Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
LICENSE-TO-WED DAY
LOUISA
Bathroom mirrors like this are designed to show you where you missed a spot shaving even though you’ve already left the house, point out the mustard stain from your cafeteria lunch that you didn’t notice, or confirm that yes, that is your first white hair, what an ideal time to find it.
Fluorescent lighting is a beacon for every single flaw you’d managed to forget about and illuminate it with the enthusiasm of a prosecuting attorney.
(Who some people might be in here preparing to face.)
I have been standing at this public bathroom sink for seven minutes, I know because I have checked my phone once a minute, and each time I have put it back in my bag without doing anything useful with it, like texting Chandler, calling my brother to come get me like it’s a party in high school where the girls are being mean and the boys are being forward, or even Googling whether it is possible to dissolve a marriage-license application before the ink dries.
Technically we haven't signed anything yet, I could totally walk out of this bathroom, past the suits (lawyers) and silks (brides), past the clerk’s window that smells like wet umbrellas and bureaucratic resignation, and just…
keep going. But I don’t want to go anywhere, that’s the whole point.
I look at myself in the speckled mirror, which makes this reality look just a little bit worse.
The eyelet sundress, embroidered daisies, puff sleeves, ruffled hem.
Chandler said it was a must. (I already had it.) ‘You’re getting a marriage license,’ she said.
‘You’re not renewing your gym membership.
’ She believes even the smallest moments deserve to be dressed for, which is very Chandler and also the reason I am currently standing here in something bridal-themed while my stomach performs a slow, sickening bungee jump in the direction of my feet. (Ready to fall right out my butt.)
Even dropping my gaze a fraction of an inch would require me to acknowledge the dress and that would have me acknowledge—
The heavy door swings open and in bursts a gust of air from the hallway and deeply intertwined laughter accompanying it.
I’ve been standing here long enough that more than a dozen people have come and gone.
And I am a ghost in the background of everyone else’s traffic tickets and I dos. (Including my own.)
Two women tumble toward the sinks like they've been laughing since before they got here and will still be laughing well after they leave, which is the kind of energy I would normally immediately want to be near.
The taller one is in a cream jumpsuit, lace bodice, silk legs that move like water, a bouquet of dahlias in one hand and a Trader Joe's tote in the other, which she is currently excavating with the bouquet hand in a feat of coordination that I find genuinely impressive.
She produces a lipstick from the bag, and hands it off.
Then, in one continuous fluid motion, spears a loose ash-blonde curl back into her updo with a bobby pin and pops open a tin of Cinnamon Altoids, tossing a couple in her mouth.
I watch them through the speckled silver of the mirror, the filter of age and water spots, and still they are radiant in a way that has nothing to do with the lighting, because the lighting in here is genuinely criminal.
I watch all of this happen the way you watch someone parallel park perfectly on the first try, with complete admiration (jealously) and just a little bit of personal shame and your own deficiency.
(Again, jealousy.) I want to talk to them, which is not unusual, I want to talk to most people, it is my greatest, and most unrelenting quality.
Because they are the main characters of this movie and every frame is theirs.
While I am Woman at Sink Number Two, the blur in the background that the editor almost cut.
I am not the main character, I never am.
I can voice one, but never, truly, be her.
Not the way these two are.
The brunette, in a floor-length lace gown with a leather jacket slung over her shoulders like she refused to completely surrender to the occasion, leans toward the mirror and applies the lipstick, one so dark it could only be described as oxblood if you were being generous and kiss of death if you were being accurate.
Her new wife (or maybe soon-to-be wife, I’m making it up without Toby and Chandler, so your guess is as good as mine) watches her do it the way people watch things they can't believe they get to have. Like she’s checking, quietly, that this is still real. (What is that like?)
I genuinely can’t fathom it as I am about to enter an entirely fake relationship, with a very real problem.
My stomach does another bungee jump, harder this time.
I am either about to faint or hurl the breakfast I pretended to eat.
Either way, I’m gripping the sink for dear life.
But them? These two probably had some big, sweeping proclamation of love, a proposal where they could imagine their futures, ones they’ve discussed in fantasy while tangled naked in each other, not just agreed to for logistics.
I’ve barely had a day to decide what to do, and I’ve just handed my future over to someone whose reason for ensuring its success is so he can have a date to a few parties and qualify for a bigger apartment.
Our priorities couldn’t be more different, but what we do share is mutually assured destruction if this fails. Which means, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, we’re in love. Not the reality, where we are the abject opposite.
But I can recognize what this look is between them, I’ve read it described endlessly. I know it because I have read it out loud in a soundproofed booth (depends who you ask) and made it sound like the most inevitable thing in the world.
And I have never had anyone look at me like that.
Not Ben, certainly. Ben was charming in the beginning, which works until it doesn’t, which in our case was approximately eleven months longer than it should have.
Who said ‘I love you’ early and often with the same energy he brought to ‘I'll be there by eight and I definitely didn’t forget.’ (He always forgot.) Who I moved in with weeks after meeting him, with the breathless, stupid optimism, because I confused momentum for intention.
Then after months of wondering if I was talking to a wall that just learned to nod, I sat on his floor at three in the morning having a panic attack while he slept.
That week I learned about the apartment at The Richmond and I moved days later.
And suddenly, it became a place I saw myself, not just the place I had a few drawers assigned.
The Richmond, however, also came with Hudson Ellis.
Who is, at this exact moment, somewhere on the other side of this bathroom door, in a queue for a marriage license, checking his watch, waiting for me.
The thing I keep not-thinking about (liar), the thought I keep picking up and setting back down like a cup of tea too hot to hold, is that Ben never knew me.
He always ordered from whatever the top-rated pizza place was, even though their sauce was too sweet and their pepperoni was large and never crispy.
Hudson, who has not once been anything other than a thorn in my side since the day I moved in, knew my favorite pizza place and not because I told him. Because he paid attention to my silence. For reasons I have no capacity to worry about right now, but still.
He made a full dossier of a person and handed it over like a key, it’s not out of love, I know that.
(Obviously.) But here is the thing about being protected by someone who is doing it for their own reasons: the outcome is the same.
That’s what matters here. It's the same reason I haven’t given Chandler, Theo, Toby, anyone in my life I care an ounce about, the full, honest story about our proposal, because while I can’t swoop in and save anyone, I can protect them from the mess I am making.
The brunette in the leather jacket catches my eye in the mirror. She has the lipstick done now, dark and perfect, and her wife is still looking at her with an expression I will let fill my mind when recording a love scene later.
But, the sound of his throat clearing cuts through the romance as the door cracks open, and there he is, or rather, there the shadow of him is.
He stays hidden behind the heavy wood door, but even under the cruelest of industrial lights, his outline is visible on the wall.
The sharpness of his jaw, of his nose, he’s here to remind me that it’s time.
“Our number is coming up,” Hudsons says.
Not with any excitement, just as if he was ordering a ⒈／⒉ pound of extra-thinly sliced roast beef from a deli counter.
(Which is his preference on deli meat, it was in the folder.) He calls for me through the door matter-of-factly, task-oriented, because that is exactly what we are here to do.
With that, my new sink-standing friend pops the top on the Altoids and extends them to me. “Make sure that kiss is spicy,” she says, with a wink. I take the mint, square my shoulders, and look at myself one last time in the foggy, speckled, horrifically unflattering mirror.
“You are going to be Hudson Ellis’s wife,” I tell my reflection. My reflection looks like she needs a moment, but she doesn’t get one. (And neither do I.)
This is a building that has witnessed too much paperwork to feel anything about any of it. Which is fine, because I feel enough for both of us. (Mostly anxiety.)
Hudson is already back in the queue when I find him, looking like this is just another appointment for him.
(I guess it is.) Charcoal suit, because of course, collar precise and expression neutral, bordering on brooding, probably because even if I am dressed bridal themed, he is just doing this on a scheduled lunch break.