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“You gotmarried?” Willa cried, putting down her glass and reaching for the certificate. “Like, married,married? With vows and everything?” I looked at Emma and then shrugged.
“I guess? I mean, I don’t remember anything beyond going to the bar after the magic show.” I reached and searched within my mind, but everything got hazy. I’d had a lot to drink. Shots upon shots upon mixed drinks. I’d decided that I was going to live it up this weekend, and that had seriously backfired.
“Yeah, we had a lot of drinks. I’m hurting today for sure,” Lara said, even though her brown eyes were clear and her hair was perfect.
“So what, you just get it annulled, right? I’m sure you can probably do that online,” Sammi said, leaning against Nova.
“I guess,” I said. “We’ll deal with that later.” I was suddenly very tired.
“We’ll deal with it later,” Emma said in a quiet voice. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. She shook her head and then smiled, but it didn’t seem genuine. “We still have one day and one night left, so I say we keep celebrating Lara, since that’s what we’re here to do.” She picked up a glass and filled it with orange juice and champagne before handing it to me and then making another for herself.
“To Lara,” she said, raising her glass. We all raised ours and toasted.
“To Lara!”
After consuming several mimosas, we headed to the spa in the hotel for hot stone massages, facials, and pedicures. It was the perfect way to end the weekend that had been filled with gambling, dancing, drinking, and just being fools before we had to go back to our regular lives with jobs and bills and responsibilities. It was also a hell of a detox.
“Hey,” Emma said, as we got our pedicures. She’d been pretty damn quiet the whole day. Emma was my best friend and, for the first time ever, I was at a loss for what to say.
“Hey,” I said, leaning closer to her as the nail tech scrubbed the bottoms of my feet. It tickled just enough to be distracting.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “About this whole marriage thing?” I shrugged one shoulder. Bits and pieces had started to come back to me. I couldn’t remember how we’d gotten separated from the group, but I did recall us stumbling into a shop and buying the gowns. At least I had that, and I had one more thing: the swelling feeling of joy as I looked into her eyes and said the vows the justice performing the ceremony told me to repeat. That feeling had crept back and now I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“Yeah, why?” I asked, my voice a little choked. I was going to blame it on the tech going to town on my heels.
“Just checking. I mean, I still can’t remember how it happened, but it will be okay, right? We should probably not tell anyone else about it though.” I agreed on that. I could just picture the particular way a frown would flip my mother’s normally smiling mouth upside down, and the exact tone of the sigh my father would let out.Reckless Callyn, at it again. Foolish Callyn. Always getting herself into one situation or another.To be fair, I could (usually) get myself out of the scrapes I go into without too much damage. Most of the time.
“Yeah, I don’t think my parents would be excited about this one. And I’m definitely not telling Dani,” I said. Perfect Dani, my older sister who was the prettiest, smartest, most perfect daughter to ever live, according to my parents. No, I wasn’t bitter about it atall.
“No, I’m not telling mine either. They’re not so happy with me right now about the whole job-quitting thing.” Emma had left her job in finance to go back to school and get her vet tech degree. It was something she’d always wanted to do, but had caved to parental pressure about making money for years.
Well, she’d made decent money, but she was so miserable that something had to give. I was so fucking proud of her for standing her ground and doing what she wanted. Since she was an only child, her parent’s expectations had sat atop her shoulders and nearly crushed her spirit for most of her life.
“Let them be mad. It’s not their life.” She sighed and rested her head back on the massage chair, closing her eyes.
“I know that they want me secure financially because they never were. But I think I can make a little less money and be a lot happier, and they can’t seem to get that.” No, they never would. My parents were just happy that I had a full-time job and was living (with roommates) on my own.
“They’ll see. When you graduate and start working, they’ll see.” I hoped they would. I hoped they could put aside their own desires and support their only daughter.
“I looked up annulments. We can file everything online. It might cost a little bit, but I’ll take care of it,” she said. I cringed because Emma took care of a lot of things when it came to money. I didn’t want to feel ashamed that she used to make more than I did and had saved a ton, but I couldn’t stop when she always whipped out her card to pay for lunch or the movies when we went out.
“We can split it,” I said. “Or is that you admitting that the marriage was your idea?” That was what I wanted to know, even if it meant that I’d been the instigator. I usually was.
“Who was the one who convinced me to get a cherry tattoo on my ass?” she asked, leaning close so no one could overhear. I stifled a laugh.
“I got one too. And no one forced you to get it, Emma,” I said. It had been a silly best friend thing we’d done before we’d graduated college. It was cute as hell and my parents still didn’t know about it.
“And who was the one who almost got us arrested?”
“Which time?” I said with a grin. Emma tried to suppress a smile and failed. “My point is, when it comes to which one of us is more likely to say ‘hey, let’s get married in Vegas,’ it’s you.”
“But maybe that’s why it’syou. Because you’re assuming it’s me and you should never assume.” I wagged my finger at her and she grabbed it and bit it lightly before giving it back to me. My heart thumped at the thought of my finger in her mouth. What a weird thought.
We finished our pedicures, Emma getting a soft gray on her nails and me with a wild red with rhinestones on my big toes.
“Those are going to chip off in about five seconds,” Emma said as I wiggled my toes and admired them.
“I don’t care. They’re fun.”
