And you make me see things in a different way. I mean, before I met you it didn’t even occur to me to figure out the science behind every single Avenger’s superhuman ability. I didn’t even know how important it was to use HDMI cables for better picture and sound quality on my TV or to have an external hard drive for my computer to back everything up. Since I met you, everything looks and sounds better. And I always know that you’ll be there to back me up.”
I gave her a look, because holy shit that was the cheesiest thing anyone has ever said in the history of people saying things. She tried so hard not to laugh, but as soon as she cracked a smile, it’s like her brain had broken. She laughed so hard. She was shaking and tearing up and snorting.
I looked over at the judge, glanced down at my watch.
She got control of herself and finally said: “So thanks for marrying me today. You make me happier than sleeping baby animals and I hope to break bread with you at our table every day for the rest of our lives…Amen.”
The judge said his thing about the power vested in himself, and informed me that I may now kiss the bride.
I made a split-second decision. Maybe it wasn’t a decision made in my brain, but it was a decision nonetheless. This may be the only time I kiss Gemma Kelly. I’m going to make it count. I don’t care who’s watching. This is my bride, dammit. Who knows when I’ll get married again.
The first time, I cupped her pretty face in my hands and leaned down to kiss her, slowly and softly. I watched her eyelids flutter before closing. Once I’d started to pull away, I realized she’d risen to her tiptoes, so I went in for a second kiss, this time a quicker one, with slightly parted lips. When that didn’t quite feel like the end of it, I whispered “Love you, Gem,” my mouth only a few millimeters from hers, and she either lost her balance or launched herself up to meet me. She grabbed me by my shirt and pulled me down for a long hard kiss that had our parents and friends laughing and clapping, but it nearly brought me to my knees. Now she was taking my breath away. Now my heart was leaping out of my chest. I let one hand go to her waist and one to the back of her neck and I kissed her back.
Two can play at that game.
She gasped, opened her eyes. Before tearing herself away, she whispered: “You better love me, Walker, I just married your ass.”
And if I’d let myself believe for one second that this was a real kiss, she had cleared things up for me now.
She patted me on the butt, turned to face our friends and parents, the cameras, her arm raised in victory. “Wooohoooo! This butt legally belongs to me now!”
“Congratulations,” laughed the judge. “Be good to each other.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Be good to me.” But she couldn’t even look at me when she said it. I could see her trying to steady herself. I saw that flush in her cheeks.
I pulled her in for a hug, before people started coming over to talk to us.
“Love you,” I whispered down at her.
“Love you,” she whispered into my chest.
“Good job on those vows. You almost had me convinced.”
“Well, you know. I’ll say and do whatever I can to stay out of jail. Yours were good too. I guess we both won.”
“You didn’t pay attention to a word I said, did you?”
She pushed me away. “You don’t know me.”
“Yeah. I do.”
“That was a pretty convincing wedding kiss, though, right?” she mumbled, frowning at me.
“Yeah, I think we nailed it. Good job, buddy.”
“I just hope Andrew never sees that video.”
“Why would he? He’s not coming to visit, is he?”
“No.”
He never came to visit. It was my favorite thing about him.
I had splurged on a big suite at the San Ysidro Ranch in nearby Montecito, so it would look like a genuine honeymoon in our many photos for documentation of legitimacy when the time came for our interview with the immigration officer.
I already knew that after dinner we’d all hang out in the suite until Gemma “Grandma” Kelly started to get sleepy at ten o’clock. Neither of us would use the hot tub on the private deck, and we’d both fall asleep on the sofa watching Bob’s Burgers after she Facetimed with her out-of-town boyfriend, instead of going to town on each other for hours or days in the amazing king-size bed.
I knew we would never discuss the vows or the wedding kiss again. I would stop feeling the ghost of her lips on mine—eventually. I would stop thinking about it—eventually. I would try not to wonder if she ever thought about it.
Aside from the six other people who knew that this was a green card marriage, the world would continue to view us as best friends who lived together, and I would continue to have discreet, meaningless sex with hot women who didn’t distract me from my ambitions.
She’d be the only woman I wanted to talk to, the only one I’d miss when I’m working up in the Bay Area, the one I’d trust to look after the house when I’m gone, the one I’d look forward to coming home to.
And only every so often I’d think about how what I really wanted to do was go back to the night we met, when she was pressed up against that open door, and kiss her.
Because that’s just how it goes when you’re best friends with a girl. A girl who has a boyfriend in Ohio. A girl who offered to marry you so you could get a green card, so you could become the person you’ve always wanted to be. Because it never occurred to either of you that the person you wanted to be was the love of her life.
That door had closed.
And it would be fine. It was always fine.
How could it not be?
It was us.
3
Gemma
*Two Years Later*
Theo’s always telling people that the first time I saw him he was totally naked, but I was so stoned, I swear I couldn’t fully-remember exactly what his totally naked body looked like. Aside from that fleeting clear view of his butt, I mostly remember seeing an orange-yellow aura and moving kaleidoscope patterns. Which was annoying. And also a blessing. It was an annoying blessing.
And it was probably a survival technique.
I have a feeling that if I had been more clear-headed I would have been so hyper-aware of the light brown hairs on his chest and the way his voice always sounded like he was flirting with someone on the phone. I would have been more aware of the butterflies in my stomach instead of how I truly believed I could feel each and every hair follicle growing out of my scalp.
That was the first and last time I’d ever been stoned, but every time I walked out the front door of that apartment or looked at that hallway, I had this vague vision of him standing there, all six plus feet of him, almost every inch of his golden skin and toned runner’s body facing me, but it was and always will be his eyes that captivate me. The warmth of them. I mean. I would never let a strange naked man into my home if he didn’t have warm, kind eyes. Or if I weren’t stoned.
Did I ever feel guilty about feeling so comfortable with him, even though I had a boyfriend? Nope. Because there was never any doubt in my mind that I was Andrew’s girlfriend. I had been, basically, since we were five. It was never a choice. It was a convenience. It was a family thing. It was uncomplicated. Even when I quietly married someone else. It just was.
I can remember the exact moment I feared that I was falling in love with Theo Walker. It wasn’t before I told him I’d marry him, and it wasn’t during the marriage ceremony kiss—I managed to swiftly talk myself into believing that we were just doing it all for the green card and the cameras and the judge. I convinced myself that I was in Friend-Love with him—that it was no different from the love and adoration I felt for my best friends in kindergarten and high school, that it was just more significant because we were older and living together.
It was not long after we were married, during the interview with the immigration officer, when I got that undeniable feeling in my belly and I thought to myself: Oh shit. I think
I’m actually in love with this guy. This is terrible.
He was wearing his olive bomber jacket—my favorite—the one that makes his eyes look like tiny pools of rich melted chocolate, and if I were any other woman I would have tried to lick his yummy sexy eyeballs. His signature jacket used to be a worn-in black leather biker jacket, but when I told him that I preferred the bomber jacket, he started wearing it more often. I had been staring at it, completely spaced-out while Theo was answering some question about our bank accounts and showing the guy our utility bills, and I didn’t even hear the government official the first time he asked me what I was thinking about. He had been asking such perfunctory questions by rote until then, I was caught off guard. I blushed and told him I was thinking about how handsome Theo looked in that jacket, and how he started wearing it more after I’d mentioned that I liked it. I told him that whenever he was up in Toronto visiting his parents, I’d pull that jacket out of his closet and inhale it because it smells like him.
It was true. Well, it was true that I’d done that once.
“You never told me that,” Theo said, in a hushed voice. The way he looked at me, it made my insides melt. He took my hand and squeezed it, and I swear I saw the immigration guy’s lower lip quiver.
A woman who was outside the office when we came out had said that was the shortest interview that officer had ever given—presumably because it was so obvious to him that we were a real couple—but I saw the guy hurry off to the men’s room as soon as we were done, so I’m pretty sure he just cut it short because he had to pee.
But he didn’t even ask if he could see video evidence of our marriage ceremony. I was glad of that. I still hadn’t seen the wedding video that Ethan shot and edited for us. I barely remembered our marriage ceremony, and I didn’t remember Theo’s vows at all. I was trying so hard to not look nervous and maintain a look of love on my face that I just had Beyoncé’s Halo playing in my head whenever I wasn’t talking. Chloe kept telling me that I need to watch the video to see how cute we were, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.
Despite realizing that I was in love with him, it had never occurred to me to break up with Andrew because of it, and I had always been aware that our marriage had never been about romance, so I never romanticized it. Since the immigration interview, I’d kept the engagement and wedding rings in their boxes in the drawer of my bedside table. I’ve always been a practical person, and so has he. It was one of the many reasons this arrangement worked for us. The In-Loveness had always somehow been this separate thing that existed outside of our friendship, my relationship with Andrew, and our secret green card marriage.
It became like a useless third nipple that I had learned to live with by hiding it and telling myself that it was just some evolutionary fluke that I can have surgically removed if I ever decide I can’t live with it anymore.
Regardless, the hug that Theo gave me when we got out of that interview room was the best hug I’d ever been given in my life—including parental and grandparental hugs. It was so genuine and intimate, and it was like he was squeezing all my love out of every pore.
“Love you,” he whispered, as he kissed the top of my head.
“Love you,” I mumbled into his chest, as I inhaled the scent of his jacket. It was somehow soothing and stimulating at the same time. Like the color green. Like him.
I also remember the exact moment I realized I needed to make myself fall out of love with Theo Walker. It was when Andrew got drunk at my cousin’s wedding and told me that he had been seeing other women off-and-on for three years. I didn’t think: “You lying turd—I knew it!” I didn’t think: “How could you do this to Us?” I didn’t think: “Our parents will be so upset. We’ll have to tell them we had a friendly break-up, that we just grew apart.” Although, I did think that later. I thought: “Oh shit. I’m secretly in love with my secret fake husband and I don’t have a boyfriend buffer anymore. This is a fucking disaster.”
And then I thought: “I hate how Theo always eats apples all the way down to the core and makes fun of me because I leave so much uneaten—like that makes him better than me. I need to focus on that. Plus he’s always writing notes to himself on Post-its and then calling me and asking me to find them and read them to him. It’s like—write it on your phone, dummy—you’re the millionaire tech nerd!”
But then I remembered that I once found a Post-it note that said I miss you Gemma when he was up in Palo Alto, and then I started crying and Andrew thought I was crying because we were breaking up. And then he cried, promised me he “was always safe with the other girls, so you don’t have to worry” and I was like: “Wow, you’re so considerate, thank you,” and then I got champagne-drunk, and then we angrily made out one last time in the bathroom at the wedding reception and it was just terrible.
We shared a cab back to my parents’ house. When Andrew and I said goodbye in my parents’ driveway, while the cab waited at the curb, we hugged each other for a long time, and that time I really was crying because of him. Because of Us. Because that part of my life was over. I hard-core ugly cried right there in the purple Ralph Lauren dress that I’ve worn to all non-L.A. weddings, in front of the only man I’d ever had sex with, and Mrs. Francis who I know was peeking through her old lace curtains across the street. A huge part of my life was over, and had been for a long time, but I hadn’t let myself admit it until now. I had remained devoted to the idea of being Andrew’s dedicated long-distance girlfriend for years, because I didn’t want to have to deal with my real feelings for Theo.
“I loved you,” he said as he held me so close. “I always loved you.”
“I know. I loved you too.” We just never fell in love with each other, is what we didn’t say. What we’d never said.
He cleared his throat when he let go of me and looked down at the ground, hands on his hips. “So, you, uh…You’re still gonna be married to Theo for another year or so, huh?”
It was so strange hearing him say Theo’s name. We almost never talked about him. “Yeah. About a year.”
He nodded his head. “Yeah. I guess…I guess I’m glad you have him.”
“What do you mean? I don’t have him.”
“Yeah you do.” His tone of voice changed. Like he was reprimanding me.
“I don’t—Andrew—we’ve never.”
“I meant as a friend, obviously,” he said, in a way that meant he obviously didn’t. “To keep you company.”
“Oh. Yeah. As a friend.”
He glanced at me, his whole body tense all of a sudden. “I’m not an idiot, you know.” Such restrained anger in his voice.
What happened to the poignant break-up moment we were having?
“I know you guys aren’t just friends.”
“Yes we are.”
“No. You’re not.”
“I’m not the one who cheated, Andrew.”
“Whatever. Well, you’re all his now. Have fun in La-La Land with your fancy millionaire secret husband who didn’t stay in his hometown to be near his family and go to a second tier state college.”
“What?! Where is this coming from?”
His hands went up, surrendering. “Nothing’s coming from anywhere, forget it. I just couldn’t let you get away with thinking this was all on me. Nobody’s going to blame me for fooling around while you’re out in Los Angeles with your sweet little pretty boy husband.”
“You can’t tell anyone about our marriage.”
“I won’t. Don’t worry. I just mean your parents won’t be mad at me. If you do decide to tell them about what I was up to.”
“Andrew. Do not tell anyone. He could be deported and I could go to jail. I mean it! Don’t you dare.”
“I’m just saying. If you tell people around here that I cheated on you, I will tell people over there that you married him so he could get a green card.”
He looked fifty percent indignant, fifty percent filled with regret.
I one hundred percent wanted to shove him into a ditch. But
I didn’t. Deep breath. He’s drunk. He’s hurting. “Okay then. Thanks for making this goodbye a little easier for us both. Well done.”
He made a little obnoxious noise that might have been laughter. “It’s just—Gemma. Do you see yourself?” He waved his hand up and down in my direction. “You just got so much more upset about me blowing the lid off your marriage to him than you did about me getting blown by other girls.” He made that alien laughter noise again, because he thought he just said something really clever.
I shuddered. There is nothing more chilling than seeing someone you’ve known all your life become someone you don’t recognize, someone you don’t even want to see. “Right. Bye, Andrew.”
I went inside, didn’t watch him get into the cab. A minute later I received an apology text, citing alcohol and overwhelming unfamiliar emotions as valid excuses for his behavior. He will make a decent lawyer one day, and a moderately reliable husband to someone other than me.
I don’t regret my relationship with Andrew. I really don’t. I knew that we’d text each other on birthdays and at Christmas and New Years. It would mean nothing and everything. I would miss him. He’s as much a part of who I am as Lake Erie, my mom’s apple crumble, and my need to make the rooms I’m in look pretty so I can feel like I’m in control of my life.
The next day, at lunch, when I carefully informed my parents that Andrew and I had broken up because we had grown apart, neither of them reacted in the way I had expected them to. They nodded slowly, glanced at each other, gave me a hug, asked me if I was okay, and then gently asked if it was because I was in love with Theo.
Green: a friends to lovers romantic comedy Page 3