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“Yeah, well, we just decided it was right, you know?” Cara said. “And it just worked out. I know I’m not impulsive, but when Lo said she wanted to get married, I couldn’t dream of saying no.” She did that thing where she put her hand on my thigh under the table. She’d been doing that a lot more, I was sure of it.
“Well, I did do a perfect proposal,” I said, grinning back at her.
“Yes, you did,” she said, leaning closer. The noise in the restaurant faded and everything about Cara sharpened. Her eyes that were sparkling with our shared amusement. Her warm hand, which was still on my leg. The brightness of her cheeks because she’d had a few drinks. Her scent that I could pick out, even in this crowded restaurant filled with so many other smells. I could find her even in a sea of other people. I would always find my best friend.
“Tell us the story,” Lane said. “I haven’t heard it yet.”
Cara and I took turns telling first my proposal story and then hers and flashed our rings again and talked about where we were going to go on a trip and how we thought living together was going to work out.
“Honestly, when we moved in together, I was freaking out, but it was such an easy transition,” Kell said. She and Lane had been together for four years and I was surprised they weren’t married yet. They were one of the first queer couples I’d met in Boston, and they’d been my inspiration for what a good queer relationship could be.
“Except for the time when we fought about what to put on the walls. And where to put it,” Lane said with a smirk.
“You just didn’t understand my theme,” Kell said to her, and I snorted.
“Was your theme clutter? Because that’s what it looked like,” Lane fired back.
“Oh, unlike your collection of teapots? Because that looked pretty cluttered to me.”
“You love my teapots,” Lane said, leaning closer. It was like Cara and I had disappeared and Kell and Lane were in their own world. That was what I wanted.
“Ugh, I guess. I kinda love you too,” Kell said, leaning only a few inches away from Lane’s face.
“Oh you do, do you?” Lane said, smiling.
“Yeah, I do.” They shared a sweet kiss and it made my chest ache. I was so happy for them, and supported them, but seeing that when I didn’t have it and wanted it so much was rough sometimes.
“Hey,” Cara whispered as the waitress came to ask how everything was going and if we wanted drink refills.
“What?” I whispered back.
“Are you okay?” she said softly.
“Yeah, fine.”
“You sure?” I nodded and ordered another Coke.
“I’m fine.”
Pretending to be married was fun most of the time, and then there were the moments when melancholy and jealousy would creep in through the back door of my mind and take up residence at the front of my thoughts.
It wasn’t Cara’s fault that we weren’t really in love, and it wasn’t her fault that I had come up with this ridiculous plan in the first place. It wasn’t anyone’s fault but mine. My one consolation was that it would be over soon and we could hopefully go back to being best friends. We’d been through so much already and our friendship had survived. So why wouldn’t we make it through one little fake marriage?
Fifteen
“When did you get so much stuff?” I said, looking around our living room. Well, what used to be our living room before it had been infested by a plague of boxes that were stacked nearly to the ceiling.
“I’m not really sure. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but then you put it in a box, and I think it multiplies.” Cara said, panting a little from walking up the stairs. The movers had left and now it was up to us, and the friends that would be here in an hour, to get all this shit from boxes to not boxes.
Then there was the added complication of having to put all of her bedroom items in my room, since, you know, we were a couple and getting married. It would be strange if we didn’t share a bedroom. Later, we would move everything back to her room ourselves.
“Where do we even start?” I said, starting to panic.
“Lo, it’s fine. I have a system. I color-coded and labeled everything.” She pulled a folded piece of paper from her back pocket.
