Chapter 11
ELEVEN
JADA
The immediate stress relief of having our marriage license signed evaporates after I check my phone first thing in the morning. Most of my texts are congratulations from friends, but Danika blew up my phone at midnight even though I posted the news not long after we got married.
Danika: Since when do you have a boyfriend??
Danika: Much less a husband???????
Danika: WTF JADA
I roll my eyes. I don’t blame her for being confused. But I didn’t think she’d blast me right away.
Danika: Cute timing, Jada. Super cute. Seems like some BS.
I sigh and send back a response.
Me: It’s for real. We’re legally married.
Danika: Sure. Sure. Whatever. See you Saturday, I guess. I got that invite from your “husband’s” mom. How did she even get my details?
She absolutely does not believe me. And how did Delia get her information? She works in mysterious ways.
I need to go workout with Jeremiah to shake off some of this stress. When I was diagnosed with ADHD six years ago, my psychiatrist mentioned how important exercise was for managing my symptoms and supporting my mental health.
I’m still annoyed that she was right. And she’ll definitely be right today because I feel like throwing up. I need endorphins.
I stumble out of my bedroom to see Ash on my pull-out couch, frowning and tossing in his sleep with his blankets around his hips. My eyes scan across his bare chest and arms, examining his tattoos, then his frown.
I need to leave.
I get dressed and head to Jeremiah’s.
He decked out the garage in his house with fitness gear, so his home gym is better than the one in Jepsen because it’s free.
And yes, he was able to buy expensive gear and still have a juicy savings account and investment account and whatever it is that we’re supposed to have by our age.
He leveraged a few years of being ground to the bone as an engineer at an energy start-up, then sold some of the stock that came with his benefits package, so being on a teacher’s salary isn’t much of a strain.
We’re twins but sometimes I wonder if we’re even related. It takes me extra effort to stay on top of my life in general, but even if I were neurotypical, I doubt I’d have his level of “having my shit together.”
He sees my face and immediately ushers me to start. Neither of us speak this early until I start groaning in annoyance during a set of squats.
“Do it. One more set.” Jeremiah points at his squat rack. “You’re going to be sitting all day.”
“Come on,” I say, looking up at the ceiling. I don’t want the reminder that my to-do list at the hotel is a million miles long, as glad as I am to have it basically in my name. “I don’t want to.”
“Do it for him.” He points at his orange-and-white cat Garth, who’s watching us from the inside of the glass door to the rest of the house. “Look at him. He wants you to succeed.”
Garth stares off into space. Jeremiah adopted him on the same day I adopted Pip, and he couldn’t be more different.
He likes to watch every human like he’s putting together field notes, very rarely actually touching any of us except Jeremiah.
Sometimes he blesses us with a light twitch of his tail as he passes by.
“Fine.” I sigh and get under the bar.
I do one more set of squats, my ass and thighs screaming at me, and re-rack the barbell. I let myself flop onto the ground a few feet away like a rag doll. I don’t want to get up. I don’t want to face the day. I need my magic post-workout mental health juice to kick in. Where is it?
“What’s the deal?” Jeremiah asks, loading up the bar even more. “The wedding is over. All the paperwork for transferring ownership of the hotel to you is in process.”
“Yeah, but Danika texted me and she doesn’t believe it’s real after I posted the pics on Instagram.” I throw an arm over my eyes.
“Well, what’s she going to do about it?” Jeremiah asks.
“I dunno. Contest the will, maybe?” I’m well aware that I’m whining, but Jeremiah’s house is a safe space. If I can’t be a little gremlin with my family, who else can I be a gremlin with? “Hire a hit man?”
“I don’t think she’d hire a hit man. But maybe she’d contest the will.” He shrugs and I groan again. “But you mentioned that, didn’t you?”
“I know. I did. And Ash and I discussed it.” Very briefly. Too briefly, now that it actually might happen. Were we way too hasty? I mean, we kind of had to be.
“She can’t solidly prove you and Ash are faking it,” he points out.
“I guess.”
“And you made a plan, right?” He does a set of squats.
I sigh and nod.
Jeremiah always has a plan. When we were in high school, he knew he wanted to go to Crescent Hill University, and he wanted to be an electrical engineer.
He graduated summa cum laude and went to work for an energy start-up, and as soon as he realized it was going to suck out his life force, he made a plan to get all the money he could and pivot to teaching.
Now he has a job he finds fulfilling and a nice little house.
He makes it look effortless. He can make plans that cover every contingency and actually succeed.
Historically, planning well hasn’t been my strongest suit.
I roll onto my side, facing Garth. He stretches and yawns before walking away, not even giving me something cute to look at anymore.
“Yeah, but what if she contests the will and wins?” I laugh without humor to it. “That would figure. I’d be in an even worse spot than before.”
“Then you just have to prove that it’s real.” He stands over me, extending his hand down. I put my hand in his and he pulls me to my feet.
“I know.” I tug my sweatshirt back on over my outfit.
“I mean, you tolerate Ash enough to fake marry him. Just get to know him,” he says. “Not every couple is over the top in love. I really don’t think Danika could have hard evidence that you two aren’t in love, because it’s on your phones. Or it’s not there at all since you guys spoke in person.”
I rest my hands on the back of my neck and stretch my chest muscles. He’s right. Danika isn’t so cunning that she’d get all the evidence she needs. The knot in my chest doesn’t loosen even as I continue to stretch. My anxiety is burrowed in deep.
“Okay, but tell my lizard brain that,” I say.
“If I can’t convince your lizard brain, I can just tell you good luck.” He shrugs and grabs his water bottle.
“Thanks.” I sigh and grab mine, too. “I need it. There’s so much stuff to do at the hotel, too.”
“I know you can handle that.” He says it casually, which bolsters my hope. Maybe it’ll be okay.
The post-workout endorphins linger with me in the short drive back to my apartment, but I immediately lose them when I hear Ash talking through the door. I take a second to compose myself before I unlock it.
“Yeah, it’s bullshit,” Ash says into the phone, running his hand over his head. “I know…I fucking…I know. I’ll send the email.”
He turns to look at me and his eyes widen, his gaze trailing up and down my body.
My body betrays me, once again, and my nipples tighten.
Even in his agitated state, he’s hot. It’s the fucking robe—and his bare chest under it, of course, but a lot of it is the robe for some damn reason.
He looks good in red and seems to know it, too.
His frown returns and he says bye to whoever is on the line.
“Everything okay?” I ask, more out of reflex than anything else.
“It’s fine,” he says in a way that tells me it’s not. I have just enough of a grip on my self-control to not prod him about it. This marriage has just begun and we’re on a weird tightrope.
“Do you want coffee?” I ask.
“Sure.”
I start putting together a pot, upping the amount I usually make. I’ve done it thousands of times, but I’ve never felt so watched.
I glance over my shoulder at Ash. He’s still leaning against the counter, frowning at his phone. Just taking up space.
“You’re sure you’re fine?” I ask again.
“Just…a lot of shit. And I’m starting at the office today,” he murmurs. “Didn’t sleep well.”
“The couch isn’t that bad, is it?” Because he’s staying there. Maybe I could get a blow-up mattress. Although where would I put it…
“No, my sleep just sucks when I’m stressed. Which I guess is a lot.” His eyes skim over me again. “You went to the gym? This early?”
“To Jeremiah’s. He has a gym set up in his garage.” I grab some mugs for each of us. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. Working at Stryker Liquors. Wes says JD’s a decent boss.”
Ash scoffs but doesn’t say much more. He runs a hand over his face, clearly holding in a yawn. My post-workout buzz fades a little.
“Well, sorry for trying to be optimistic,” I say, opening my fridge. “It’s only day two of this marriage and I wanted to attempt something friendly.”
“I’m not trying to be a dick,” he says. “I’m just saying I don’t fully believe Wes.”
“Why?” JD, like Ash, was always in the background of my life growing up. He’s prickly, for sure, but Wes has said a lot of positive things about him in the past year or two. He’s mellowed.
“It’s a little too early for me to get into my bullshit.” He eyes the coffee pot as it slowly fills. “But the long story short of it is that I don’t believe he’s had some magical personality transplant, even if it looks like it on the surface. He’s still JD.”
His irritation is palpable. Yeah, that shit behind his words does feel too deep. But also, it’s not my fault he’s doing this. It feels like his irritation is aimed at me.
I start to tell him this, but something in the structure of my apartment groans. I’m used to that. It’s an old building. But I’m not used to that groan traveling across the apartment like an earthquake, followed by a crash that shakes the floor.
Ash and I lock eyes and he darts out of the kitchen first, his arm out as if to shield me. The crack came from the corner of the living room where Pip likes to sit and stare at the walls and ceiling. Or what used to be the ceiling, which has now collapsed onto the folded-out couch.
“Pip? Oh my god, Pip?” I push past Ash to the small pile of rubble and spot a little white blotch of fur. “Pip!”