“Miss Quinn!” Sadie beams.
“What a treat, I get to see you on Sunday. Twice!” Quinn says, smoothing her fingers through Sadie’s ponytail. Sadie crawled over my lap and sat next to Quinn at church this morning, and Tate gave me the eyeball at that move, then sent me a text message that simply readASK QUINN. Fortunately, as Mabel was dragging Quinn around the lobby and introducing her to everyone, I was able to pull Tate aside and spill.
I explained that I had asked Quinn and that she has tentatively agreed, but that we needed to talk privately after service today to iron out the kinks. Tate agreed to take Sadie,because I believe with all of my heart he and Love feel just as invested in my success as I am.
If I lose Sadie,welose Sadie. That’s how close we are.
Love pulls open the back door and pokes her head inside. “Who wants pizza?”
Sadie squishes Quinn’s cheeks in her hands, pressing a kiss to her nose. “Have fun with Daddy. I’ll see ya later!” And with that, she’s hand in hand with my best friend’s wife, traipsing across the lawn toward their place.
At the counter, I press a piece of toasted bread slathered in mustard into the other half of the sandwich against a fresh slice of tomato. Quinn braces one hand against the glass, watching Sadie go.
After another weighty sigh that sounds a lot like the one she did when Melvin was on her mind earlier, Quinn leaves the back door where she’d been lingering. She comes to join me, helping herself to the pitcher of sweet tea in the fridge. She fills two glasses in comfortable silence, standing right next to me all casual and natural.
It’s gonna hurt when she leaves, because she brings so many things I’ve missed, but still, it’s worth it at the moment. She smells like flowers in the sun, sugar cookies, and all things good woman. The crotch of my best denim gets hot and tight, and suddenly that jerk down the drain in the shower doesn’t seem like it was nearly enough.
“I liked the service today,” she announces, drinking from the glass then refilling it. This time, she hops up onto the counter, her white skirt brushing the plate I’m making sandwiches on. I pause for a moment, calibrating to the way she chooses to be so comfortably and casually close to me, how effortless it is.
Almost like the two of us together is the most natural thing.
“Yeah, it was good,” I agree, though I didn’t hear a word because my mind was working overtime on this lunch.What will her demands be? What will she want? What boundaries do I need to put in place to make this the best fake marriage?
I couldn’t come up with answers to any of those things, because I kept asking myself other questions like,will she move in? Will I get to kiss her in public to make people believe we’re really an in-love, married couple? Will she hold my hand at church?
And more than that, one question hovered in my mind: how will I explain this to Sadie?
“So,” she hedges, breaking me from my introversion. “Let’s talk about our impending nuptials, shall we?”
I work on the second sandwich, adding lettuce and sprouts. “Okay.” I glance at my ring finger, where a gold band still resides.
She must notice, because she softly adds, “You can keep that on. I totally understand.”
I look up at her, hands on the sandwich, and find her green eyes wide, full of understanding. “I mean, I don’t understand your loss, and I don’t mean to imply it, but more so, I understand the desire to keep that ring on, even for this.”
I lower the knife to the side of the plate, my eyes on hers as I drag the gold band down my finger, and set it on the counter. “I accept that Amelia is gone,” I tell her, having never said these words aloud, “and I know wearin’ that ring doesn’t make me any closer to her in Heaven.”
Quinn blinks at me, like she’s thinking over what I just said. “You feel close to her no matter what?”
I wobble my head, then refocus on finishing my sandwich. “Sometimes I do. Other times I go real long stretches where I don’t. It comes; it goes. I feel the same about my mama and my pop. Sometimes I feel them in this land, hear their memories echo through this property when I’m out here workin’ inthe sweltering heat.” I shrug. “Other times, I feel like I was put on this earth completely alone and I have ties to nothing.”
She plucks a chunk of avocado from the plate of fixings as I continue to assemble my sandwich. “I know what you mean, kinda. I mean, I make films, and I love doing that, but every once in a while I feel empty, like there’s a huge other piece of my life that’s missing, and I don’t even know what it is.”
We stare at one another for a moment as I wipe my hands on the dish towel. “Maybe it’s that award you want to win,” I say, collecting the plates and guiding us out to the porch. Quinn brings the sweet tea with her behind me.
We settle into the chair, the awning letting the sun lap at our feet, but our faces are shielded. There’s some privacy, and a lot of beauty, and it feels like the perfect spot for this talk.
“Maybe,” she says, drawing her legs up into the chair as she balances her plate on the arm. She points to her sandwich. “You cut it into little triangles,” she coos, then makes me choke on my first bite when she bluntly asks, “do you want more kids?”
“Sorry, sorry,” she apologizes, wincing as she passes me my sweet tea. I take a few sips, trying to wash down the shock and confusion clogging my throat.
“This is a fake, temporary marriage,” I remind her, which causes her face to pale.
She slaps a manicured hand over her mouth, and releases a muffled, “Oh my god.” Quinn sets her plate on the ground and twists in the chair to completely face me. “I know it’s temporary. I wasn’t— My god, you must think I’m crazy. No, see, I was asking because one thing I think is important is us getting our stories straight. Like, what’s our timeline for having kids or are we not doing that? Are we taking a honeymoon? We got a lot of stuff we gotta get straight."
I already have half of my sandwich eaten. “Are we startin’ there? I mean, should we talk timeline first?”
Quinn retrieves her plate and gets to work on one of her triangles. “Yes,” she says around a mouth of food, which I like, though I’d never tell Sadie that. Quinn is clearly comfortable here around me, and I like that. It’ll make this fake marriage thing a lot easier. “That’s true. Okay. So we get married now and, what, you win the rodeo and win in court against the Montgomerys,” she says, saying their surname in a British accent, which makes me chuckle.
