Chapter 9 #3
He has suddenly introduced new words into his vocabulary, and every time he uses them it comes through at a different frequency than all other words in the sentence.
We. Us. Some combined plural state that didn’t exist twelve hours ago that feels like a glass door I keep walking into.
I should know it's there, but every single time my heart jumps as if to say, ‘Did you hear that’ and each time, I pretend I don’t.
“You gonna be able to last?” I tease. It might be easier for me, I’ve been single for half a year now. But my single and his single look very different from everything I’ve seen.
“Usually,” he says with his eyes locked on mine.
Before shifting back to the negotiations I’m sure he is going to draft into a contract.
“You’re officially my permanent plus-one.
Every dinner meeting, colleague’s wedding, or fundraising gala.
You’re there with bells on,” Hudson says, adding another requirement to the ever-growing pile.
“I LOVE bells,” I begin excitedly, “I don’t know if you remember at the building Christmas party, my skirt had—”
“Wasn’t there.” (Of course he wasn’t.)
“You really should be more neighborly, you might not have to enter into a marriage just to get an apartment,” I tease.
“We are getting married, it isn’t a marriage. It’s an arrangement.”
“Good, because I’m keeping my apartment.
” He hadn't implied I wouldn’t, but I say it anyway because twenty-four hours ago I couldn't have described who I am or what I'm doing and I need to hear it out loud. “It’s got my studio and it’s the first place I've ever seen myself staying longer than six months.”
“On paper, fine, but you’ll need to spend nights here, especially in the beginning so that it’s believable. Too many people in this building pay attention.”
“Then I get my own room... and bathroom.”
“Obviously.”
“And, no lying,” I say. The irony of a statement that's only needed because we are entering into an agreement that's built entirely on a lie.
“To each other,” I add quickly. “The government, and everyone else we know, fine, yes, necessary, that's the whole point. But you and me,” I point between us, “I want the truth.”
“Okay, Louisa,” he says. It looks like he might want to disagree, maybe refine the point with another clarification between a cover story and a lie, but he doesn’t. “Between me and you, no lying.”
I put out my hand. (A handshake is the right move, right?) His eyes drop to it for the splittest of seconds before dragging themselves back up to my face, but then he slips his large grip into mine.
It doesn’t move the way a handshake should, but his hand is warm and certain, even without the symbolic up-and-down gesture meant to indicate the ‘binding agreement’ of this thing.
We spend the next half hour on the small things.
The specific, granular, intimate details that any real couple accumulates without effort.
His preferred side of the bed, the left.
I tell him mine. (The middle.) I tell him about my favorite snack, which requires a bit of a drive to procure and which I am both willing, and now apparently required, to make for him to try them.
I tell him about Theo, and about my parents.
Not just the move and the parts that got us here, but the underbelly of it.
The dynamics that don’t fit on a legal form, but my husband would know.
He listens without checking his phone, without formulating his response while I'm still talking. Just absorbing it. It’s attentive in a way that looks practiced but no less sincere.
“I never noticed an accent,” he says, when I finish.
“I don't really have one, I grew up here. Whatever’s left is more about the house I grew up in than the country.” I sit up slightly, offering him something. “But sometimes, when I’m very tired, or drunk, or talking to my brother, the occasional word slips out.”
“Now that you mention it, I always thought it was weird you told me to ‘bugger off' once,” he says. “I assumed you were method acting.”
“Oh yeah, also sometimes when I'm angry,” I confirm. He lets out a breath, resigned to the fact that even if it's easy to momentarily forget, our interactions have never looked like this.
The doorman calls, there’s a knock at the door, and Hudson returns with two pizza boxes. He sets them on the counter between us, and I am, completely against my will and better judgment, unreasonably charmed. (Stop being so easily impressed, Lou!)
And then, he opens the top box and I see the logo.
“This place is my favorite.”
“I know,” he says, taking a slice of pepperoni, which is also the reason this place is my favorite, small, crispy, and a generous amount of pepperoni.
“We haven't even gotten to my folders yet.”
“You order it once a week. It's not the closest, it's not the highest rated.” He glances at me sideways. “Process of elimination.”
I’ve dated men who didn't know my coffee order after three months. Hudson learned my beverage before I knew his name. (Oops.) He seems to absorb information differently, knowing parts of me just from proximity and a single day of preparation.
“What happens when the interview comes, if they ask me something I don't know.”
“Whatever happens, I’ll handle it.” There’s a momentary beat, and I don’t know why, it makes me believe him. He says it with such assurance. Like he has thought through every risk, 'whatever.’ Which is why every question I’ve posed, he already has an answer for.
There are so many what ifs with all of this. What if I forget something? What if they don't believe us? What if we can't survive being in the same apartment? What if the visa is denied anyway? For every question I ask, he has a prepared answer.
We eat the entire box of pizza as he answers every version of ‘what if’… except perhaps the most important. (Also the most unlikely.)
“What if,” I say, “you fall in love with me?” He looks up, working out how to treat a question like that. The kind that sounds like a joke but has a room behind it. “I’ve seen enough rom-coms to know how this could go.”
“That’s a risk you'll have to accept,” he says.
“And what if,” I say, more quietly, in the key of this is obviously hypothetical, “I fall in love with you?”
The corner of his mouth flattens. He looks at me with the full, focused stillness that is overwhelming to me, but I can’t break the contact of our gaze. The quick electric current normally pulsing between us, slows so he can answer.
“That,” he says, “would be too big a liability.” The words don't carry cruelty, they arrive honest and unapologetic, the way most of his words do, which has always been easier to be angry at than to sit with.
I look at the shape of what he's actually said, which is not that won't happen but that will be a problem if it does.
“Fine, I won’t fall in love with you.” (Easy enough, right?)