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“¡Explicalo1!” I bark as my bride and her sister are in the room. I look around at the old books and the broken desk and understand why he wants the donation so badly. It may be in perfect condition from the altar to the benches, but the rest of the building is clearly in ruins.
“I thought maybe it would be better if you married Leticia instead of me,” Belén offers as an explanation.
Really?
“You thought it would be a good idea to switch places on our wedding day? Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”
Leticia starts to nod, but as I narrow my eyes at her, she shakes her head.
“A haircut and some cheap perfume. Do you think this is the only difference between the two of you?”
“I’ll have you know I paid twenty bucks for my perfume, I’m sure it’s not considered cheap …”
Leticia rolls her eyes as she stops talking, confirming what I’d just said. She really thinks that perfume and a haircut is the only difference between the pair of them, but I don’t have the patience nor the tolerance to explain it to her. There are so many more.
“It’s me you both should be apologizing to. When I woke up this morning, I didn’t think I’ll be marrying Diablo—Diego,” Leticia quickly corrects herself. “I thought I was coming to my sister’s wedding and I would be getting a break at work.”
I know what name she has me under in her phone and what she calls me at work. She’s even accidentally sent me an email with the wrong name. She’s not good at hiding her feelings. Her emotions are displayed on every part of her body, even her nipples when I was kissing her just now. I adjust my length and try to erase the memory out of my mind.
“What about me in all this?” I demand a fucking answer now, but not from Leticia, because she clearly was roped into doing this. The question is why.
“Leticia will be the perfect dutiful wife. She will do everything you command,” Belén says coldly. There’s no reaction from her at all. Unlike Leticia who is pacing the room and stopped in her tracks with her mouth wide open as if she’s ready to catch flies like a frog, because the only sounds leaving her mouth are croaks.
I take a deep breath because I’m clearly on the road to nowhere. My heart beats a slow and steady rhythm inside my chest.
“Technically, we are not married.”
“What? How?” they bark at me.
Belén cannot be completely stupid. She must know how, I think as I pinch my brow, trying to figure out how someone so intelligent as Belén could do something so stupid.
“You signed the register as Belén, and you are not Belén. Therefore, we are not officially married. Leticia, you will continue to be Belén. Tomorrow morning, Belén and I will go to city hall and get officially married. We just need to get through this fucking day. Got it? I will not be humiliated. I swear a Dios, you will not do that to me!”
Leticia nods, and Belén shakes her head. But this isn’t a negotiation. I’m not asking if they want to do it. I’m telling them that, being fucking generous, and this is all I’m offering.
Nothing more, and certainly nothing less.
“I can’t marry you, Diego. Don’t you get it?” Belén says with no emotion. It’s as if the woman I’ve been dating for the last six years is different to the one who is talking. I march up to her wondering how I’ve been so blind to her true nature all this time.
“¡Por Dios!2 I don’t fucking get it, but then you don’t seem to neither.”
My mind flashes back to the countless dinners, the outings we’ve been on together. Our plan and fate were always clear. Was Belén the love of my life? No. But she was perfect, because she would be the dutiful wife.
Her eyes trace back to Leticia, who is now biting her fingernails. Something I told her to never to do in my presence, but here she is doing it, irritating me even more.
And now she’s supposed to be my wife, not my assistant.
“Belén Martinez Lopez Martin, you better have a good explanation for all of this.”
“Well, you have the Japanese deal in two weeks. Remember, we were supposed to fly there right after our honeymoon?”
She’s still not explaining to me why they switched places.
“Romantic,” Leticia says under her breath, but her mumble is so loud that even I heard it.
“She doesn’t speak Japanese. So, she’s no use to me.”
“She can learn. You can take her there instead of Barbados to learn a few words before the meeting,” Belén pleads. The more we talk, the more I realize even us going to city hall isn’t going to work, because technically, we are married. The only people who know they switched places are in this room.
