“Just put it in my pocket, will you?”
Right. She was wearing his jacket. The fleece collar soft against her neck smelled like him, a musky male scent of woodsmoke and juniper, accentuated by the cold air.
She folded the ticket and shoved it into the jacket, the back of her hand tapping against something solid already inside. Her heart rate doubled as she palmed the coaster’s curve. But she couldn’t take it out and read it. Not with him sitting right there. She brushed a thumb over the writing, as if she could read the words that way—some sort of intuitional Braille.
Bran pulled across the lanes of traffic, a bus honking behind him. “What did you get?”
“Banana pudding. I got a large. In case you want to share.”
“Never had it.”
She popped the top off the cardboard pint and scooped a mouthful of pale yellow pudding onto a biodegradable spoon, making sure to include a bit of softened vanilla wafer. “Open up.”
Bran took a left, looking away from her. “Open what?”
“Your mouth.”
They stopped at a red light, the color staining his hair. He looked from her to the spoon and opened his mouth, his Irish eyes smiling.
She slid the spoon past his lips, and he licked it clean.
“Wow.” He opened his mouth again and she fed him another bite. “Wow. That’s really—wow.”
“Three wows—you’re a Cleffy-nominated lyricist?”
“Judith never got a Note nod.”
Nelle almost dropped the container of pudding. “No—you—oh my god, how don’t you know?”
“Know what?”
“The Note nominations are out. Green is up for Notable Pop Album—and ‘Touch Her Back’ is up for Notable Song. As of yesterday. That’s you, Kelly. Who are your people that no one told you this?”
“I’ve been ignoring my phone. Off the map for a few days.”
She waited for his reaction. He’d been nominated for a Cleffy! To be recognized at the Note Awards—dreams didn’t get bigger than that. Except to win. When she’d heard her name read out last year, she’d FaceTimed her mom while jumping on the hotel bed. Bran simply inverted his lips, flattening them into a line.
“You answered my text.”
Tension filled the small car as he gripped the wheel, his mouth shut tight.
Nelle had missed something. “I meant to say congratulations—”
“But you were too busy calling me a talented dickhead?”
“You are a talented dickhead. A Cleffy-nominated dickhead. Seriously, from one Cleffy-nominated artist to another, congrats. You deserve it.”
“Yeah, thanks—thanks for telling me.”
He kept his eyes on the road but turned his head like a baby bird.
She loaded up another bite, and, sensing an opening to make him smile, to ease the set of his face, ate it herself. He laughed and her stomach dipped.
They sped south on the highway that ran along the lake and Nelle lowered the pudding to her lap. “What if we fall in love?”
For the first time, Bran looked a little green. She’d panicked him.
“Not us. I mean. Presumably, you won’t be celibate forever. And I’m young but I plan to have a family someday.” She didn’t have time for a boyfriend. They were too expensive—to her focus, to her reputation. But eventually she would be ready to bring someone important into her life, and they’d have to deal with it. “At some point we’ll have to get divorced. So we can marry other people.”
“No problem, just let me know where to sign.” His gaze flicked over her. “What? You don’t think it’ll be that simple?”
Nelle’s topknot brushed the car’s low ceiling as she sat straighter. “How much are you worth?”
“I’ll tell you what, we’ll write a prenup when we get there.”
“And where are we going? How exactly are we going to do this?”
“I need to make a call.”
“Bran. This is supposed to be just between us. That’s the whole point. Two people equally invested in one secret.” Nelle’s forehead creased and she was glad Max wasn’t here to lobby for preventative Botox again.
“She’s a lawyer. She couldn’t say anything if she wanted to.”
“A label lawyer?”
“No. Personal. My cousin. She’s a county clerk. We need her to—to facilitate, get us in to see a judge. All that.”
He started pressing buttons on the wheel and then the warbling treble of a phone ringing filled the car.
“Bran? I’ve looked it over and there’s nothing we can do about the deed—”
Bran cleared his throat over the woman. “Yeah, yeah, hey, Tomi. I need you to do something else for me. Call it a favor.”
A pause. “Am I your cousin right now or your lawyer?”
“My lawyer.”
“Then it’s not a favor. Because I’m charging you.”
“Fine—whatever—but this is bigger, more time-sensitive—I did something—”
“Please tell me I am not your first call after killing a hooker because—”
“Tomi.”
“—sex work is work, Bran. Hookers are people who deserve—”
“Tomi—I’m getting married. Tonight.”
A longer pause. “Congratulations?”
“I need you to figure it out.”
“Bran.” His cousin drew out the name, stressing the vowel with a nasal pitch. “It can’t be done.”
“Sure it can. I just googled it. Michigan has secret marriages. I need a county clerk to waive the waiting period, a judge to seal the file. Easy peasy. You’re a clerk, I know you know a judge or two—”
“Google? You’re insane. I know it’s been a hard week—”
Bran pushed his jaw out and cut his cousin off. “Can you do it?”
“Do you really need this?”
“Yes.”
Tomi must have also recognized that hard edge in his voice, because after another long silence she relented. “I can get you a license. And waive the wait. And there is someone—Judge Jordan—he’s kind of a softy and he happens to be a fan.”
“What’s his first name?” Excitement laced Bran’s words, more excitement than he displayed hearing he’d been nominated by the Note Awards.
Tomi sighed. “Michael, okay? No relation—”
Bran laughed and Nelle bit the inside of her cheek. “This is happening—Michael Jordan is marrying me tonight, Tomi.”
“You’ll need witnesses.”
At the mention of witnesses Nelle flared her eyes at him and Bran waved a hand, nodding that he understood. “How many?”
“Two.”
“What are you and Wyn doing tonight? Wanna come to my wedding?”
“She’s going to die.”
“Good, then she can’t tell anyone.”
“She wouldn’t.”
“I know. That’s why I invited her.”
Tomi sighed again, her breath crackling through the car speakers. “I need some information from you. For the license. And why does it have to be secret?”
“I don’t want the media to find out. Say something about how everyone is entitled to a bit of anonymity.”
“And your blushing bride? What’s her name?”
Bran looked over at Nelle, and she felt like Courtney Cox pulled onstage by Bruce Springsteen—out of the spectator role, into the spotlight. “Do you have a last name?”
In the face of such a ridiculous question, she forgot her hesitation. “Antonella Georgopoulos.”
What? he mouthed. She ignored him, focusing on Tomi.
“And your birthday?”
“October 23rd, 1997.”
Next to her, Bran was listening intently.
“Parents’ names and places of birth?”
“Andreas and Maria Georgopoulos, they were both born in Patras, Greece. I wasn’t, if that’s important.”
“It is.” A keyboard clicked in the background. “What time is it?” Tomi groaned. “Bran, this is impossible—let’s do it tomorrow. Take the night to think about it—”
He shook his head even though his cousin couldn’t see him. “Tonight.”
Another silence stretched through the connection. “I can keep Judge Jordan here until nine. Where are you?”
“Already in the car.” Bran glanced at his watch. “We’ll be there by eight.”
Nelle pointed to the clock on the dash. “Michigan is an hour ahead.”
“Fuck—okay—gotta go. Make this happen, Tomi.”
“I really shouldn’t—”
The line went dead. The burned-egg smell of Indiana’s factories filled the car, and the seams of the tollbooth they were approaching reverberated beneath them. Bran barely paused long enough for the electronic pass to register.
“You’re gonna get another ticket,” Nelle worried out loud. Tickets were a sign of bad karma. A sign that you weren’t vibrating at the right frequency for abundance. That you weren’t in harmony. Before tonight, Nelle had never gotten one. She took care to be in tune.
“I don’t think so. I’m feeling lucky. Judge Michael Jordan.”
He grinned, an infectious look that could spread through a crowd of fifty thousand people like wildfire. And the force of it on Nelle alone sent her head spinning. That somber Bran she’d met at the bar earlier was gone, replaced by a man of energy, a man who would not be stopped.
Nelle rolled the pudding container between her palms. “You didn’t even know my name until a minute ago.”
“I know it now. Plenty of people get married like this.”
“Drunk people. In Vegas. Not people who have a two-hour drive to reconsider.”
“It’s not going to take me two hours to get to Michigan.” He stepped harder on the gas as if to accelerate his point. “Are you reconsidering?”
Was she?
Bran ruffled his hair up and brushed it back into place in a practiced sweep of his hand. He took his eyes off the road and held her gaze. The lane began to curve and the car drifted out of the lines. Someone behind them honked and Bran snapped his attention back to driving.
Nelle released a shaky breath. She needed to regain control of the situation. “I just think we need to set some—some expectations.”
“Like what?”
“After tonight, that’s it. If we’re going to do this, nobody can see us together. You’re right, we’ve gotten lucky so far.”
“Sure.”
“Too many people already know we met up tonight.”
“Who? Besides Tomi, the judge who has an obligation to keep it a secret, and your boy Andre?”
“Benj. And whoever Wyn is.”
“Wyn is salt of the earth, kindest person I’ve ever met, don’t worry about Wyn. Benj? Is she the one who sent you the eggplant emoji while we were looking up the statute?”
Nelle’s cheeks heated and she angled the car’s vents away from her as if that were the cause. “About that statute. It is handy. That your cousin is a clerk.”
“That’s what made me think it was possible.”
“I thought you were just gonna throw money at the problem.”
“I’m prepared to do that too.”
That was it. All of her concerns, tossed at him in rapid fire. And he’d sent each one flying, out of reach. Momentum had reached the tipping point. They’d crossed state lines. Michael Jordan was waiting for them.
The speed of the night, the car, his answers, the rush of the sugar, in her veins, her heart, had her giddy. Had her wanting. Dizzied from the outside in and the inside out.
Bran opened his mouth and waited. Nelle dipped the spoon into the pudding, obliging him with light dancing in her eyes.
“I mean wow.” He licked the corner of his lip, leaving it wet and glistening, and she knew exactly what she was gambling for.
“You said that.”
“Well, I make a living on sincere refrains.”
Chapter Five
The Berrien County Courthouse was as small-town picturesque as you could get in the daytime, a red-and-white Romanesque building surrounded by trees and grass and even a gazebo. In December, at night, shadow cloaked the charm. The only distinguishable feature was a square clock tower looming overhead, the short hand almost touching the nine.
Bran knocked the car into Park and they sat listening to the engine click.
Nelle turned to him, her seat belt catching loudly in the quiet. “Why doesn’t this feel crazier?”
He knew what she meant. Ever since they’d left the city he’d felt strangely settled. Every time he’d glanced over at her on the drive, riding shotgun with her hair in a casual bun, his jacket loose on her shoulders, it had felt easy, natural. Like this was their hundredth date. Not their first. Their only.
They’d found their way into the eye of the storm—it couldn’t last, but he’d enjoy it while it did.
“Madness seems like reason to the insane.” His fingers grazed her hip as he unbelted her. “We need to get in there. If we’re doing this.”
He waited for her to open her door. After a moment, the winter night blew in.
Bran hustled behind Nelle up the cement steps. One side of the double doors opened at their approach and Tomi leaned out. Her grey pantsuit and naturally grim mouth displayed a stern disposition and Bran knew, under any other circumstances, any other week, she would have challenged this request, shut him down with that no-nonsense sensibility she’d always had, despite being a Kelly.
“Down to the wire, Bran—Wyn’s stalling him but—what are you doing?”
Angling over the counter of the reception desk, Bran answered, “I need paper.”
“We don’t have time for this—”
“It’ll just take a second.”
Tomi pulled a blank sheet out of the brown folder she was holding. “Make it quick.”
Nelle was already extracting a tooth-marked pen from her bun and Bran bent over the desk scratching long sloppy words on the page. “I don’t want anything from Antonella Ger-go-pah—”
Perfume filled the air as she peered around his elbow. “I can help you with that.”
“I got it.”
“You missed an o.”
“How many are there?”
“And the u.”
Bran crossed out his first attempt at her name and tried again. He looked up at her for approval when he’d finished, fitting the pen into his mouth while she read his work.
I don’t want anything from Antonella Georgopoulos, except her body.
Nelle pinned him with one of her sizzling stares. “Looks very professional.”
Bran held the pen between his teeth, talking around it. “Your turn.”
He bit harder as she tried to tug the pen free, adding his own set of dents to the plastic end. Nelle jabbed at his ribs and the pen popped loose as he bent and groaned. He rubbed the sore spot blooming on his stomach while Nelle narrated, ink gliding across the bottom of the paper. “Bran Kelly can keep all his shit—just let me have that d.”
A grin spread across Bran’s face. “I think we nailed this.” He handed the paper to Tomi.
“What the fuck is this?”
“Our prenup.”
Tomi pinched the corner of the paper, her arm extended. “What am I supposed to do with it?”
“You’re my lawyer, put it in my file.”
His cousin visibly swallowed her argument and started down the hallway instead, their steps echoing in the empty building. But she couldn’t keep it in. “That’s not how any of this works. You know you have a real lawyer, right? From a really fancy firm—”
“Mr. Money?”
“That can’t be his name.”
“But that’s for the business stuff—this is personal. And you’re family.”
They turned the corner and reached a door flanked by two benches.
“Your personal is your business.” Tomi ushered Nelle inside and blocked Bran from following. “Nelle? Nelle. I’ve got Google too, Bran. That’s who you’re marrying? Is this a publicity stunt? Because I’m out on a limb here—this is my job. Can you not get her into bed any other way?”
Bran freed himself from Tomi’s hold. “That’s not it.”
It wasn’t. It was that no matter what happened with the house, he’d have something for himself. It was that even though Nelle had only been relaying the news about his Note nominations, even though that had already happened yesterday, it had seemed like she made it happen tonight. As if her magic was rubbing off on him. It was that he saw her, and heard bursts of music that didn’t exist yet.
“It better not be. I told that judge you were desperately in love—that is the only reason he agreed to do this. So you’d better act like it.”
“Okay, okay.” Bran hooked an arm over his cousin’s shoulders and pulled her into the room. “I’m sorry, Tomi. I got it. Thanks for doing this.”
The courtroom had the kind of beige nondescript atmosphere that Bran associated with true crime documentaries, not the grand depictions of marble-column justice popular on television dramas. A pale room, with fluorescent lights and cheap low-pile carpet. This was where he was going to marry Nelle, the world-renowned superstar who had graced the covers of dozens of fashion magazines. It wasn’t opulent, or romantic, or anything he imagined she might like. Bran frowned, unaccustomed to the sinking weight of considering that what he wanted might not be right for someone else.
But he pushed past it, faltering only once on his walk by the cramped rows of chairs, when he caught sight of a newly plastered section of wall its own wrong shade of beige. Nelle was a big girl, she’d made her decision for her own reasons. And she was fine. On the other side of a short dividing wall she was shaking hands with Wyn, who had come prepared for the occasion with a bouquet of white peonies.
“This is so thoughtful, and my favorite—I buy a shampoo just for this smell.” Nelle brought the flowers to her face to inhale. Up until a moment ago, dressed head to toe in black, standing in this 1989 set-piece, she’d looked completely un-bridelike. But now, smiling gratefully at his cousin-in-law, holding a bouquet of white flowers, her eyes shining... Bran wiped his palms on his pants.
All the Best Nights Page 4