Chapter Three
I’m about two hours into an edible, watching Conan the Barbarian with a mixing bowl of Froot Loops on my lap, when the doorbell rings.
“What time is it?” I ask the television. “Who’s at the door?”
Conan doesn’t answer either question, but he does begin what is one of the best lines in cinematic history.
“Run from me… and I will tear apart the mountains to find you!”
I raise a fist into the air and shout along with him, “I will follow you to hell!”
The bell rings again, and I haul myself up from the couch, wrestling one of my feet into a Big Bird slipper. The doorbell rings a third time and I give up on locating the second slipper, swing the door open, and come face-to-face with a beautiful stranger on the other side of the threshold. Thick golden-brown hair and warm honey eyes lined with absurdly thick lashes. Tall, serious, sober. A sharp contrast to the passing glance of my reflection I got this morning: faded pink hair, bloodshot eyes, yesterday’s smudged eyeliner. Unkempt, unemployed, baked.
He gives me a wary smile before his shocked gaze sinks to my legs. Which is when I remember I’m not wearing any pants.
The thought quickly dissolves, preventing any true embarrassment, because I’m dedicating every molecule of mental energy to figuring out who this man is. I know I know him. He’s hot, but not in the shaggy way of any of the recent guys I’ve slept with. (Though the last one played Legolas in a Lord of the Rings–inspired band, and I must admit he took elvish hair care very seriously.) I also don’t think this guy is the landlord, but it’s only now that I realize I have no idea what our landlord actually looks like.
Finally, I give up.
“Hi.” I wave awkwardly. “Can I help you?”
“Anna?” he says, like he’s not entirely sure, and then does a full top-to-bottom sweep of my body, which recalls the lack of pants. When he digs his hand into his luscious head of hair, I forget to be embarrassed again, because it all comes back to me.
“Hey,” I say, pointing. “You were my husband. West, right?”
The expression he makes is like the meme of that one kid who smiles and then immediately bursts into tears. West is staring at me like he’s doomed but must pretend to be happy about it. “Anna. You look… great?”
That question mark in his voice is entirely justified. I put my hand on my hair. A few strands are still loosely captured in the ponytail from last night. “Thanks.” I grin. “I woke up like this.”
West huffs out a laugh and lifts his chin, indicating the apartment behind me. “Mind if I come in?”
Stepping aside, I let him pass, and he pulls up short at what’s on the television screen. Conan is enthusiastically fucking a witch in a cave. We both clear our throats and look up at the ceiling instead.
He cups the back of his neck. “Looks like you have the day off.”
“In fact, I have all the days off.” Seeing his frown, I add, “I got fired yesterday for forgetting to pay for a pack of gum.”
He looks around the room. I won’t deny it could use a little tidying. “Did you truly forget?”
“Sort of? But doesn’t termination seem like overkill?”
West’s frown deepens, and I shuffle to the couch and settle back into my seat. “Did my eighteen-year-old former boss and sexual harasser Derrick send you over to have a conversation with me about this? Because I have a lot to say.”
“No, no, of course not.” He studies me for a beat and then blinks away to the surrounding apartment again. “So, I’ll admit I’m a little confused. Are you not in school anymore?”
“I graduated right around the time you moved out, remember?”
“Right, but I mean,” he begins, tilting his head, “did you not go to medical school?”
I stare at him for a long beat until understanding lands. “Oh, man.” I press my fingers to my lips. “You didn’t finish the book, did you?”
His expression flattens. “What?”
“I switched majors.”
“When?”
“Like, four months after we moved in together?”
West pales. “To what?”
“Fine art.” I grin, pointing at a vibrant dahlia on the wall, its thousands of intricate petals a series of violent, orange spikes. “I paint now. And work odd jobs to pay for this sweet lily pad you’re standing in.”
“I thought painting was just a hobby,” he says, voice tight.
“It was, until I realized I hated biology and loved paint. What’s the big deal?” I stare up at him expectantly but get distracted by his hotness. He looks great. I mean, three years have passed—three? I think three. And he looks like a real man. I realize he was a man then, but this is, like, a manly man. A professional man. A man who does not get high at ten a.m. and eat cereal out of a mixing bowl.
It might be the current state of my brain, but he seems to weave in place a little. “Hey. Are you okay?” I ask.
He passes a hand down his face. “Yeah, I’m just…” He exhales, and I swear he finishes his sentence with a whispered “fucked.”
“Can you tell me why you’re here?” I ask. “I’m high as shit and can’t tell if I’m imagining you.”
West frowns and glances down at his watch. “High?” he asks. “On…?”
“A gummy.”
His expression relaxes. “Oh.” He looks around the apartment and then back to me. “Is that the same sofa?”
“It has the same bones. I don’t think either it or I will be the same after what my roommate and her boyfriend were doing on it last night.”
“Condolences.”
“Thanks.”
“So, listen, I find myself in a strange situation, and I’m wondering if you can help.” He pauses, and the misery seems to overtake his expression again. “Though I seem to have made a much bigger mess for myself.”
It takes a beat for this to sink in. “You need my help?”
“Yes.”
I press an index finger to my breastbone. “Specifically, me?”
West sighs mournfully. “Yes.”
“Should I put pants on for this? It feels like we’re leading up to a pants-on conversation.”
“That’s entirely up to you.”
I stand, limping in one slipper to the bedroom. When I emerge in a pair of shorts, West is still standing exactly where I’d left him.
“You can sit, you know.” I gesture to the splendor of my living room: the half-empty Big Gulp cup on the coffee table that Jack left a few days ago; the dog toy on the floor that Lindy bought even though we don’t have a dog; the laundry basket overflowing with clean clothes neither of us feels like folding. “I know the place feels like an interior design showroom, but we aren’t fussy.”
With vague trepidation, West sits on the couch. I climb back on, leaving a little distance between us, but reach out to poke his knee. “Okay. You’re real.”
He squints at me. “How high are you?”
“I’m like a five right now. I can’t ever get to a ten. I only sort of like edibles, but I didn’t know what else to do today.”
“A job search felt ill-advised?”
“I thought I deserved a day to wallow.”
He looks around again like he’s not sure I can afford to wallow. He’s right.
“What have you been up to?” I ask.
“I’m a professor with a joint appointment in economics and cultural anthropology at Stanford.”
My brain screeches to a halt. “Wait, are you fucking serious? Like Indiana Jones?”
He exhales patiently, and even stoned me realizes he must get that a lot. He runs a long finger along an attractively dark eyebrow. “This is anthropology. You’re thinking archaeolo—”
“Do you go in caves? Swing from vines?” I lean forward. “Yes or no: Have you ever been chased through a jungle?”
West blinks at me and says flatly, “Routinely.”
I reach forward, slapping his arm. “Shut the fuck up!”
He stares at me, trying to hide how distressed he is over everything happening right now. The I’m doomed look is back. I sit up, trying to compose myself. Truthfully, the man before me does not fit my mental image of a modern-day Indiana Jones. I expected more of a Patagonia half-zip, cargo pants, and well-loved hiking boots look than the expensively tailored white dress shirt and navy pants he’s wearing. His shoes are so polished I could probably lean forward and see my reflection and realize how grubby I look in contrast: A ratty old Tom Petty concert shirt of my dad’s that falls off one shoulder. Terry shorts barely covering my ass. Still just the one slipper.
“Didn’t your family live in the area?” I ask. “I haven’t seen Jake in like two years.”
“They’re down in Orange County, yeah. Jake is in Newport Beach working for the family business.”
“Cool.” Other than the sound of Conan grunting on the TV, silence falls, and I’ve lost the thread of why West is here.
He adjusts his posture on the sofa, turning slightly to face me. Oh, right. He came here to ask me for help. I sit up, too, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear. Focus, Anna.
“Okay, so here’s the situation,” he says. “You remember, I’m sure, the circumstances of how we came to be roommates?”
Indeed I do. At the end of my sophomore year, my two roommates graduated, and I couldn’t afford the rent for our one-bedroom apartment near campus alone. In fact, I couldn’t afford any rent on any apartment within biking or walking distance. Jake already had a roommate; Vivi lived at home with her parents and commuted a half hour to school every day from Playa del Rey. Even though the Amirs offered me a room, I didn’t have a car and LA public transportation is so deeply shitty that if Vivi and I didn’t carpool, it would take me nearly two hours to get to school from their house every day. Given my penchant for oversleeping, I knew it wouldn’t work.
But Jake’s older brother was working on his doctorate and needed graduate housing; unfortunately, he’d been offered only family housing, which required him to be married. So Jake had the idea to connect the two of us for a little harmless rule-breaking. A legal lockdown on my vagina was well worth the pennies in rent I’d have to pay. I met West for the first time at the courthouse, where we had a brief ceremony. I signed some papers when he moved in and some papers when he moved out, and that was that. Easy.
For two blissful years, I had cheap housing and an apartment all to myself most daylight hours. West had been one of the best roommates I’d ever had—certainly I had never caught him with his ankles tied to his wrists on the couch.
“I do remember,” I say. But then something occurs to me and panic washes me out for a second. “Wait. Are we in trouble for fraud or something?”
“No, no, nothing like that.”
I deflate back into the couch. Adrenaline plus gummy is a heady combination. “Thank fucking God. Believe me, that is the last thing I need.”
“No, this situation is entirely of my own making, unfortunately.”
“And you think I can help you? I can barely feed myself a balanced diet.”
West eyes my soggy bowl of Froot Loops. “I think only you can help me, in fact.”
“Is this my Chosen One moment?” I flatten a palm to my chest. “I thought it would come sooner than my twenty-fifth year.” Pausing, I add, “I also thought there’d be a sword. Maybe dragons.”
“Maybe we should wait to have this conversation.”
“No, no.” I reach for my mixing bowl. “This is perfect timing.”
He seems unconvinced, but continues anyway. “As you likely remember, my family owns a large company.”
Swiping a drip of milk from my chin, I admit through a bite of Froot Loops, “I honestly have no idea what your family does.”
He looks surprised. “Even being friends with Jake?”
“I knew what Jake ordered for lunch and what kinds of stupid movies would make him laugh, and I could predict all his pickup lines at parties, but we didn’t ever, like, sit down and do backstory. He didn’t even mention he had a brother until he suggested I marry you.”
West coughs out a dry laugh. “Okay, well, in that case, my grandfather Albert Weston founded a grocery stand back in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1952, and—”
“We’re starting in 1952! Oh my God, I am so high.” I take another bite.
“And that grocery stand eventually became a storefront, and that storefront eventually became a grocery store chain, which—”
“Wait.” I set the bowl back on the table. Understanding is setting in. “A grocery store chain? Are you talking about Weston’s? Like the giant supermarket two blocks from here that has the good cheese I can’t afford?”
“I am.”
“Are you shitting my dick right now?”
West squints at me. “I—no? My father is Raymond Weston, son of Albert, and current owner and CEO of Weston Foods.”
West is the grandson of the Weston Foods empire? “You guys are like one of the biggest grocery chains in the country.”
“The sixth, in fact.”
“Holy shit. Holy shit! Wait—your first name is West.” I press my hand over my mouth and speak behind it. “Are you West Weston?”
“Anna. What?” West stares at me. “Are you being serious right now?”
“Is that a yes?”
“My first name is William. I go by Liam.” He stutters out a few sounds. “Sor—Di-did you really not know that?”
“Liam,” I say, and squint at him. Thick auburn-blond hair, those matching whiskey eyes. It seems like a Scottish name. I can picture him in a kilt, fists planted on his hips as he stares out at the Highlands before him. “Okay. I can see it.”
“Anna, are you telling me you didn’t know what my first name was the entire time you lived with me?”
“Everyone just called you West.”
His mouth opens and closes again. “You never read the legal documents I gave you? The ones I told you to take to an attorney and sign?”
“I was fake-marrying you because I couldn’t afford rent off campus. What made you think I could afford an attorney? It was a simple divorce, right?”
“Had I known you couldn’t afford an attorney, I would have—”
I cut in, laughing. “What college undergraduate who is so desperate for housing that she marries a stranger can afford an attorney?”
He gapes at me for a beat longer and then bends, resting his head in his hands. “Oh shit.”
“Oh shit what?”
“Oh shit as in, if you didn’t read any of our contracts, this is a mess. I think I need to go back to the beginning with you.”
“I definitely need to go back to the beginning,” I say, wiping my eyes. I mime an explosion at my temples. “Like—my mind is blown right now. You dressed like a middle schooler around the house. All basketball shorts, all the time. You drove a Honda! West, you’re incognito rich! No wonder Jake never told me anything about his family! I would have made him pay for Jersey Mike’s every fucking time! Wait. Why did you need to live on campus? If you’re the grandson of the founder of Weston’s, you could probably buy an entire apartment building on Sunset.”
“In theory, yes,” he says, shifting uncomfortably, “but just before we got married, I found myself suddenly having to pay for housing, tuition, and living expenses without a job.”
“What? Why?”
“My father supports his kids financially, provided we do what he wants. His plan had always been that I would finish my MBA, join Weston’s corporate office, and eventually take over his role at the company. But by the time I finished business school, I already knew I didn’t want to do that. I’d interned there for a year after college, and it was miserable, due to reasons that aren’t worth detailing now. I told my parents that I would be continuing school to get my PhD. My father and I had a huge fight where a lot of these old issues came up. He cut me off completely until I agreed to come work for him.”
“Well, he sounds fun.”
“Initially, our marriage was just so I could cheaply live on campus and finish my degree. But once we were officially married, I realized what I’d inadvertently done.”
“Granted, I’m super high—”
“You’ve mentioned.”
“—but is it weird that I’m not sure I’ve ever heard someone use the word inadvertently?” West takes another deep, patient breath. “Sorry,” I mumble. “What had you inadvertently done?”
“My grandfather left money to each of his four grandchildren—my three siblings, and me. A condition of the trust was that our inheritance would become accessible to each of us only when we got married.”
It’s my turn to gape. “What in the smelling salts waistcoat gentleman shit is that?”
“Agreed.”
I attempt a British accent: “The lord must find a wife!”
“Well, as far as the family attorneys knew, I did.”
That lands in a puddle of silence, and it hits me after a couple of seconds filled only with the sound of Conan kicking someone’s ass on TV that West expects me to catch his meaning.
And then I do. “You mean, marrying me triggered your inheritance?”
“Correct.” He looks down to his lap. “Only Jake knew the real situation. The rest of my family was disappointed that I didn’t let them throw me a big wedding, but I guess they weren’t all that surprised. I’ve always been private.”
“So you married me for housing but ended up getting a ton of cash, too?”
He nods. “With the inheritance, I could pay my tuition and living expenses and avoid having to ever work with my father.”
“Okay,” I say, dragging the word out. “I’m happy for you, but you started stressing out about the legal documents, and now I’m stressing out about them. What exactly did I sign? I thought the first was a standard prenup.”
He nods at this. “It was a document saying you are not entitled to any of my income or property.”
I frown. That’s a bummer. “I get nothing?” I grimace, realizing I sound greedy. “I guess I already got this couch and the old TV.”
“You also get ten thousand dollars once our divorce is final.”
Sitting up, I feel my lips stretch into a smile. “Seriously?”
West gives a tiny flicker of a smile. “Seriously.”
“Ten thousand dollars.” I pass a hand down my face, trying to keep it together, but that amount of money is life-changing. I could pay down over half of Dad’s remaining hospital bills. And then his words penetrate my fog. “Wait. What do you mean, ‘once our divorce is final’? Are you saying we aren’t divorced?”
He nods slowly. “I’m saying we are not divorced.”
I have to reach out and touch his leg again to make sure my brain isn’t making up this entire conversation. The firmness of his thigh under my fingers, the sheer strength of muscle there, tells me I’m not. “I thought the second set of papers I signed when you moved out were, like, standard divorce papers.”
He purses his lips, swallows. “They were not.”
I lean back against the couch. “Whoa. This is heavy.”
West nods. “The trust stipulates a five-year marriage. It does this to prevent one of the grandchildren from marrying someone and immediately divorcing them simply to get access to their money. The trust pays out a stipend every year for five years, and then the entirety of the remaining balance is mine. If we divorce before the five years passes, I forfeit the remaining balance of my trust.”
“What is your grandpa’s deal with being married? Like, can’t a dude just… date? Sow some wild oats?”
“He and my granny Lottie have both passed away, but they were very happily married for nearly sixty years. He created the business to be a family business, and this marriage stipulation was a way, he thought, of ensuring that it stayed a family business.” There’s something in his eyes, some tension that I am too high to translate. “He wanted that happiness for his grandkids.”
“Well… you do seem blissful, West. Really just a portrait of laid-back joy.”
I am rewarded with a smirk. “The contract you signed before I moved out states that we would remain married until September first of this year.”
I count out the remaining months on my fingers. May, June, July, August. Four more to go. “Okay, that’s not too bad.”
“After September first,” he says, “I can tell my family that things didn’t work out for us.”
“What if someone had wanted to marry me in the meantime?” He hesitates just a little too long. “It could happen!”
“You do realize we talked about all of this before I had the second contract drawn up?”
I wince, drawing my shoulders up to my ears. “It’s possible it felt like a lot of irrelevant details?” At his expression, I deflate. “I had a lot going on! I was graduating and finding a new place to live and dealing with stuff with my dad.”
We stare at each other.
“West? Hello, I still have no idea what the fuck is going on. How am I supposed to help you right now?”
“My family still thinks we’re married, but… there’s tension there with my father. He wants me to return to the family company.”
“Just tell him you’re very sorry, but you’re too busy being Indiana Jones now.”
“It isn’t that simple,” West says gently. “If my father suspects that our marriage is fraudulent, he will use my inheritance as leverage to get me to come back. I can avoid the conversation if I don’t see him, but seeing him is about to be unavoidable. Unless you help me, I’m concerned that he’ll begin to wonder whether I married you only to trigger my inheritance.”
“Because you did.”
“Not intentionally.”
“Dude, you have a job. Why not just let go of this inheritance and live your happy life without it?”
West nods, understanding. “I do have a job. And so far, the trust has paid out a million dollars over five years.” I whistle long and low. I mean, holy shit. Two hundred grand a year would change my life in ways I can’t even wrap my head around. “But,” he continues, “the remaining balance I stand to inherit is nearly one hundred million dollars. It’s hard to walk away from that.”
I choke on air. “Oh. I guess that does change things.”
“It does. And I’ve recently discovered a loophole I didn’t know about before. A very big loophole.”
I lift my chin, grinning smugly. “Well, look who else missed some fine print on a contract.”
West swallows audibly. “It’s complicated and boring, but the point is this: I don’t think anyone in my family knows about this loophole, and I really need it to stay that way. No one else can find out that you and I are married in name only.”
“So, do you need me to, like, write an email? Take a picture where we’re kissing?” I wince, at a loss. “Forge some love letters?”
He looks me over again, top to bottom, and the defeat in his eyes makes me realize the true extent of my unshowered, feral chaos. “Actually, Anna,” he says, “I need you to come with me to my sister’s wedding in Indonesia and convincingly play the part of my very loving wife.”