expressed much interest in anything about me, and also because it’s a pretty Google-able fact.

  “I own a social media management company. Which is a fancy way of saying we implement Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram strategies for bigger companies.”

  “And that’s profitable?”

  “I’ll rephrase,” I say with a smile. “We implement Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram strategies for really big companies.”

  It’s more than profitable. Some of our biggest clients, the behemoths of the retail world, see annual invoices from my company in the seven figures.

  “And that’s what you wanted to do?” he asks.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, as I remember it back when we got married, I needed a green card. You needed to get married in order to access your trust fund, which you told me was to start your own business, but you never mentioned any details. This is the business you envisioned?”

  I think about it, trying to get back into the mental state of my twenty-one-year-old self. “You know, I don’t really know,” I admit. “I knew I wanted to start a company. I just loved the idea of it, all the more so because of the risk. The brainstorming, the planning, the securing of funds. Deciding when to bring on a team, how big the team should be. When to grow, how to grow, whether to invest in marketing or infrastructure first, and so on.”

  “Did it meet expectations?”

  I ponder this. “It did. And by the way, Grandpa, if we’re ever going to put you on the real road, you’re going to have to go above twenty miles per hour.”

  We accelerate slightly. Very slightly. “You don’t sound sure.”

  “That you’re driving too slow? Trust me. I’m sure.”

  “No, about your company. About it meeting your expectations.”

  “I do genuinely love it,” I say. “It was harder than I expected but more rewarding too.”

  “Okay, here’s the line of questioning where you might get mad,” he says slowly.

  “Bring it on.”

  “When we were trying to figure out the logistics of this prenup arrangement, you didn’t really fight me on my suggestion that you move here, rather than me move to San Francisco.”

  “Well, that’s the benefit of it being a social media management. Most of what we do is online. I can work remotely, and you can’t as easily.”

  “True. But …”

  “Okay, fine, I promise not to get mad,” I say. “Just spit out whatever you’re dancing around.”

  “Fine,” he says. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that you seem a bit bored.”

  I look at him in surprise. “I do?”

  He nods. “Not unhappy. But I’ve seen you at your laptop, listened to some of your work calls. I’ve seen you when you head off to your makeshift office in the mornings, and I often see you when you get home. You seem a bit indifferent. Content,” he adds. “But when it comes to your work, I don’t get the energy I’d expect from someone with your—”

  “Zeal for life?” I supply.

  “Sure.”

  I turn my head and look out the window, thinking over his words, wondering if they’re true. I haven’t put all that much thought into my business lately, and that makes me realize Colin is right. I like my job, I’m proud of my company, but if I’m being really honest with myself, it doesn’t feel like much of a challenge anymore.

  Yes, the company is still growing, but at a slower rate. Plus, we already have some of the biggest clients, so we’re already at the top of our industry. The options for innovation feel limited, the growth potential stunted.

  Or maybe it’s just that I can’t see the innovation anymore.

  Maybe it’s time for me to move on.

  The second the thought crosses my mind I realize it’s been looming for months now. I’ve been trying to avoid it, but now that it’s out there, it’s not nearly as scary as I thought it would be. Or rather it is, but I like the fear. I like the little zip I feel in my stomach at the uncertainty of what might be next.
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br />   “You know for someone who’s so emotionally stunted, you’re quite introspective and wise,” I tell Colin.

  “Emotionally stunted,” he repeats a little woodenly.

  I look over quickly, wondering if I’ve hurt his feelings, but as usual, I can’t read a damn thing on his granite jawline.

  “I don’t mean that in a bad way,” I correct quickly, but he gives me a telling look. “You’re just…” I blow out a breath, wondering how to backpedal. “Well, put it this way. You sensed that I’m a little bored with my job, and you were right. But gun to my head, I couldn’t tell how you feel about your job. Or whether or not you like your apartment. Or if you like your wardrobe. I can’t tell when you enjoy what you’re eating, versus when you think it’s bland. I can’t tell if you like coffee as much as I like coffee. I can’t tell if you’re crazy in love with Rebecca or just sort of meh about her. I can’t tell if you’re as mad at my brother as I am. I can’t even tell if I drive you as crazy as I think I drive you. I never know what you’re thinking or feeling. Ever.”

  Colin doesn’t respond. Not so much as a twitch—definitely not a verbal response—and I wonder if I’ve officially overstepped this time.

  He finally responds, and true to form, it’s with as few words as possible. “You do.”

  “I do what?”

  He glances over. “Drive me crazy.”

  “Good to know,” I say with a laugh, reaching across the car and tugging the steering wheel slightly to bring us back to the right side of the road. “What about the rest of the stuff?”

  He exhales and taps his fingers against the steering wheel. “No complaints about my job. I like my wardrobe. And my apartment. Nobody enjoys coffee as much as you do. Yes, I’m angry with your brother too. Does that cover it?”

  “What about Rebecca?” I ask, hating how much I want to know the answer to that question.

  He hesitates. “What about her?”

  “Are you crazy in love?”

  “Maybe that’s how you and I are different,” he says slowly. “I don’t believe there should be anything crazy about love.”

  “What should love be?” I ask.

  “Calm. Comforting. Serene.”

  I wrinkle my nose. “Sounds boring.”

  But I feel a little pang. Because it sounds kind of nice, too.