27. Billie
BILLIE
I didn’t know what I expected from the county clerk’s office when I booked both the license and ceremony, but it wasn’t a line that snaked around the corridor with a dozen couples ahead of us, some laughing, some tense, most holding either hands or envelopes.
The linoleum gleamed with the kind of industrial shine that made everything seem even less romantic than advertised, the air perfumed with government-issue lemon cleaner and the leftover sweat of public service.
Last night this sounded like the most rational thing in the world to do, so why was my hand shaking as we stood in line for our marriage certificate?
“You don’t have to do this,” Adam repeated for the hundredth time.
That wasn’t an exaggeration. I’d been keeping a mental tally and in the ninety minutes it had taken us to drive to City Hall, park, and stand in line at the county clerk’s office, he’d said it one hundred times.
“You’re buying me a Birkin,” I stated resolutely.
“What?”
“A Birkin. You’re going to buy me one.”
“Why?”
If I didn’t nip this in the bud, it would go on until we said, “I do” and then for 90 days after.
I turned to face him. “You have told me one hundred times that I don’t have to do this in the past hour and a half.
That means more than once per minute. When you get the money, you are buying me a Birkin, so I’m not doing this for nothing. ”
His eyes searched mine. “You mean the purse?”
“Yes.”
“You can buy yourself a purse.”
“It’s a hundred thousand dollars.”
“A purse is a hundred thousand dollars?”
“The metallic Birkin is. Jane Birkin’s Original Birkin Bag sold for ten point one million.”
He stared at me like I’d grown two heads. “You would never spend a hundred thousand dollars on a purse.”
“You’re right. That’s why you’re going to. And you’re going to stop telling me I don’t have to do this. I know I don’t have to. I don’t do anything I don’t want to do.”
The emphasis on anything wasn’t completely true, we still hadn’t discussed the fact that we’d slept together. Although, that was more something I wanted to do, not something I didn’t want to do. So, it wasn’t exactly the same.
I was scared to hear what he had to say if I did bring it up, mainly that he regretted it. That was my greatest fear. So I hadn’t said anything, but I really wanted to know. Did he think about it? Did it change his feelings for me? Did he want to do it again?
I guess I had the answers to all those questions.
His silence on the matter said it all. Not that it mattered.
He hadn’t promised me anything. Just because I thought it was the best sex of my life, clearly, his perspective was different.
He’d gotten whatever he wanted out of his system.
I just needed to stop thinking about it.
It was sex, one night, and now we were getting married, for ninety days. No. Big. Deal.
So why did I feel like I was about to have a panic attack?
My anxiety was through the roof for absolutely no reason, just like it had been at the church. We’d had a fake wedding, and now we were getting legally married. Talk about doing things backwards. It was sort of funny when you thought about it.
When we finally reached the counter, the woman behind it looked up with an arch of penciled-in brow so severe it could have cut glass.
Her snow-white hair made her appear in her seventies.
She wore her polyester suit with the pride of a four-star general.
Her nametag read “Ida.” She eyed us as if we had asked to buy a kilo of heroin.
“Marriage license?” she droned.
Adam replied, “Yes.”
“We have an appointment,” I explained.
“Names?”
“Adam Knight and Billie Bliss,” Adam told her.
Hearing Adam say our names for our wedding license caused my heart to do a full Scarlett O’Hara swoon.
She typed on her computer. “Forms?”
I slid her the envelope with the forms that we’d been requested to bring, and she slapped down two clipboards.
“Fill these out. Blue or black ink. Don’t cross out or white-out mistakes, that voids the form, and then you have to start over.
If you’re undocumented or have pending legal issues, check the appropriate box.
I won’t ask and I don’t care, but the state does.
” She slid two pens to us as if dealing sophisticated narcotics.
I looked and saw that these were the same forms we’d had to fill out online, in hardcopy.
I hadn’t expected to be offended by bureaucracy, but as I filled in the forms—legal name, date of birth, social security number, prior marriages: zero—I felt a weird pang of disappointment.
Was this the moment that was supposed to feel like a milestone?
It’s not like I had ever wanted to get married, so why did it matter?
Adam’s handwriting was painstaking, each letter was blocky and deliberate. He chewed the tip of his tongue as he wrote, which made me want to reach over and kiss his forehead. It was his tell that he was nervous, which made me feel infinitesimally less alone in my ridiculous jitters.
We finished the paperwork and slid it to Ida.
She scrutinized it, lips pursed, then nodded and printed out our certificate.
She returned our documents with our license and gestured towards the left.
“Hall C for the ceremony. You’re in the one-thirty group.
Congratulations and good luck.” Her well wishes were dripping with sarcasm.
As someone in the bridal business, I was aware of my shortcomings in customer service and knew that the least amount of interface I had with brides and grooms, the better. “How long have you worked here, Ida?” I asked.
She blinked, perhaps surprised by my inquiry. “Forty-two years.”
“And have you always been such a ray of sunshine?”
She glared over her glasses.
“Okay, thank you for your help, Ida.” Adam ushered me away before I could get blacklisted from the county clerk’s office.
We walked down the corridor towards Hall C, where our ceremony was set to take place in an hour, and Adam still hadn’t dropped his hand from my lower back. I didn’t mind it. In fact, I was enjoying having it there.
“It’s nice to see some things haven’t changed.” He spoke in a low voice, only I could hear.
I sighed and shook my head, assuming he was being sarcastic.
“I’m serious. I haven’t seen that Billie, I was wondering where she was.”
“What Billie?” I spun towards him.
“The one who has no filter. If you think it, you say it.”
“I always do that.”
“Not since I’ve been back you haven’t. I have a feeling a lot of things have been on your mind you haven’t been sharing with anyone.”
“That’s…different.”
We reached the “chapel,” aka Hall C, which from a quick glance as the door opened appeared to be a small room with a mural of City Hall painted on the back wall and a few rows of folding chairs.
Other couples milled around, some smiling, some staring straight ahead like they were about to be shot into space.
There was a vending machine with off-brand sodas and a dispenser of plastic-wrapped roses for twenty dollars a pop.
I watched a couple in their eighties buy one, the man with gold-rimmed bifocals holding the rose out to his bride, her hands shaking so badly she nearly dropped it.
She laughed, then started to cry, and he kissed her on the cheek.
It was so tender I felt my throat close up.
Adam chose two empty seats in the corner, angled so we could watch the whole room.
I didn’t miss his wince and the way the color drained from his face.
He had physical therapy later today and should be resting this morning, not spending an hour on his feet.
But the sooner he could get this money the better.
I lowered myself beside him, and we began to wait.
“What is?” Adam asked after a few minutes.
“What is what?” I asked.
“What is different?”
It took me a second to remember what his question was referring to. He wanted to know what was different about me not sharing things on my mind. “Some thoughts are for the general public and some are not.”
“Ah, so the general public doesn’t get access to Billie Bliss’s internal thoughts?”
“No.”
“What about me?”
If there was one person who definitely didn’t get access to my inner thoughts, it was Adam Knight.
“I am about to become your husband.” He held the marriage certificate and wiggled it a little, teasing me.
I rolled my eyes, pretending to act like the fact he’d said that hadn’t caused the butterflies in my stomach to start full-on raving.
I’m talking glow sticks, blasting EDM music, dropping E.
My entire body was going into flight or fight mode, and for the first time in my life, my instinct was not to stay and fight. I was voting for flight.
Adam must have noticed because he reached for my hand. “Hey.”
I pulled away, not because I didn’t want him to touch me, but because I knew, if he touched me, I might start crying and never stop.
I was so angry at myself for being nervous that I wanted to crawl out of my own skin.
This was supposed to be a nothing wedding, a blip on the radar, a transactional event with none of the pageantry or meaning of the real thing.
I was wearing an off the rack dress from Aritzia not an original Birdie Bliss, like I’d been wearing when I walked down the aisle to Adam.
So why was my pulse racing like it was Usain Bolt on an Olympic track, and why did my palms and cheeks feel like they were in a steam room?
“Billie?” Adam said my name so softly, tears sprung to my eyes.
I stood up. “Bathroom. I need to…don’t let them start without me.”
He nodded, watching me walk away, and I could feel his gaze on the back of my neck all the way down the hall. I pushed the door open, and the walls felt like they were closing in.
The bathroom was deserted, with three stalls on one side and mirrors so clean above the sinks they looked like portals to a parallel universe.
I locked myself in the middle stall, sat on the toilet, and slowly inhaled the institutional scent of cleanser through my nose, trying to slow down my speeding heartbeat.
I counted the tiles on the floor—forty-eight, turquoise blue, with one cracked in the corner—and focused on the sound of my own breathing.
This was stupid. This was so, so stupid.
I was marrying a man I… well, let’s just say didn’t hate, a man I could see myself making blueberry pancakes with on Sundays for the rest of my life, and somehow it felt more terrifying than any catastrophe I’d ever managed at work, more paralyzing than any family tragedy I’d ever survived.
I should have been calm, even giddy, but instead, I felt raw, exposed, like someone had pulled all my nerves to the surface and left me blinking in the daylight.
After sitting for more time than I cared to admit to and not being able to get myself under control, I stood and flushed the toilet out of habit, then washed my hands, scrubbing harder than necessary, the soap harsh and scented with fake oranges.
I stared at myself in the mirror, searching for cracks.
From the outside, no one could tell that inside I was having a breakdown.
Every hair was in place, and the extra fifteen minutes I’d spent on getting ready paid off, I looked…
hot. I did my makeup exactly like they had for The Vow shoot, I figured go bridal with it.
Everything was fine unless you looked in my eyes, there was a panicked expression I couldn’t quite blink away.
“That’s it?” I chastised my reflection. “You’re just going to stand here and freak out?”
The woman in the mirror had no answers. I leaned in closer.
“There are worse things to be doing on a Thursday afternoon than marrying the man you love. Even if it’s fake.
Even if it’s only for ninety days. You can survive ninety days.
You’ve survived worse. You survived the girls getting lice in the first and second grade, you survived parent-teacher conferences when you went to the same school and convincing teachers you were the one responsible, you survived driving to Vegas and back to pick up Birdie after she got alcohol poisoning on her twenty-first birthday, passed out in the Bellagio fountain after she’d had one too many margaritas and her rock star boyfriend ditched her to hang out with his rock idol, and you had to come back to take your final exams on no sleep without our grandparents finding out and worrying, because if they had, it would have given them a heart attack even sooner. You can do this.”
I counted my blessings. My dress, while not classically bridal, was flattering. It was a white, square neck, body contour, tea length dress with thick straps. My nude five inch heels made my calves look great. I had not yet vomited, which felt like a win.
So why was my heart trying to punch its way out of my chest? Why did I feel as if, at any moment, someone would call my name and tell me it was all a mistake, that I was not supposed to be here, that I had failed to play by some unwritten rule?
I clutched the edge of the sink and tried to steady myself. I knew the right words. There’s nothing to be nervous about. This is just a legal formality. You’re not even signing up for a lifetime, just a few months. You’re doing the right thing. Adam and the girls need the money.
So why did it feel like all my organs were tangled together, and why did my throat feel as if I’d swallowed a marble? Why did it feel like I was about to pass out or throw up, or both, at any second?
I smiled at my reflection, then cringed at how green I appeared.
“You’re being an idiot,” I told myself in frustration. “What if it were Genesis marrying him?” I blurted out.
The second I said those words, my entire perspective shifted and all the chaos in my mind and body quieted. It was instantaneous.
That was it. That was the Golden Ticket of motivation I needed to calm the fuck down and get on with it.
I may be freaking out about signing my life away, but how would I feel if there was another woman in my place right now?
Oh, hell no. I’d been pretending to be Mrs. Adam Knight since I could write my name.
I’d been training for this my entire life.