Coming soon… #4
I want to believe in the administrative error thing, but honestly, what are the chances that someone made an error that had me married to someone I actually knew. No, there has to be more to this. And if anyone is going to know the details, it will be Stephanie.
I have to call her and see what she knows. I pick my cell phone up and scroll to my contacts and find Stephanie’s name, but instead of making the call, I just sit and stare at my cell phone’s screen for a long time.
Stephanie Harrison, once the person who knew me better than I knew myself and now a virtual stranger.
The little circular photo next to her name is a blurry selfie of us from college with me squinting in the sun, and her laughing, holding a smoothie with her pinky finger in the air like a queen.
We look happy. We were happy. Before everything changed.
I take a deep breath, then another. Then I hit the call button before I can chicken out. It rings once. Twice. Three times. And just when I’m sure she’s going to let it go to voicemail, she takes my call.
“Hello?”
I smile as my eyes fill up at the sound of her voice.
God, it’s so good to hear her voice after all this time.
Her voice is warm and welcoming, not the hostile tone I half expected.
She sounds a little bit breathless, like she ran for her cell phone.
Hearing her voice again after all this time hits me like a punch to the chest. My throat tightens, my eyes sting, and I have to press my hand to my mouth for a second so that I don’t start to sob.
“Steph,” I say, my voice small and shaky. “It … it’s Lily.”
There’s a pause. Not a long one, just long enough to fill with every fear I’ve had about this moment; that she hates me, that she won’t want to talk to me, that she’s deleted me not just from her contacts but from her life. But then I hear her give a half laugh.
“Umm yeah, obviously it’s you,” she says. “Oh my God it’s so good to hear from you. Are you okay?”
That simple question undoes me a little bit. After all of this time, after I practically ghosted her, she still cares about me.
“I … I don’t know,” I whisper.
“Where are you? What’s going on? Is everything alright?”
I laugh, or at least it was meant to be a laugh. It’s a weird, broken sound.
“I’m at home,” I say, answering the easy question first. “And as for the rest? It’s … complicated.”
There’s a rustling sound on the other end of the line, and I picture Stephanie pacing her apartment like she used to do when we pulled all-nighters on the phone, me making grilled cheese at two o’clock in the morning and her snacking on chips and dips.
“Tell me everything,” she says. “I’m here. I’m listening.”
I get up off the bed and go and slide down the wall, pulling my knees up to my chest like I used to in college when life felt too big. It feels familiar, like Steph’s voice, and I feel better just for that.
“I was supposed to be registering to get married today,” I start.
There’s a pause.
“To Jacob?” she says softly, her voice guarded, but even after all of this time, I know her so well and I know exactly what she’s thinking. Then again, maybe I don’t need to know her that well to know what she’s thinking regarding Jacob. I think most people have similar thoughts about him.
“Yeah,” I say. Normally, at this point, I would launch into a long speech where I defended Jacob and tried to upsell his good points. Today, I don’t even bother.
“But you didn’t,” Stephanie says, and I can hear the spark of hope in her voice, the hope that I have come to my senses and walked away from Jacob.
I hate to extinguish that spark of hope, hate to have to tell her that once again, I have let her down, let myself down.
But I have to tell her otherwise I will never find out what I need to know.
“No,” I say. “Because apparently, I’m already married.”
That stuns her into silence for a moment.
“Wait … what?”
I explain what happened at the registry office. How Janine told me she’d need to see proof of my divorce before I could sign. How I told her I wasn’t married and then the name that stopped the pen in my hand: Cole White.
“Oh. Oh my God,” Stephanie says.
Oh my God indeed.
“You remember him?” I ask.
“Of course I remember him,” she says. “Not to be blunt, but he isn’t the one who disappeared from my life after college.”
“Oh,” I say in a small voice. “I …”
“It’s ok,” she says, cutting me off. She gives a small laugh. “Even aside from that, Lily, how could I forget the guy who married you in Vegas?”
My heart drops into my stomach.
“So, it did happen? This marriage is real?” I say, dread causing me to silently retch.
“I mean, yeah, I guess so,” she says slowly. “I always assumed it was annulled the day after, like we planned.”
I press my forehead to my knees.
“Tell me everything. Please.”
“You really don’t remember?” Stephanie asks.
“No,” I say and then I groan. “I was drunk, but God, Cole White? My brain probably repressed the memory to stop me from imploding or something.”
Stephanie laughs, a warm sound full of happiness.
It’s infectious and even in my current state, I find myself smiling along.
The smile fades as Stephanie begins to tell me what happened all of those years ago in Las Vegas.
As she speaks, parts of it come back in fragments, blurry, half remembered images sharpening into something clearer and all the more horrifying.
We had gone to Las Vegas to celebrate our graduation, that much I already knew.
There were the six of us, our core friend group which unfortunately for me included Cole.
There was me, Stephanie, Rachel, Marcus, Cole, and Jamie.
We pooled our money and shared a cheap Airbnb and ate nothing but burgers and those sad casino buffets for three days.
But despite that, we had a good time. The drinks never stopped flowing and the laughter never stopped ringing out.
I remember the glitz of the strip, the way it buzzed under our feet like it had a pulse all of its own. We were drunk on freedom and cheap cocktails, our whole lives ahead of us.
“Do you remember the dares?” Stephanie asks with a laugh.
“Not really,” I admit, though the haze is lifting enough that I remember us all being drunk and thinking it would be funny to dare each other to do shit.
“Oh, Lily. We were so drunk. Rachel got dared to pull down a stranger’s pants. She faked a fall and grabbed some guy’s pants, and pulled them down, and he ended up being so nice about it because he thought she had actually fell. You must remember that,” Stephanie says.
I think for a moment, and an image comes into my mind of a man in a blue, short sleeved shirt, his jeans round his ankles, wearing stars and stripes patterned boxer shorts.
“It’s coming back to me,” I say. “I can’t believe she did it.”
“She had it easy compared to me. I got dared to kiss the next guy who walked through the door, remember?” Stephanie says.
“Oh God, yeah,” I say, laughing at the memory. “He was old enough to be your grandfather, and you did it anyway.”
“Of course I did. I’m no chicken,” she says.
“Then Jamie asked what would have happened if the man hadn’t wanted to kiss me.
Everyone was laughing at the idea of that old man not wanting a young woman to kiss him, and then Cole said he could talk any girl into kissing him.
He said to pick anyone, and he would kiss them.
He obviously expected us to pick a stranger, but Marcus straight away pointed at you,” Stephanie says.
“And you said you’d rather marry him than kiss him, because at least you could do that without having to touch him. ”
I don’t remember that part, but that definitely sounds like something I would have said.
“And then Rachel dared you two to get hitched, just to see if you’d actually do it,” Stephanie goes on.
“You were outraged, saying it wasn’t fair that Jamie had to shave half his eyebrow off, and you had to marry the worst person in the world.
We all started making chicken noises and Cole said he was up for it, and well, you weren’t going to back down once he said that. ”
I feel a ghost of laughter rise in me.
“What happened next?”
“You registered online, went to sign the forms, and then we found a twenty-four-hour chapel. You and Cole were yelling at each other the whole way there, and you didn’t stop when we got there. God, you two were feral. The officiant thought it was an act.”
I rub my eyes.
“Did we … did we say vows?”
“Oh yeah. They were horrendous,” she laughs. “You vowed to tolerate his arrogant face for at least twelve hours’, and he promised to cherish your complete inability to shut up.”
I choke on a laugh.
“Oh my God. How could the officiant be ok with that?” I say, laughing.
“It’s Vegas,” Stephanie says as though that explains everything, and I guess it does.
“Then he said I vow to never, ever fall in love with you, because that would be a fate worse than death, and you said, I vow to always be the one girl you can’t convince to kiss you, even if my life depends on it. ”
“I was so dramatic.”
“You were amazing,” she says softly.
And I feel that pang again, a familiar, aching longing for the good old days, for my best friend and my uncomplicated life.
“When the officiant got to the part where you kiss at the end you refused to do it,” she adds. “I shouted up that without a kiss, the wedding didn’t count, and you failed the dare. So, you turned around, lifted your dress up and told Cole he could kiss your ass, which he promptly did.”
“What?” I gasp.
“Just a quick peck. And it was on top of your panties. It won you the dare. Afterwards, Cole immediately wiped his mouth, and you rubbed at your ass like you had sit in something vile. Both of you fake gagged. Then you called each other a bunch of names, and we all went to the bar across the street for margarita slushies.”
“Wow,” I breathe. “Did we sign something?”