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“It’s not –”
“It was in an envelope and I put it on my desk to shred it,” she growls. “I’ll do it when I go in.”
I take another drink of water, my worst fears quickly becoming realized. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Emily,” I go on, “it’s not there. I looked and it’s not there.”
“Aaron, we have other things we need to talk about and –”
“Emily, I think that certificate accidentally got mailed in.”
She looks at me as if she’s not comprehending what I’m saying. “Yeah, and?”
“And that means we’re married,” I declare. “We’re married, Emily.”
The expression on her face rotates from mild surprise, to shock, to outright horror in the span of mere seconds as the full comprehension of what I just said sinks in. She opens her mouth to speak and then closes it again without saying a word. We sit in a tense, awkward silence for several long seconds, the tide of uncertainty between us growing ever deeper.
“No, I put it in my basket to shred –”
“Emily, the basket on your desk is your outbox,” I explain. “And it was empty. When you left, you took the mail and dropped it off to be sent out.”
She shakes her head, her eyes faraway like she’s trying to replay every step in her mind’s eye. She’s walking through every step of her day from the instant she opened the package to when she bolted out the doors that afternoon. And as she goes over it in her head again and again, I see her becoming less and less certain that she disposed of it like she thought she had. It’s not long before her eyes widen. Her mouth falls open.
“Oh God. Oh God, Aaron. I think I might have accidentally mailed it,” she whispers. “I didn’t mean to. I meant to shred it. I was going to shred it. I –”
The absurdity of it all hits me like a runaway train. The force of the blow knocks the air from my lungs for a moment, and then the laughter bursts from me like a volcanic eruption. I laugh long and hard, unable to stop myself. Through it all, Emily stares at me like I’ve lost my mind, the horror on her face only growing thicker and deeper.
“What in the hell is so funny?” she barks at me.
It takes a minute for my laughter to finally fade away and when it does, there are tears streaming down my face. I wipe them away and shake my head. I look up and Emily is staring daggers through me, obviously not seeing the humor in any of this.
“I was just thinking that this is probably the most ridiculous way to start a marriage, Mrs. Steel,” I crack, still chuckling. “Of all the ways I thought I’d get married, having a six-foot-tall Kelpien performing the ceremony and a paperwork screw-up to seal the deal would probably the last. It’s not exactly the stuff of fairy tales, is it?”
“No, I guess it isn’t.”
Her face is still stern, but the frown slowly and begrudgingly starts to fade. It takes a minute, but the frown disappears completely, and she starts to laugh. She’s doing her best to fight it, but she can’t hold back the flood. Soon enough, she’s laughing as uproariously as I was. Her laughter breaks something loose in me, and I can't help but join her in laughing until our sides hurt. It’s not long before we’re both laughing like lunatics together.
The laughter is like a pressure release valve that helps drain some of the tension in the room. It doesn’t make it all evaporate completely, but it helps ease it some. When we both have ourselves under control once more, we’re left staring at each other.
“So, what are we going to do about it?” Emily asks.
“I suppose we’ll have to file an annulment,” I reply.
Like clouds passing over the face of the sun, a shadow of emotion crosses her face as those words pass my lips. I’d be lying if I said the same shadow didn’t cross my heart. I don’t deny the feelings I carry for Emily. I only question the wisdom of giving myself over to them. Of letting my emotions cloud my thinking and my judgment.
It would be so easy to give in, to give myself over to them. It would be easy to let myself get swept away in this flood of feeling. But with so many unanswered questions and unresolved issues hovering between us, now is not the time. I can’t afford to let myself get caught up like I did back in college – like I did when she came back into my life. There’s too much left to figure out and too many life-altering stakes in play to not be thinking clearly.
“Yeah, an annulment,” she muses quietly. “That’s probably for the best. It’s probably the smartest thing to do.”
“Yeah, probably,” I mutter.
There’s something about uttering those words, though, that leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. It feels like my tongue is coated in dry ash so thick I’m choking on it. I know it’s the emotion within me welling up, trying to force me to give in. My heart is trying to hold me hostage while my mind rebels as it tries to assert control –to inject some logic and reason into the proceedings.
The trouble is, I know logic and reason have no place in this goddamn circus that’s taken up residence in my head.
But for a minute, as we laughed together, it felt like old times again. The fog of tension and awkwardness had lifted, and we both got a glimpse of those feelings we shared again. It feels like it’s been a hundred years since we’ve had that sort of comfort and connection between us. Basking in the warm rays of it once more leaves me feeling good. For the first time since this whole shitshow came crashing down around us, I feel something closer to whole.
Emily clears her throat, her expression turning sour. “There’s still a lot we still need to discuss, Aaron.”
And pretty much just like that, the good vibes are gone again. The sun has ducked back behind the clouds and thunderheads are starting to gather.
