by Jana Aston
“We have a date night, every Tuesday,” he continues. “We can’t do the weekends because of all the soccer and ballet and that one kid who insists on taking a sixteen-week course in ceramics, which is only available clear across town, at eight AM on Saturdays.”
I nod, because that’s exactly how I’d imagine it too.
“Our babysitter cancels on our anniversary”—he shrugs—“but it’s fine because we’ve got all those kids and we’re tired. So we stay home and order pizza and watch something on Netflix.”
“No.” I shake my head, fighting back a smile. “We never miss an anniversary because Canon is our backup sitter. We leave him with our gaggle of children while we go to dinner because we like to live on the edge like that.”
“Agreed.” Vince nods. “Lydia would be too logical a choice to fill in. We like the messy choice.”
“We love the messy choice. We’d come home to at least one kid with gum in their hair and a kitten we didn’t own when we left.”
Vince smiles and nods. “At least one kitten. Maybe three. They’d be matching kittens and it’d take us a week to figure out there were three of them.”
“Or something worse, like a drum set for toddlers.”
“Fucking Canon.” Vince shakes his head.
“So how do we get all that?” I ask, because imagining is fun, but reality is a lot tougher. Is he really committed to forever?
“It won’t be the easiest thing we’ve ever done,” Vince answers. “We’ll have to put the work in. Every day.”
“I like the sound of us.”
“It’ll be easier for me, obviously.”
“Why is that? Because you’re less crazy than me?” I suck my bottom lip into my mouth, worried he still thinks I’m nuts.
“No. It’ll be easier for me because I get the better end of the deal; I get you. Every day I get to spend with you is a win for me.”
“Oh.” He’s doing that thing where he looks at me, in that way like I fascinate him. In that way like he loves me. Every crazy bit of me. “So you want to stay married to me? A random girl who maybe sorta tricked you into marrying her while you were drunk?”
“I’ll tell you a secret, Payton.”
“What’s that?”
“I wasn’t that drunk.”
“You weren’t?”
“I was sober enough to know better, and just drunk enough not to care. I was captivated with you, and yes, it was the most irresponsible and out-of-character thing I’ve ever done in my life, but fuck it, I wanted to see where it was going to lead.”
“You could have just let me get the tattoo and asked me out like a normal person.”
“What kind of story is that for our grandchildren?”
I nod, because that’s a very valid point.
“So, Mrs Rossi, do you agree to stay married to me? Through the good times and the bad. Through the dogs who will vomit, and the kids who will fight and the babysitters who will cancel. Through all the things that haven’t happened yet and that we’ll never see coming. What do you say? Do you vow to stick it out with me and stay married till death do us part?”
“Because you’re in love with me?”
“I’m so in love with you,” he responds as he pulls something out of his pocket and drops to one knee. It’s a ring, and it’s beautiful. A large round center diamond surrounded by a halo of tiny diamonds. It sparkles in the light of the fire and I love it, but I love that he picked it out and made the gesture even more. “Love is a word that means infatuation and lust and respect and devotion,” he says as he slips the ring onto my finger. “Tenderness and affection and friendship and passion. I feel all of those things for you, Payton, and I’ll spend the rest of my life showing you just how much if you’ll agree to stay and be mine.”
“I’d legiterally like nothing more.”
Epilogue
Vince
* * *
Happy wife, happy life.
I’m an intelligent man so I live my life by this philosophy. Luckily for me, it’s not hard because if the name Payton had a definition it would be ‘happy.’ Characterized by joy and delight.
I’m not sure what I’ve done to deserve her, but I’ll spend forever keeping her. I worried in the beginning that she’d grow bored. That she was too young. That she couldn’t possibly be as serious about me as I was about her.
Ridiculous as it was to feel serious about someone you’d known two weeks.
I met her at noon on a Saturday.
Within twenty-four hours we were married, and she’d left me in the honeymoon suite we’d only partially christened. Without a word or a phone number or a note on the nightstand.
I wasn’t in love with her that morning.
I went to her apartment anyway, just to talk. To make sure she was okay. To make sure she ate. I slept with her because she was sober and because she asked. The bossy way she told me exactly how she wanted me to fuck her, but then stripped out of her clothing with no finesse at all was so beguiling to me.
The Tennessee driver’s license in her handbag was the first inkling I had that something was happening between us, for me at least. Don’t go, I thought. Jesus Christ, whatever you do, do not leave the state. Not because it would make the annulment difficult, but because I hated the idea of her being so far away. Yet less than an hour later she was bolting again, running out the door of her own apartment with her bra in her hand and some ridiculous talk of having to be somewhere other than postcoital with me.
I wasn’t in love with her by Sunday afternoon. Or hell, maybe I was. I was still grappling with what had possessed me to marry her in the first place. I was casual drunk, not stupid drunk. Yet when her eyes lit up with the idea of getting a tiger tattooed onto her ass there was no way I was allowing that. “What’s the B?” I asked. We’d spent the entire evening making choices based on A or B options, surely there was a B to getting a tattoo. When she quipped, “Getting married,” somewhere in my normally practical and orderly mind a voice whispered, Yeah, do that.
I love a good deed. What better deed could there be than rescuing her ass from a tiger tat?
Weak. It’s a weak excuse. It was always a weak excuse. Temporary insanity is the only thing that justifies marrying her that night. Temporary insanity, or fate.
I was leaning towards temporary insanity on Monday morning when I started the annulment paperwork. Paperwork so irrelevant I passed it off to Gwen to handle. Gwen, ex-girlfriend so irrelevant it hadn’t occurred to me that it might be improper or offensive to have her handle it. She was always more of a friend than anything else. She completed it without judgement, bringing it discreetly to my office and placing it on my desk while rubbing her pregnant stomach with her free hand. Gwen was a nice girl but I was never in love with her. We had some charitable work in common, law and not much else. Our relationship hadn’t been much more than co-workers with benefits, which wasn’t enough for her, so she’d dumped me and found the tax attorney she’d married. Nice guy. I’d felt nothing but happy for her, the way you’d be happy for anyone.
On Monday night I left work with the annulment papers, intent on stopping at Payton’s to discuss them with her. I could’ve let her figure it out when she got served, but I’m not an asshole. I could spare an hour to explain the process to her so she wasn’t blindsided. That’s all it was. The weekend of revelry and foolish choices was over.
So why did I stop for groceries so I could make her dinner while we talked? I’ve got no idea.
Fate or insanity?
When she swung the door open with a huge grin and a joke about how I’d been avoiding her, something shifted in me. She’d already changed into pajamas—the least sexy or seductive set of pajamas possible. She wasn’t expecting me, or if she was she wasn’t planning a seduction. Or possibly this was just Payton. Possibly this was how she always was.
In that moment it’d been easy to imagine a lifetime of her—just like this. Welcoming me home without makeup, her hair gathered messily
on her head, wearing pajamas and teasing me.
I didn’t hate the idea of it.
She questioned why I was bringing her dinner and I nearly answered, “Because I liked talking to you,” but the thought surprised me so I made a deflective comment about multitasking instead.
I’m not sure I can pinpoint the exact moment in the evening that I stopped wanting to talk to her about those papers and started wanting to know more about her instead.
She was such a mystery to me at that point. Was she just looking to have a good time? Or was she looking for something more? She’d propositioned me for sex, married me and then run out on me. Twice. But that night, sitting at her kitchen table in a pair of cotton pajamas, she bit her lip and offered me health insurance—as an incentive to stay with her. Offered me some kind of marriage of convenience, as if she wanted this to last in whatever form she could get it. She was such a contradiction. Confident with a hint of insecurity. Aggressive with a dash of adorable. Crazy with a silver lining that was all heart.
So I stayed. Talked to her. Slept with her again.
Every night.
I couldn’t stop myself. I lived within walking distance of my office—it was the only reason I picked my apartment—yet every evening I’d find myself in my car driving to Payton’s apartment.
She liked me, I knew that much. She liked me even when she thought I was a strip club owner who might be in need of healthcare or tax relief. She liked the idea of being married, but was terrified of it at the same time. So she was trying me on, like a sample. And I was falling in love with her.
She said she was falling in love with me, but could I trust that? A week into our relationship? Into our marriage? Payton was a spontaneous wildfire with an overactive imagination.
And I loved her.
Then she got served with the annulment paperwork and she shut down before she’d even talked to me about it. Paperwork that was never meant to be sent, but instead of trusting her instincts about us, about me, clammed up. She told me later that her plan was to woo me once the annulment was processed. She thought we’d date and she’d woo me into loving her back.
But there wasn’t a chance that was happening because I already loved her and I wasn’t letting her go.
I asked her if she wanted a re-do. A real wedding, as it were. A dress and flowers and a fancy dinner with all her friends and family present. She looked at me with an expression akin to horror and said, “God, no. Please don’t make me do that.”
When I finished laughing she kissed me and said the wedding we’d already had was the only one she wanted, and all she’d ever need.
“You might regret it later,” I warned. She promised if she ever felt the desire for a wedding re-do she’d let me know.
She did request a honeymoon re-do and I happily obliged.
I took her to the Maldives, to one of those resorts with private thatch-roofed overwater bungalows. Ten days of relaxation, sex and not a single tan line on Payton.
It was heaven, but every day since has been just as great. Two years of viewing the world though a Payton lens and I’m not sure how I ever coped without her.
She moved into my cold and lifeless condo at first because it made the most sense for both of us. Not surprisingly, it didn’t feel cold and lifeless with her in it. Still, I don’t miss it. Last month we moved into our new home, the one we constructed on the lot where I’d asked her to stay, where I’d laid out a fantasy vision of our future, telling her I was all in.
The reality is better.
* * *
The garage door slides up as I pull into the driveway. Some fancy contraption linking my car to the automatic door. I park and I’ve got to admit, it’s satisfying as fuck to have a home. I’ve never owned a home before. I’ve never lived in a home before. Growing up it was apartments. Once I had money it was nicer apartments and then the condo. I wish my mom could be here to see it, but I know she’d be proud of me and that gives me peace.
My lovely wife is in the kitchen when I enter the house through the garage. She’s standing at the island countertop, making a list of something on a notepad. She still works in event planning at the Windsor, but she’s got quite a side business planning events on her own. She looks up at my arrival and grins, giving me an enthusiastic kiss and a hello. I make it ten feet past the kitchen before I stop.
It’s an open-concept home so I can see Payton from where I’m standing. I can also see a baby. I walk closer, just to be sure my eyes aren’t deceiving me or she hasn’t purchased one of those very expensive dolls they use for high-school classes to terrify teenagers out of procreating.
It’s a real baby. Asleep, but very real. It’s sitting in some kind of bouncy seat contraption in the middle of our family room.
We don’t have a baby.
We don’t have any friends who have a baby.
I glance back to Payton, but she’s ignoring me as she jots away at her list.
“Payton, where did this baby come from?”
“Oh!” Payton looks up, an expression of excitement on her face. She claps her hands together, as if she cannot contain her enthusiasm, as she abandons her list to join me. “She’s ours now. Do you like her?”
Fuck.
“Payton Elizabeth, where did you get this baby?”
“I’m just messing with you.” She rolls her eyes and shakes her head as if I’m so gullible. “She belongs to the next-door neighbor and I’m not sampling her without permission, so you can wipe that look off your face right now.”
“Why is she here?” I think it’s a she. She’s wearing a baby headband with a giant pink bow.
“Well, I was helping plan Lucy’s birthday party,” Payton begins.
“Who is Lucy?”
“The baby. I wouldn’t have chosen it myself, but it’s a lovely name. I was thinking option A, Annabel, or option B, Joseph. What do you think?”
Good Lord, where to start. I look at her carefully, assessing.
“Are you pregnant, Payton?”
“Not yet, but I was thinking maybe I should be? That maybe it’s time to try?”
“You were thinking this based on a couple of hours of baby-sampling?”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Lucy’s been here for five minutes. Her mother just ran out to meet the school bus.”
“Okay, so how did you come to the conclusion that we’re ready to be parents?” I think we’re ready, but I’d like to hear her thoughts. I always like hearing her thoughts.
“I was thinking it might be time to try because you’re very elderly.”
I side-eye her.
“So we should probably start having kids.”
“That’s up to you, Payton. Whenever you’re ready.” I’m ready, elderliness aside.
“We’ll want them all out of college by the time you retire,” Payton continues. “And you know at least one of them will be that kid who’s on the six-year plan. And another will want to go to graduate school or become a lawyer. That’ll probably be Annabel, she’ll be a lawyer just like her daddy.”
“How considerate of you to think all this through.” I pull her close to me and she yelps, not expecting it. Then I kiss her. I’d fuck her over the back of our new sofa, but there’s a baby here. The restraint’s good practice, I tell myself, because I don’t think we’re going to have long in this house, just the two of us.
It’s fine. I had the builder soundproof the master bedroom. It’s not that we’re especially kinky but a family home means a couple of decades of living with people who never want to hear us have sex.
Which reminds me.
“How does the A or B game work when one’s a girl name and one’s a boy name? You get your pick either way.”
“Uh, I don’t see how that’s true.”
I can’t wait for her to explain this to me. I fight a smile and bury my face in her neck, breathing her in before I ask, “How’s that?”
“You get to decide which sperm you impregnate me with, so it’s real
ly your choice.”
“Well played, Mrs Rossi.” I laugh now because I love bantering with her. “We’ll start practicing as soon as the sample goes home.”
“Good idea,” my wife agrees with an eager nod and a sneaky grab at my ass.
“Option A, you tied to our new headboard with the convenient iron rails? Or option B, you on top riding cowgirl?”
“C, both,” she answers and this time she smacks my ass before she walks over to pick up the baby.
I’m not sure how I got so lucky. If it was fate or synchronicity or kismet or coincidence, but I’m thankful all the same. Because every day with Payton is the best day of my life.
Also by Jana Aston
GOOD GIRL
GOOD TIME
WRONG
RIGHT
FLING
TRUST
TIMES SQUARE
SURE THING
Acknowledgments
Readers, THANK YOU! I am forever grateful each & every time you choose to read my words. It humbles me to my very soul. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
* * *
RJ Locksley, thank you for putting up with my crazy turnaround times on these edits!!!
* * *
Thank you to Letitia Hasser for another delicious cover & to Kari March for my gorgeous teasers. Erik Gevers for the paperback formatting!
* * *
Getting ARC’s out the door & promotions lined up is no small task. Many thanks to Candi Kane & Sarah Piechuta for their help in managing the chaos.
* * *
Jean Siska, Melissa Panio-Peterson, Marie Jocke, Lydia Rella, thank you for everything you do!
* * *
Staci Hart, Liv Morris, Kayti McGee, Amy Daws, Raine Miller, BJ Harvey, Sierra Simone, Laurelin Paige, Jade West, it’s a joy to be on this author journey with each of you.