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It would be a sham marriage, but you would reap all the benefits of being my wife.
At this very moment, I was staring an eviction notice in the face. I’d dealt with angry landlords before and had always come out okay, but there was no guarantee I’d land on my feet this time. I had loans to pay back. Art supplies to buy.
I could be indignant about what Walker offered me, or I could be resourceful.
And I had always been resourceful.
“Say I do this for you.” I spoke slowly, the wheels turning in my head. “Ho
w long would it be? What would it entail?”
“It would be a couple of months,” he said immediately. “Maybe less. We’d only need to go to a justice of the peace, get our wedding certificate, and have a quick ceremony. Obviously, you’d have to move into my place, but if that’s a problem—”
“It’s not,” I said, still neglecting to mention my eviction. We weren’t actually in a relationship, so my crappy living situation was none of his business. “Or, it wouldn’t be. Go on.”
“We’d just need to put on a show for a little while. Make it look like we were truly husband and wife. I keep my personal life… private at work, so it wouldn’t surprise people to learn that I’d been seeing someone special and just didn’t talk about her. We only need to keep the charade up long enough that it doesn’t look suspicious when we get a divorce. We’ll do it amicably—nothing that shakes things up badly. I don’t want any of this to affect you negatively. I just want to be able to keep control of my company like I know my father wanted… even if he couldn’t just leave it to me like a normal man.”
I was silent as Walker explained his plan to me, still stunned the words had come out of his mouth to begin with. Marriage wasn’t something that had been on my mind in years. Maybe at one point… but that’d been a long time ago, when there was someone in my life I could see myself spending the rest of my days with.
Swallowing hard, I looked across the table at Walker. He had been that man, years ago.
I could still remember the day he’d called me just moments before getting on a plane. He’d told me he was leaving—that his father was moving to Tokyo, and he had to go with him. His mother had died of cancer, and his father had closed off after her loss, becoming even more driven than before.
I’d given Walker time, had hoped he would make his way back to me. That he’d at least call me so we could end things properly, if that was how it had to be. But weeks had turned to months of unread texts and unreturned calls. The last voicemail he’d left me was a ‘Sorry. I have to focus on work.’
It had hurt. He’d broken my heart and wounded my pride, leaving me to wonder if any of what we’d had was truly real. I mean, I’d gotten over it—or so I’d thought. It stung more than it should’ve to watch him sitting across from me suggesting marriage to get out of a loophole. I almost told him no. It was one thing to reconnect as friends, another thing entirely to have a shoddy, impersonal marriage proposal thrown my way.
I’m saying this would be a huge favor to me, and I would be willing to pay you for helping me…
Eviction loomed over me like a guillotine ready to sever my damn head. I had maybe a few hundred dollars to my name in cash, another thousand or so in savings. Not enough to keep me afloat in New York City on the fly. Maybe, on some level, this was Walker’s way of apologizing to me after all this time, and it was something that would benefit me more than hurt me.
Or maybe I just saw this as a way to get some kind of weird, convoluted closure for a break-up I should have gotten over a long time ago.
Either way, when I opened my mouth the words just tumbled out.
“Alright. Let’s get married.”
* * *
Alone in my apartment after lunch with Walker, I flopped down on the bed, staring up at my ceiling. I couldn’t possibly call Mom and Dad and tell them I was getting married. There would be way too many questions, and I wouldn’t be able to lie to them. They’d probably understand the situation, but there was something about pulling them into the strange little web of weirdness I’d gotten myself stuck in that felt insidious—even if it was something that involved Walker. They had liked him a lot, at one point. After he’d moved and ghosted me, their love for him faded as they cleaned up the emotional mess he’d left behind.
No… I wouldn’t get my parents involved in this, but I needed to call someone. I pulled my phone from my pocket and swiped across the screen, tapping my number one contact.
Alexander picked up after three rings.
“Hey there; what’s up, Big Mac?”
I rolled my eyes. Of all the nicknames to land, that one was easily the most regrettable. It had survived several college semesters with Alex, who was arguably my best friend at this point in my life. He was my advice column, art critic, and brother from another mother, all wrapped up into one. There was no one else quite like Alex in the entire world.
“Hey, Alex. I have some… ah, life updates.”
“Oh, really now? Spill.”
I told him about yesterday at the office first, starting with my shock at seeing Walker and my subsequent bodily attack on my cleaning cart. When I moved on to my ex asking me out to lunch, Alex interrupted.
“Walker? As in, that handsome hunk of man you talked about all through college—”
“I did not talk about him that much,” I protested.
