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“Look, I am positive that I want to marry him,” I said. “You knew way sooner than seven months. He just waited that long to ask you.”
I could feel Lindsey’s judgement as I laid there on the couch, trying to argue my side of things. I really wanted her to be happy for me, request to be at the courthouse, and start talking about cute outfits I could wear to get married in, but that didn’t happen. Instead of happy girl talk, I got a lecture on getting to know someone before jumping straight into marriage. It was like she didn’t understand that I knew that. I let it go, knowing that eventually, Lindsey would come around. She was my best friend, and the last thing I wanted to do was fight with her. She had her own big day coming up, and with her already being pissed with her sister, the last thing she needed was me picking a fight with her. So, instead, I changed the subject back to Sarah. It was the first time I had ever wanted to talk about Sarah over my own personal happiness.
After about twenty minutes, I could feel the nausea coming back full force, and I told Lindsey that I needed to close my eyes. She brought me a new soda and then let herself out. My heart was sad that I couldn’t share this special time with her. I knew one day, everyone would realize that Nathan and I were meant to be, but for now, I just had to be happy with knowing I was going to get to marry the man of my dreams soon. All I had to do was shake whatever was kicking my ass first.
Chapter 14
Nathan
It was Sunday afternoon, and I was laying on the couch, staring out the window. I never went back to Amanda’s house after meeting up with John, and I hadn’t talked to her since then, either. My head was spinning from our conversation, and I didn’t know what to think or say about any of it.
I wanted so badly to believe in the fairytale that I had created, but it looked like it was a load of bullshit. When I had met up with John, I was irritated, not wanting to listen to what he had to say. I had been with Amanda, taking care of her, and didn’t have time for his bullshit. He had started out by letting me know that Amanda had recently, in the last couple of days, started really looking into starting her own practice.
At that moment, it didn’t seem strange to me at all, and it irritated me how John was acting so accusatory when he told me. He was acting like I didn’t know anything about her dreams for the future. He
then continued by telling me all about her financial situation. Apparently, at that time, she didn’t have all of the funds that she would need to get the clinic up and running. I didn’t really find this strange, either, assuming that if she did have the funds, she would already have the clinic up and running.
I had rolled my eyes and sighed, waiting for him to either quit or tell me something worth hearing. I almost wish I hadn’t even thought that because the news just kept spewing out of his mouth. Apparently, Amanda had been living off of a trust fund that her father had passed down to her from when her grandparents had passed away. I had never asked her how she paid her bills, and honestly, the question never even crossed my mind. This trust fund wasn’t bottomless, though, and she either used it to open a clinic and then was broke, or she spread it out over the next few years until it ran dry. My interests became piqued at that moment, but only because she hadn’t shared that information with me yet. It was very likely that it wasn’t something that she even thought to share with me.
I leaned my head back on the couch and closed my eyes, feeling my chest aching from the pain of an impending heartbreak. I wanted to sit in my house and never leave again, feeling like such an idiot for not listening to John in the first place. I had been pissed at him when I went to the bar to meet him, but by the end, he was buying me shots to ease the pain. I sat there replaying the whole conversation over in my head.
“There’s more than just that,” John said in a calm tone. “And I want to say ahead of time, I’m sorry for doing it this way, but I had to do something before you made a mistake.”
“Yeah, well you haven’t told me anything damning yet,” I said with irritation.
“I am pretty sure the fact that she can’t make her dream clinic come true and that she is running out of money are the reasons why some mystery girl out of nowhere decided to marry you so fast,” he said.
“Or it could be that she loves me like she told me that she did,” I said, sipping my beer.
“Okay, well how about the fact that she is married?” he asked.
I stopped and stared forward, the beer barely touching my lips. I shook my head, trying to decide if he really just told me that Amanda was married. There was no way that was true. It couldn’t be true, could it? I had seen her, stayed at her place, showed up unannounced, and everything seemed kosher. I never once saw any remnants of another man at her place. I turned my head slowly toward John.
“You have exactly five seconds to explain to me exactly how you came to that conclusion,” I said. “And it better not be a gut instinct.”
“Well, first of all, it makes sense if you really think about it,” he said. “She didn’t tell you about her financials, she is only available to see you on certain nights, making up excuses when it is spur of the moment, and she doesn’t really talk about any man other than the mystery ex that she had cheating problems with.”
“That does not point to her being secretly married,” I said. “Try again.”
“Fine,” he said, sliding an envelope over to me. “I found this. It’s a marriage certificate with her name on it. I looked it up online, and I found a site that said she got married on that date, and that her maiden name is Adams.”
I slapped my hand on the envelope and opened it up, pulling out the piece of paper. It was a marriage license, or at least, looked like one, and sure enough, it had her name on it. I stared at the paper for a minute before looking back up at John. It was all history from there, shot after shot, trying to drown my heartbreak.
My eyes opened, and I stared up at my ceiling, hearing my phone ringing on the table next to me. I looked over to see Amanda’s name flashing across the screen. I had been screening my calls ever since I left her house, but I felt like it might be the right time to finally talk to her. I knew she wouldn’t stop calling until she knew why I disappeared, and I wanted to get it all over with as soon as I could so that I could go on with my life.
“Hello?” I answered.
“God, finally,” she said. “I have been worried to death about you. Why haven’t you answered my calls or texted me back at all? I thought you were coming back over last night, and you never showed up. On top of being sick from whatever I have going on, I was nervous as hell thinking something had happened to you.”
“I found out some information, Amanda,” I said with irritation. “I needed a little bit of time to process it before I could talk to you. I’m sorry if you were worried about me. I will be fine when all of this is resolved.”
“All of what?”
“Look, we need to talk,” I said. “I’ll be over in twenty minutes.”
I hung up the phone before she could respond, knowing that I needed to see her face to face. I headed over to her house and let myself in, finding her showered and sitting up on the couch. Her cheeks finally had some color in them, so I didn’t feel so bad attacking a sick person.
“Why have you been looking into starting your clinic?” I asked. “You just started looking over the last couple of days.”
