But if there was one thing that having so little for so long had taught me—it was the value of money and appreciation of belongings. No one respected money more than I did.
So, it had been to my utmost horror, when I applied to college and received zero scholarships. None. Nada. Not even $500.00.
I was smart, but I wasn’t an extraordinary student. I was shy in school. I didn’t raise my hand much in class, or joined every extracurricular activity available. I didn’t play sports because there wasn’t disposable income lying around to buy uniforms, and there hadn’t been any for us kids to join league teams either. My favorite thing had always been hanging out by myself, drawing and painting, if I had paints. I didn’t excel at anything that could have gotten me a scholarship. My high school hadn’t had a fine arts program worth anything; the closest class I’d been able to take was Wood Shop and I’d excelled at it. But where did that lead me?
There was a very clear memory of my high school guidance counselor telling me how average I was. Really. She’d said that to me. “Maybe you should have tried harder.”
I’d been too shocked to have to count to ten after that.
All As and a couple of Bs hadn’t been good enough. Yet I’d still been horrified and disappointed when I got accepted to every decent school I applied to, but received no financial help other than a federal grant I qualified for because of my financial need, but that only covered 10 percent of my total yearly tuition.
And, of course, the school I wanted to go to was out of state and incredibly expensive. I’d loved it more than I loved any other one I’d gone to check out with my friends the fall of my senior year.
So, I did the unthinkable. I took out loans. Massive student loans.
Then I did the next most unthinkable thing in the world: I didn’t tell anyone.
Not my foster parents, not my little brother, or even Diana. No one knew except me. There was no other person in the world who carried the burden of nearly $200,000.00 on their conscience but me.
In the four years since graduating with my bachelors, I’d been paying off as much as I could from my loans while also attempting to put money aside in savings to eventually be able to dedicate myself full-time to my dream. A debt as large as the one I had was a bottomless pit that you had to accept like it was Hepatitis—it wasn’t going anywhere—but it only served to make me work harder, which was why I didn’t mind going to work for Aiden, and then doing my design work well into the middle of the night afterward. But there was only so much you could take, and I’d saved and paid off a significant enough of a chunk to get to the point where I felt like I could breathe for the first time in years… as long as I didn’t let myself look too closely at the loan statements I got in the mail every month.
But…
“What do you think?” the big man asked, leveling his stare right at me as if he hadn’t just busted out the greatest secret in my life.
What I thought was he was out of his damn mind. What I thought was my heart shouldn’t have been beating so quickly. What I also thought was no one else should have known about how much money I owed.
Mostly though, a small part of me was thinking there was a price for everything.
“Vanessa?”
I blinked at him before looking down at my poor, contaminated sandwich sitting in the sink. Then I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and opened them once more. “How do you know about my loans?”
“I’ve always known.”
What? “How?” I felt… I felt a little violated honestly.
“Trevor did a background check on you.” That sounded vaguely familiar now that he mentioned it, even though it was disturbing to hear they knew something I’d tried so hard to keep to myself. “There’s no way you’ve managed to pay them off,” Aiden stated.
He was right.
Vomit. Vomit. Vomit.
“Whatever you owe, I’ll pay it.”
Just like that. I’ll pay it. Like $150,000.00 was no big deal.
I liked to watch that show on television where bosses went undercover at their businesses and then at the end, they surprised their employees with some crazy amount of money to go on vacation, or to pay off whatever it was they owed money on. More often than not, I got teary-eyed watching it. The employees would usually always cry and say how they never expected something like that to happen to them, or they would talk about how much of a blessing the money was going to be for their families. Or how much the gift they were being bestowed was going to change their lives.
Yet here I was.
My hands shook. The ability to breathe was stolen from my lungs.
My loans were my Achilles heel.
I was only slightly ashamed of myself for not immediately thinking his offer was preposterous. Why wasn’t I kicking him out or telling him to go eat shit? Why wasn’t I laughing at his idea? Or telling him to get the hell out because he couldn’t buy me? He hadn’t treated me well. He didn’t deserve for me to do him a ‘favor’, and put my life on the line for him.
Clenching my hands at my sides, I let the sensation of being overwhelmed wash over me. He was offering to pay off this thing that weighed on my soul like a cement block in a pool. Who did that?
Better yet, who said no to an offer like that? I liked to think I made wise decisions; that I did what was the best for me, or would be the best for me in the long run. But $150,000.00? Holy shit.
“I’m willing to compromise,” Aiden offered, his eyes even, his voice steady, which didn’t help any.
I sputtered.
Shut up, Van, I told myself. Shut up, shut up, shut up and just say yes, you idiot. Don’t talk him out of this. Don’t be that dumb. You can get over anything for that much money. This is the opportunity of a lifetime, even if he hurt your feelings, even though it’s stupid and illegal, and doesn’t make any sense because there are a million other women in the world who would do it for less.
But I couldn’t shut up. I just couldn’t. It was that nagging little part of my personality that I’d had to hone over the years—the one that didn’t know how to keep quiet sometimes.
I lifted my eyes and looked at the bearded man standing in my apartment offering me a lifeline, an opportunity. A felony, I made myself remember. He was asking me to do something that was essentially illegal. This man that had never given two single shits about me until now that he needed something, and he had no one else to ask. “Aiden….”
The most muscular man I’d ever known took a step forward, and dropped his hands to his sides, pinning me in place with his gaze alone. “It has to be you. I’ve thought about it. No one understands my schedule the way you do. You don’t get on my nerves, and you’re…” He shook his head and crucified me on the spot. “I’ll do whatever it takes. Tell me what you want and you’ll have it. Anything.”
The headache that had been hanging around my temples from hunger suddenly intensified.
Tell him no, the smart part of my brain said. I could pay off my loans eventually. I still had time.
But the other part of my brain, the logical one, told me it would be dumb to waste this opportunity. All I had to do was marry the guy, right? Sign a piece of paper? Save a fortune worth of interest?
Oh, hell. I couldn’t seriously be changing my tune from one minute to the next. I’d just been telling him how we weren’t friends and how much he’d hurt my feelings, and how dumb he was being for even bringing it up… and now I was thinking about his offer all in a matter of a few minutes. Then again, over a hundred thousand dollars was riding on this offer. This wasn’t nothing.
It was when my hand started shaking worse than before that I had my temporary answer, and even then, simply wanting to consider the option made me feel like a prostitute.
I might be thinking of myself as being a prostitute, but at least I’d be a prostitute free from debt, wouldn’t I?
His gaze was totally fixed on me standing there, in my tiny kitchen in baggy Dr. Pepper pajama pants and a spaghetti strap tan
k with no bra. This incredibly handsome and intimidating man wanted…
There was something wrong with me. There was something seriously wrong with me.
Tell him to screw off. Tell him to screw off.
I didn’t.
“Let me think about it,” I said, my voice breaking, unsure.
He didn’t cry victory at me not immediately telling him to go to hell, which was surprising. Instead, Aiden said very calmly, “That’s fine.” He hesitated for a second, rocking from one foot to another. “I am sorry I messed up.”
A knot formed in my throat at the expression on his features.
“I’m used to being on my own, Vanessa. Nothing that I did or said had anything to do with you. I want you to understand that.”
Without another word, the man known as The Wall of Winnipeg let himself out. The only sound signaling his departure was the door slamming shut behind him.
I was going to think about it. Going to think about marrying a guy for money when I’d walked out on him a month ago for not defending me to his manager, for not upholding the tiny bit of a bond I thought we shared. What the hell was I doing?
Being smart, that logical part of my brain whispered.
* * *
I didn’t get any sleep the next two nights, and that wasn’t exactly surprising. How the hell was I supposed to sleep when all I thought about was if I was really considering committing fraud—marriage fraud it was called—to make a lot of money? Was this what thieves went through?
I felt guilty, and I hadn’t even done anything.
I felt slightly cheap too, for not saying “hell no” right off the bat, but I didn’t feel that cheap.
Getting my loans paid off—and the possibility of having a house bought for me—enticed me a lot more than my morals would have ever expected. Then again, morals didn’t exactly mean much when you were shelving out what was a mortgage worth on loans each month. I lived in an apartment that would horrify my foster parents if they knew what it was like. My car was twelve years old. I kept my expenses to the absolute minimum, just to spend my money the way I needed to.
And then I started thinking to myself… if I did this, I would have to get divorced one day. I would have to tell my future husband—if there was one—that I’d been married once, and I would never, ever be able to tell him the truth as to why I’d done it. It wasn’t like I could lie and pretend it had never happened, even if it would be fake and in word only.
Was that cool? Was that fair? Maybe it was because my mom never married while I was young, but I’d always envisioned it as being this ultra-serious, special thing that not everyone got to do. A union of two people who decided they were going to tackle the world together—so you should be picky with whom you chose as your partner. ‘Til death do you part and all that stuff, otherwise you would just be wasting your life. Right?
When I wasn’t contemplating all that stuff, I asked myself what in the world I would tell the people in my life. They would know I was up to my neck in shit if I suddenly said I was marrying Aiden. I would have to bring up the loans if I told them the complete truth, and I would rather stick my hand in a boiling pot of water than do that.
It was all too much. Way too much.
And so, I finally picked up the phone and called the only person who I wouldn’t be able to fool with my lies. I couldn’t live with it any longer. I was tired, grumpier than ever, and I wasn’t focusing because I was too distracted. I needed to make a decision.
“Diana, would you marry someone for money?” I asked her out of the blue one afternoon when I called her during her lunch break.
Without missing a beat, she made a contemplative noise. “It depends. How much money?”
It was right then that I knew I’d called the wrong person. I should have dialed Oscar, my slightly younger brother, instead. He was the levelheaded one in my life, the basketball player studying mechanical engineering. He’d always been wise beyond his years. Diana… not so much.
I only told her the partial truth. “What if someone bought you a house?”
She “hmmed” and them “hmmed” a little more. “A nice house?”
“It wouldn’t be a mansion, you greedy whore, but I’m not talking about a dump or anything either.” I figured at least.
“All I had to do was marry someone, and they would buy me a nice house?” Later on, I could laugh over the entire situation leading up to this conversation, and how easily Di was considering it.
“Yes.”
“Would I have to do anything else?”
What else would there be? The marriage would just be to get his residency; it wouldn’t be a forever thing. “I don’t think so.”
“Oh.” Her tone perked up. “Sure. Why not?”
Sure. Why not. Good grief. I snorted.
“Wait a second. Why are you asking? Who’s doing it?” She finally chimed in, extremely interested.
When I was done explaining to her just about everything minus what had been my tipping point to quit, I waited for her sage—usually not so sage—advice.
What I got was: “Do it.”
“That’s it?” I scoffed. I was asking her for her opinion on a life-changing decision, and that was how she was going to respond?
“Sure. Why not? He has money, you know the worst things about him, and he’s willing to pay you. What do you have to think about?” she said in a matter-of-fact tone.
She was definitely the wrong person to call for advice. “It’s illegal.”
“In that case, make sure you don’t get caught.”
Okay, Aiden Junior, I thought before she continued on.
“People do it all the time. Remember Felipa?” That was her cousin; how could I forget? “That Salvadoran guy she married paid her five thousand dollars. You might get a house, Vanny. You could be a little more grateful.”
Definitely the wrong person. “We’re not each other’s biggest fans.”
That had her exasperated. “You like almost everyone. He can’t exactly hate you if he’s asking you and not someone else. I’m sure he’d have bitches lining the block if he even remotely put in some effort.”
Her comment had me groaning. “You really think I should do it then?”
“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t. You don’t have a boyfriend. You have nothing to lose.”
She was making this too easy, making me feel dumb for not immediately jumping at the chance, but something had been lingering in my gut, and it wasn’t until she said the thing about bitches lining the block that I realized what it was. My pride. I cracked my knuckles. “I don’t know how I’d feel about being married and having my husband,” I almost choked on the word, “being with other people during. Even if it was fake. Someone would find out that we’d gotten married, and I don’t want to look like the poor idiot wife whose husband cheats on her and everyone knows.”
Diana hummed again. “Did he date around while you worked for him?”
He didn’t. Ever. He didn’t even have any females saved in his contacts on his phone. I would know. I was the one who had gone to the store to get him a new phone and have his contacts transferred, and I might have looked through them. There had definitely never, ever been any sleepovers at his house, or any women hanging around. There couldn’t be any after away games because, according to Zac, Aiden always went straight back to his hotel room afterward.
So, yeah, I felt a little dumb. “No.”
“So then there’s nothing to worry about, is there?”
I swallowed my saliva. “I can’t date anyone either.”
That had her cracking up and I suddenly found myself insulted at how hard she was laughing. “You’re funny.”
“It’s not funny.” So I hadn’t had a boyfriend in a couple of years. What the hell was the big deal?
Her hysterical laughing reached a peak. “I can’t date anyone either,” she mocked me in a voice that I knew was supposed to be mine. “Now you’re just making shit up.”
It
was a well-known fact that I didn’t date much.
Diana sounded like she was covering her mouth with her hands to smother her laughs. “Oh, V. Do it and stop thinking about it so much.”
She wasn’t being any help, and I found myself still torn in half. “I’m going to keep thinking about it.”
“What’s there to think about?”
Everything.
* * *
But I thought about it. Then I kept thinking about it some more.
I looked online at how much I still owed on my loan, and I almost threw up. Looking at the balance was like looking at an eclipse; I wasn’t supposed to do it. The six digits before the period that glared back at me from the screen made me feel like I was going blind.
This thing with Aiden was a lottery, and I happened to be the only one with a ticket to it; it also happened to be the winning ticket. This small nugget of uneasiness jiggled around in my chest, but I ignored it as much as I could until I couldn’t handle it any more.
I would be helping someone whose sincerity I couldn’t judge completely.
I would be signing away years of my life.
I’d be doing something illegal.
And I would be doing this all as technically a business transaction. It wasn’t that complicated because I understood what Aiden was doing and why he was doing it, for the most part.
I just didn’t completely understand why he insisted on trying to reel me back into his life.
Regardless of everything else though, a part of me was resentful that Aiden I-get-everything-I-want Graves, had his mind set on me to be the one to help him out. I guess I didn’t feel like he deserved my help or my loyalty when he’d never exactly done anything to deserve it.
But…
My student loan debt wasn’t just a paycheck; it wasn’t payable in five years like a car loan. Plus, if a house would also be a form of payment… We were talking a lot of money, a lot of heartache, and a lot of interest. Thirty years on a mortgage. It would be a massive relief.
The Wall of Winnipeg and Me Page 11
