The Marriage Contract

by Natasha L. Black

  We went home but didn’t have a lot of time to think or talk about anything. We were there to change clothes so we could meet up with Hannah and Jordan for our celebration. There would be no reception, of course, but they insisted we get together for dinner and drinks to toast our new life together.

  Matt and I changed into the outfits we had chosen for the night, and I took just a few seconds to appreciate how incredible he looked all dressed up. Besides, it was my wedding day. Real or not, I felt justified in getting at least a couple of minutes to ogle my husband.

  We got to the restaurant after Hannah and Jordan. As soon as we walked in, she let out a squeal and rushed toward us.

  “The newlyweds!” she gushed.

  Some of the people around us turned at the announcement and smiled at us. A few called out their congratulations, and one man stepped up to shake Matt’s hand. It brought a bit of heat to my cheeks, but I found myself enjoying the attention. I didn’t get to enjoy all of the perks of being a newlywed, but I would take what I could get. It might have been shallow, but it made me feel special.

  “Our table is ready,” Jordan said.

  Matt started after him, but Hannah grabbed my hand and tugged me back.

  “Can I talk to you for a second?” she said.

  I nodded. “Sure.” I looked over at Matt. “I’ll see you in just a minute.”

  He nodded and followed Jordan through the restaurant. Hannah guided me off to the side and held both of my hands between us.

  “I just wanted to say I’m really happy for you,” she said. “Honestly, I didn’t think this was actually going to happen. Everything happened so fast between you and Matt, and I had a hard time believing you could really fall in love and decide you want to spend the rest of your lives together so quickly. But you did, and that makes me so happy. I’m so glad you finally found love.

  “I think it’s a little rushed, but who am I to say how long you should wait when it comes to what your heart’s telling you? The way you two look at each other makes me so happy. I just want you to know that I realize I might not have been the most supportive of how fast things have moved, but I accept your relationship, and I’m here for you.”

  The smile that came to my lips was somewhere between genuine and just another part of the farce. In reality, I didn’t really know how I was supposed to respond to her saying something like that. Yes, Matt and I got married specifically for the purpose of comforting his mother and sticking it to my family. We knew they were going to have a lot to say about it. That was kind of the point.

  But at the same time, her words made me feel a little defensive. It was like she thought I required her permission, or that somehow, I would feel bad about my marriage if I didn’t have her unwavering support.

  Reminding myself why I was doing this in the first place, I wrapped her in a hug.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She led me to the table, and the guys gave us a questioning look.

  “What was that all about?” Jordan asked.

  “I was just telling Chloe how happy I am for her and Matt,” Hannah said, sitting down beside her husband. “And that I think it’s wonderful that they found love together.”

  I sat down and looked over at Matt. He gave me a warm smile, and the butterflies rushed back into my belly.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I’m just going to slip to the restroom really fast.”

  “You want me to come with you?” Hannah asked.

  I shook my head. “No. It’s fine. Look, the waiter is coming over. Go ahead and order. You know what I like.”

  That wasn’t said to anyone in particular, and I was very curious about what I was going to end up eating considering I didn’t actually know if anyone at that table would be able to choose something from the menu I would really like. But I didn’t care. I needed to get away from them and have a second to breathe.

  I got to the bathroom and locked the door. Leaning over the sink, I took a deep breath, then filled my cupped hand with a little bit of water and flicked it onto my face. Those butterflies had to go away. I couldn’t even begin to entertain those kinds of thoughts. This was fake. It was a game, a performance. I had to keep that in mind and remind myself I wasn’t allowed to catch feelings for him. That would just make things far too complicated.

  When I felt like I had myself together, I went back to the table. We already had drinks, and I took a couple of sips. We ate and talked, and I managed to stay smiling and forcing laughs throughout it, but when it was time to head home, I fell quiet. Matt looked over at me a few times, but I didn’t look back his way.

  “Did you enjoy dinner?” he asked.

  “It was good,” I said.

  “I thought you would like the mushroom pasta. When I saw it on the specials list, it just sounded like you.”

  I was a little surprised. When the food was delivered and it was a beautiful plate of fresh pasta mixed with a garlic cream sauce and mushrooms, I was delighted. I also figured Hannah had to have ordered it for me. I hadn’t asked about it because I didn’t want Matt to feel bad. Now I was finding out that he was the one to choose it for me.

  “You picked that?” I asked.

  He nodded. “You liked it?”

  “It was wonderful.”

  I went quiet again, staring out the windshield as I tried to process what I was feeling. Somehow finding out that he was the one who chose my dinner for me made this even more confusing and complicated.

  “Are you okay?” Matt asked a few minutes later.

  I didn’t even know how to respond.

  23

  Matt

  I wasn’t sure what was going on with Chloe, but whatever it was, it was starting to bug me. She had been weird since the ceremony. No matter what I said or did to try to bring us back to how we had been beforehand, she was distant and standoffish. It was unlike how she had been the entire time I knew her, and I was worried I had done or said something wrong. But when I asked her, she said no, that everything was fine.

  I knew better than to believe that “fine” actually meant “fine.”

  I wished I had known that she was going to regret our situation if that’s what it was. I wouldn’t blame her for it, really. Getting married was a big deal, and I was sure she had a lot better ideas about how her wedding would be than getting hitched in a courthouse to a guy she wasn’t actually in love with. But still, I wished I had known. The last thing I wanted to do was make her feel like this was something she had to do. Bullying her into it was completely opposite of the plan. This was supposed to be something that benefited both of us.

  We had our first shift together since the wedding that night. Most of the day was spent with her on her laptop in the living room. I knew she was a bit of a news junkie, so I didn’t push it, but I kind of wished we could have hung out and watched something together. I was missing the time before our wedding. Inexplicably, it seemed like we were closer then.

  But, then again, I had to back off that, too. We weren’t supposed to be close. Just friendly. We had to be able to feign a relationship, not actually have one. Maybe she just needed her distance so she could be comfortable. I had to respect that.

  When we got to the bar, she got out of the car silently before I did and waited for me. When I got to her, it was like she was a completely different person. The game face was on, and she was smiling wide. She took my hand and curled up on my arm as we walked. I couldn’t help but feel simultaneous delight and sadness. I loved that she held me that way right in the moment, but I was suddenly upset that it was only because she was putting on an act.

  Once inside, she played up the newlywed act well. Jordan didn’t say a lot to me, but the girls all gathered around her, and she played the blushing bride. I caught her insinuating that we’d never left the bedroom in the couple of days off Jordan gave us after the wedding, and I laughed. If only, I thought.

  Still, even if it was fake, it was nice to see her pretend to be happy about being married to me.
And it kept Jordan off my case. He mostly just focused on the work ahead and a couple of the bookkeeping items that needed to be caught up on since I had been out. I promised him I would take the work home and get it done, but he insisted that for the next couple of weeks, work stayed at work.

  “Don’t let anything get between how happy you and she are right now,” Jordan said.

  I sat with that for a long time in the kitchen, running it over and over in my mind while I chopped vegetables and got things ready for dinner service. My line cook was running late, so it meant I had a lot to do back there, but I just couldn’t get my head in the game. Chloe’s reactions and Jordan’s words seemed to paralyze me.

  By the time my first break came up, I was ready to get the hell out of the kitchen and get some air. The line cook had gotten in and was handling things well enough that I dipped out without bothering to tell Jordan. As soon as I opened the door, the cooler air hit me, and I breathed deep. The door opened behind me, and I turned to see Chloe, joining me on the back porch with a smile on her face and two waters in her hand.

  “Saw you go out and thought you could use a drink,” she said.

  “Thanks. You taking a break, too?”

  “Yeah. Figured it might look weird if we took separate ones, you know?”

  “Good point,” I said. “If you see someone coming, tell me and we can start making out.”

  She laughed, and I grinned. It was good to hear that laugh again.

  “Busy night,” she said.

  Ahh, back to small talk.

  “It is,” I agreed. “That’s why I’ll try to make this short. What’s going on?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, suddenly changing her demeanor to be a little stiffer, a little more stoic.

  “You know what I mean,” I said. “Us.”

  “It’s nothing, really.”

  “Look, if this was a bad idea, you should tell me,” I said. “We never consummated the marriage, so we can just go get it annulled if you want.”

  She turned to me, her mouth open to respond when her phone rang. It seemed to snap her thoughts out of whatever she was going to say when she looked down at the screen. Rolling her eyes in the back of her head, she swiped to open the call and hit the speaker button.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “What the hell do you think you are doing?” came the screaming voice on the other end of the line. “Who do you think you are? You stupid bitch, why would you do something like that? Do you have any idea, just any fucking clue how badly you have embarrassed yourself? How badly you embarrassed your parents? How badly you embarrassed me?”

  “I only answered the phone so I could tell you to fuck off, Adam,” she said. “Now fuck off.”

  “Don’t you dare hang up on me,” Adam growled. “You have made a huge mistake, Chloe. Absolutely huge. Your tiny little brain can’t possibly comprehend the mountain of shit you just got yourself into. You are too damn naive to handle the world out there, Chloe. You need to come home and let me fix this.”

  “I would have done anything to not marry you,” Chloe said calmly. Then she laughed. “Why in the world would I want to marry you? You’re a complete prick, Adam.”

  “You have ruined your family’s business, you know that?” Adam continued. “The relationship between our fathers… it will never be the same. Ever. That’s your fault, Chloe. You did that. You couldn’t just do the easiest fucking thing in the world and do what you were told. No. Christ. How stupid can you be?”

  It took everything in me not to grab the phone out of her hand and tell that fucker exactly where he could go. But I had to let Chloe stand up for herself. She was doing a hell of a job so far. So as hard as it was, I did nothing.

  “I didn’t hurt the family business,” she said. “Dad will be just fine. So will your dad. Oh, boo-hoo, they can’t merge their businesses by marrying me off like this is the fucking Dark Ages. I followed my heart. That’s what I did. I followed my heart.”

  “Your heart?” Adam nearly screamed on the other end. “Are you a child? Because no one marries for love, Chloe. Not people who have any fucking brains at all. You and I both know that love isn’t real. Love is bullshit poor people tell each other when they settle for someone who can’t get them higher than their station.”

  “Love is real, Adam,” Chloe said calmly. “Love is absolutely real, and I am in love with my husband. So, kindly, go to hell.”

  She hung up the phone and plopped down on the stoop. I sat down beside her in silence, and we drank water for a moment while she calmed down. When she seemed like she had a little bit of a grip on herself, I started talking. Something told me that there was a lot more truth to her love argument than she was going to let on to me, but I didn’t know how I felt about it.

  “So, I take it that was your ex,” I said.

  “Not really,” she said. “I never dated him. We went out to dinner one time, but that’s it. Other than that, we just happened to be in the same social circles a lot. I knew him, but I wasn’t seeing him. That said, he’s who my parents picked out for me to marry since his dad has a business relationship with my dad.”

  “Really? That was why they pushed you together?”

  “Not pushed together—forced together. I left because they told me I was marrying him. No way out, no excuses, no objections. I was going to marry Adam, and that was that. So, I left,” she said. “I hate him. He’s cruel and vain and stupid. I left him on speaker because I thought you should hear what I dealt with before I came to Portland.”

  “He sounds like a real champ,” I said, taking a sip of my water.

  “Yeah, he’s a real winner alright,” she said. “My parents got my number somehow. They must have given it to him, and he called me. Believe it or not, that was him trying to make a persuasive argument.”

  “With the insults?”

  “He’s a child in a grown man’s body. He’s never had someone take something from him until his ex-wife left him. Now he’s worse than he was before. I’ll block him, but who knows if he’ll figure out another way to track and contact me. I hate that. He’s such an ass.”

  “Well, he won’t get to you as long as I’m around,” I said. She looked at me with what looked like a tear in her eye and nodded.

  “Yeah. There’s that.” I watched as she opened up the number that just called and hit the block button. When it was done, she finished off her water and stood. “Guess we should get back inside. Otherwise, they’ll think we’re having a lot more fun out here than we are.”

  I smiled, but there was little humor in it. The truth was, I wanted to be having that fun. I wanted to call that asshole Adam and tell him exactly how fucked he could get if he didn’t leave her alone.

  I followed Chloe inside, and she went to the floor while I ducked into the kitchen. I grabbed my apron and put it on, letting new words rattle around in my mind. Now they were ones I made up myself but were based on ones she said.

  Did she love me?

  I wondered about that the entire rest of the shift, and every time I got to the window, I would look for her. She never looked back for me.

  24

  Chloe

  A few days after that first night back at the bar, I had a day off. Hannah called and asked if I wanted to hang out and have a girls’ day with her. It had been a long time since we had just spent time together, and I eagerly accepted the invitation. Partly because I wanted to spend time with my cousin, but also because I needed to get my mind off everything. It was harder than I expected to pretend with Matt. Especially when we were together as often as we were.

  We were together at home. We were together at the bar. I had always enjoyed being with him, but now it filled my mind with all kinds of thoughts I shouldn’t be having. Maybe going out with Hannah for a while would snap me back into reality.

  She picked me up, and we first went to lunch. Since she had been in Portland longer than me, she had a better idea of all the cute restaurants and had
chosen one that reminded me a lot of the bistros we ate at in New York when I had gone to visit her there, just without the pretension.

  We sat down and thanked the waiter for the glasses of iced water he immediately put in front of us. He handed each of us the day’s menu and said he would be back in a few minutes. I scanned over the options, my mind going to the mushroom pasta Matt had chosen for me. It felt significant, meaningful. But at the same time, maybe I was just being too emotional about it. After all, it was pasta with garlic and mushrooms bathed in luscious cream and topped with shaved cheese. There wasn’t a whole lot not to like about that. Maybe I was just putting too much emphasis on him making that choice for me.

  I wished I could talk about it with Hannah. This was one of those guy-related dilemmas I would usually go over with her, seeing what she thought about it and getting advice over what I should do. Of course, I couldn’t do that. She would probably think it was a bit suspicious if I asked her if she thought my husband might like me.

  My plan was to just try to put it out of my mind and focus on enjoying my day with her. But she wasn’t on the same page. Hannah took a sip of her tea and leaned toward me with a smile.

  “So, how is married life? Have you come down out of the clouds yet?” she asked.

  I looked into her eyes and saw the genuine interest, the eagerness there. So, I did the only thing I could do.

  I lied.

  “Not yet,” I said. “Maybe I never will.”

  Hannah made the kind of sound people do when they see a particularly wrinkly puppy and let out a sigh.

  “You two truly are a fairy tale.”

  That seemed like as good a segue as ever.

  “So, guess who I heard from the other day?” I asked.