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I text her back right away. Yes please. What I really need now is to talk this over with a neutral party. A friend who was there and knows exactly how this situation got so wild in the first place. She’ll talk sense into me. She’ll explain that it’s been fun to enjoy my time with John, but that I can’t go and stay married, let alone to my boss, and potentially blow up my first job in the industry.
I need to get my priorities back in order, and my best friend is just the person to help me do that. Even if she can be a bad influence on nights out, when push comes to shove, Lea’s always practical where it really counts.
With a fresh distraction in my immediate future, I push my way back into the studio, intent on grabbing my things and heading straight to lunch. I don’t make it farther than my desk, though, before a familiar face appears beside it, wearing a bright, curious smile.
“Mara! Hadn’t seen you this morning. I was wondering if you were in yet.” Bianca grins and offers me a coffee.
Bianca has been great this week too. Almost as friendly and easygoing as Daniel. Not to mention, her habit of providing caffeine for all the staff, no matter the hour of the day, has certainly saved my sanity more than once when my energy is flagging.
“Thank you.” I accept the coffee, my second of the day, and raise it toward her in a toast. “But yeah, got here early as usual.”
“You were here so late last night too, though, weren’t you?” she asks.
“No rest for the wicked,” I joke, taking a sip of the coffee. Two creamers, just the way I like it. Bianca’s got a good head on her shoulders. She notices a lot more than people give her credit for, I’ve realized. It wouldn’t surprise me if she works her way up the corporate ladder quickly. I’m surprised she went in for a secretarial job at all, considering she seems more the business major and marketing type.
Then again, she is always talking about how much she admires John, and how much she wants to learn from him. She keeps calling him a genius, too. Often enough that I worry his ego might grow out of control if he listens to her for too long.
“What time did you finally get home?” Bianca looks worried, concerned about my sleep schedule—or lack thereof—maybe.
I blush again, remembering what I was distracted by most of the second half of the evening. “Oh, I don’t know, eleven maybe?”
“John stayed late too, didn’t he?” She cocks her head, looking so innocently curious that it just makes my flush even more obvious.
I force my smile to remain steady, and clench my hands a little harder around the hot coffee cup. “I guess so,” I reply, my smile turning forced. “Excuse me for the moment, though, Bianca. I was just about to head out for lunch.”
“Oh!” Her eyes shift to my hand. My left hand, I notice. Then they dart away again. “Are you meeting someone? Your husband?”
“Just a friend,” I answer, and this time I really do manage to extract myself, grabbing my purse from the desk and bringing the coffee with me as I beeline toward the exit.
That was close. Too close. The hairs on the back of my neck are still standing on end, my stomach churning with worry. Does she suspect something? Has she noticed that both John and I have been staying late every night this week?
Moreover, would she tell anyone else, if she did notice?
I force myself to forget about it for now. There’s nothing I can do in the meantime. And who knows, maybe this will all be a moot point soon anyway.
That’s what I need to decide now, after all.
I spend most of the drive to the restaurant going through the two competing scenarios. In one, John and I annul this marriage and continue as coworkers. And I spend every day for the next however long I’m at this company trying to forget about how it felt to be with him. Trying to forget the mind-blowing orgasms, or how hot it is to hear him call me his wife as we fuck. Trying not to think about the searing hot glances he shoots my way when nobody else is looking, glances that promise just how many filthy things he’s doing to me in his head.
Forget undressing me with his eyes. John full on fucks me with his.
And then there’s all our late-night talks over the work bench about our career goals, the plans we have for our futures. We’re surprisingly in sync, on so many things…
Stop it, I tell myself as I pull up to the restaurant. You can’t do this for real.
But my mind won’t stop playing over the other scenario. In that second one, John and I stay married. We tell people, we stop hiding and slinking around in dark corners of restaurants with discrete owners. The whole world finds out that I’m married to one of the richest, most eligible bachelors out there…
And I get to keep him. I get to keep both my job and this man. Maybe my coworkers judge me for it; maybe Daniel and Bianca won’t treat me the same way anymore, but is that a good enough reason to give up on something that could be real? Just because people might not understand or approve?
I’m torn up all over again as I stride into the restaurant and pick out Lea along the back wall, already eating an appetizer. That girl could eat most men twice her size under the table. I join her with a hug and steal one of her croquettes. “I finally heard back from Vegas,” I say by way of greeting.
“And?” Lea’s eyebrows shoot upward. I’ve kept her filled in on my progress with the annulment so far—or rather, the lack thereof until today. But I haven’t told her everything.
I haven’t kept her posted on what’s been happening between John and me, exactly.
“I can annul it, but I’d need to do it within the next two weeks in order to do it the easy way.”
“Okay. Easy way sounds good.” She picks up another croquette and bites in with enthusiasm. “Why do you look so upset, then?”
I bite the inside of my cheek, wondering how much to tell her. But she’s my best friend. And besides, I don’t think John would be upset if I said something about us. Far from it—he wants to declare I’m his to the entire world, as he keeps saying. It’s taken all my powers of persuasion to keep him from revealing this marriage publicly just yet.
So in the end, I cave. “John and I have been hooking up,” I tell her. Then I shake my head. “No, not hooking up; not even fucking. Well… sometimes fucking.” She laughs, and my face heats up. “I just… I think maybe it could be something real. I actually like him.”
“Mara.” She fixes me with a narrowed glare. “You know I love a good wild fling as much as the next girl. And I fully approved of you letting loose for once in Vegas. But you cannot marry a guy you barely know. Not yet, anyway! If this becomes a relationship, cool, but date him and think about it for a while, y’know?”
“No, you’re right. I know. I just… He’s really into this. He wants me to be his wife.”
Her eyebrows shoot upward. “Okay, first of all, congrats on snagging the world’s most eligible bachelor so quickly. But secondly, this is still pretty worrying, don’t you think?” She tilts her head. “I mean, what’s his motivation? He never seemed like the type to be all traditional about marriage and commitment before… Although, he did have that failed engagement,” she muses.
I frown. “He had a what?”
Lea rolls her eyes. “Girl, did you not even google the mega-famous guy you’re wedded to?” She reaches for her phone, and a few taps later, I’m staring at an article about John Walloway’s “disastrous almost-marriage.” It’s dated months before we met, but still, it makes something clench in my gut, uncertainty settling in.
Am I just a rebound for him?
I stare at the girl in the grainy photo who’s throwing a suitcase full of clothes into the trunk of her car, a trail of clothing behind her leading back into the front of an expensive-looking apartment complex. I bite my lower lip. He never mentioned anything about her.
Then again, neither of us really mentioned anything about our pasts. We were too focused on the present—and in my case on the looming future ahead of us. A future we need to annul before it becomes permanent, and far too real
.
“You’re right,” I murmur. “I’ll get the annulment.” But deep down, part of me wonders if I actually want it. After all, why does my chest hurt so much just saying those words? And why does it make my head throb, to think about leaving him?
I push the questions away, along with the remaining salad on my lunch plate. My appetite is long gone. “What about you, how are you doing?” I ask Lea, mostly for the distraction. But my head is pounding so much it’s hard to even pay attention to her answers.
