Chapter 8
Elliott and my management team were already at work that morning in one of their let”s-fix-Sloan”s-problem meetings, which meant Elliott was bombarding me with ideas. He didn”t want my opinion. But if he looped me in, then I couldn”t claim I didn”t know. This was all part of how he worked.
But I had bigger issues to sort, and he had to wait.
A lock of hair fell loose around Maya”s forehead. I forced myself not to reach out and push it back. She may have been my wife for the moment, but I didn”t have the permission to do that.
Instead, I focused on her amber eyes and not the Elvis lookalike grabbing coffee or the Dolly lookalike filling a plate of pancakes.
”Someday,” she said, pursing her lips. ”God, as my witness, I”ll have a wedding that I get to plan, a wedding night I get to enjoy, with a husband who will last longer than two weeks. Do you even know how pissed my mom is going to be that she missed another Maya wedding? So pissed. There”s no getting out of it.” She took a deep breath and continued, ”You”ve got to quit doing this to us.” She mimicked what had to be her mom”s voice. ”Like they”re the ones suffering.” She pointed at me with her fork. ”They aren”t. They probably don”t even have a headache.”
”At least you don”t have to deal with Elliott,” I said, trying to lighten the moment. ”He”s gonna lose his mind when I tell him about this.” Which was why I didn”t plan to do it soon.
”Take my advice. Wait until the hangover goes away before you bring it up,” she suggested.
”You know a lot about this,” I said, as some of her comments from the night before slithered back into my brain.
”Look, a girl doesn”t get married multiple times in Sin City without figuring a few things out,” she said.
”Exactly how many times have you been married?” I asked.
”Not a lot.” She dabbed the edge of her lips with her napkin.
”Maya?”
”You know about Dan. It”s not a secret that this isn”t my first time.”
”Okay. But how many?—”
She didn”t wait for me to finish the question. ”Total of three. Two others, plus you.” She lifted her palms in apparent defense. ”One divorce. One annulment. One…” She gestured between us. ”In process.”
”Okay.” Now, I frowned.
”You might have just given me my least favorite response of all the responses,” she said, matching my frown.
”I don”t… Huh,” I said.
”I know. Me either,” she said. ”And I”ve got a season pass on this ride.”
”My management team has been kicking around ideas for… how”d they put it?” How did I word this? “‘Diverting the spotlight off my loss of endorsement deals and my lack of reliability.’”
”I guess that makes sense,” she said halfheartedly, with a small shrug.
”Does it?” I asked. She may have only been my temporary wife, but I hoped she”d be more on my side here.
”I mean, you”ve switched pro teams a few times, right?” she asked.
The question was innocent, but it still stung. Yeah, sure, Denver was the first place I”d stuck, and I was now playing for a contract extension. Also, Elliott had to issue corrections more often than he”d like because I said something stupid… there was also that.
”Just because it took time to find the right team doesn”t mean I”m not reliable,” I countered.
”Okay,” she said, just like I had before.
I frowned. ”That might be my least favorite response of all the responses.”
”We”ll blame it on the booze,” she said with a smile.
Huh, the thing was, intoxicated us might”ve been onto something other than a one-night stand last night.
”Do you think people love a good love story?” I picked at my French toast with the tines of my fork.
She thought about my question. ”Sure, I guess.”
”Why?” I asked.
Her eyebrows fell together as she said, ”Because everybody wants to hope for the best in people, and the idea of picking one person out of the entire world to be your human match? Well, I guess that”s the true story of possibility.”
A story of reliability, perhaps?
”I just had an idea,” I said, carefully feeling out the idea in my head. ”It”s kind of unorthodox.” To put it mildly.
”What”s the idea?” Maya asked, some color back in her cheeks now that she dove into her breakfast.
”Well, we”re married.”
”Not for long,” she said, pulling her lips in a thin line.
”What if we stayed married?” There I said it.
Maya stared, blinking at me with the type of horror like I”d accidentally scored a winning touchdown for the other team in overtime during post-season.
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.
She crossed her arms and tossed me a serious look that sort of turned me on.
I should”ve gone back to eating my eggs, but I wasn”t hungry anymore. Not when the fluorescent lights of the buffet flickered over my future.
”So this”—Don”t say mistake— ”thing we did could actually be beneficial. Long term,” I said.
She stopped the blinking and stared with a glazed look that made me rethink my word choices and all thoughts about how this might work.
”As a bonus, I actually like you. That”s a trait you want in a husband.”
Maya”s terror was now past a crushed car and well into house-sized square footage.
I should say something else and take back the words.
That didn”t happen because I didn”t want to take them back. Yeah, being married was a little extreme. So what?
There were loads of other reasons, too. More logical reasons.
”My reliability factor would go way up. And it could help you, too, right?” I asked. ”I mean, there”s gotta be something out of this for you.”
”You.” Maya pointed to me, her words dazed. ”Really want to stay married to me?” She pointed at herself.
”Yes.” I nodded.
More of the glazed staring came from her side of the table, this time with a small tilt of the head.
I set my fork aside, since there was no chance I”d be eating any more breakfast soon.
I wanted to know her. That was the first thought I’d had when I walked through the door of the condo, and Elvis took a dive into Maya”s cleavage and tried to push down her top.
Of course, I remembered that.
I remembered the party, and Dan, and the shoe situation outside the MM Store. Remembered a few pulls of my margarita.
After that, there was a whole blank section. I didn”t remember a thing about what went down after we drank those margaritas.
Small tastes came back at odd times: little breaths of a memory. Personally, I”d never done the long-term thing—never made it that far along.
”The problem with a normal relationship is that there are too many expectations,” I said, leaning into the conversation. ”I mean, I”ve got other priorities and don”t have time to do this for real. But here we are, and we could do it like this. You want a solo career? I”ve got some connections to help with that.”
Last night drunk me bought Maya a ring, and that was more than half a marriage right there.
”What we have between us isn”t love at first sight or love at all.” Maya tapped her fingertips on the table. ”It”s not a love story.”
”Of course it isn”t,” I agreed. ”Not a real one, anyway. That”s what makes it perfect. Neither of us is coming into this with expectations. We stay married. I play football. You do whatever you want to do.”
”I was wrong.” Maya sat back in her chair, but now, she blinked again, and the glazed look was gone.
”What were you wrong about?” I asked, cautiously, moving into the situation with the same caution I”d take when approaching a new playbook.
”I thought this headache was the worst part of the morning. It isn”t.” Maya rubbed at her temples.
”What”s the worst part?” I asked.
”That you”re actually suggesting we stay married.” She gestured to me. ”You”re sitting there with your brown eyes, and that beard that I don”t even get to remember playing with, telling me you want to stay married when we absolutely cannot do that. And we used up all of our one-night-stand time totally inebriated. So, even if I was entertaining the idea of staying married—which I”m not—I don”t even know if we”re good together in… that way. That”s an important thing to know, you know?”
”We were good together,” I said confidently. I remembered little, only a few minor details. Details I really liked… ”I don”t have to remember it to know we were good together.” A memory of Maya”s lips around my?—
”There”s no way to know.” She threw her hands in the air. ”And we can”t do it again.”
Hold up. Exactly why couldn”t we?—
”Here”s the thing. Let me illustrate.” She set out the salt and the pepper on the table between us. Nudging them close together. ”Do you want to be Salt or Pepper?”
I didn”t really care but decided on the fly, ”Pepper.”
”I sort of thought I”d be Pepper.” Maya frowned, thought entirely too hard about it before saying, ”Whatever, I can be Salt.”
I”d never been in this situation before, but I figured it”d be best to keep my trap shut.
”This is Salt.” She held up the salt shaker. ”She has been avoiding all things Las Vegas for years because the last time she was here, she made some bad choices. She”s finally ready to get back to her favorite town when she meets Pepper.” She walked the pepper shaker over to Salt. ”They have fun together. Drink too much. And then Pepper proposes to Salt.” She did a puppet show, with Pepper pretending to nudge up against Salt.
Salt acted as surprised as an inanimate object could act.
”They”re both compromised because of drinks. So, they get married,” Maya said.
I didn”t know where she was going with this puppet show, but there was one point I needed to correct.
”Hold on.” I reached for the shakers. ”Can I try?”
She let me take the props. ”By all means.”
”Pepper is minding his own business, playing football, when he makes an offhand comment about the sugar content of electrolyte drinks in front of a reporter. That one comment pisses off lots of people, so he has to get out of town. His buddies tell him they”re all going to Vegas.” I set down Pepper and lifted a jam packet and butter packet, walking them toward the minding-his-own-business Pepper. ””If you”re gonna leave town, make it someplace fun.”” I did a shit job mimicking Finn and Elliott. ”So, Pepper agrees to a Vegas weekend to get Butter and Jam off his ass.” That didn”t quite sound the way I”d hoped. ”Pepper meets a pretty woman named Salt.” I pushed the jam and butter away, moving the pepper shaker to Salt. ”They drink margaritas, and Pepper pleases Salt and gives her a mind-blowing time in the bedroom because that”s what Pepper does.” I gave her a look I hoped punctuated that point. ”Then Salt asks Pepper to marry her.” I pushed the shakers back to Maya. ”You can continue now.”
”Salt would never do that.”
”But Salt did that.”
”Pepper and Salt both said they remember nothing about the night before, so how does Pepper know if he or Salt did the asking?” Maya”s chest was turning pink as she spoke, splotches of red dotting along her neck to her fair-skinned collarbone.
The last thing I wanted to do was go backward in our negotiations when we hadn”t even moved forward.
”You don”t have any bits of memory that are coming back? But when you showed me the wedding photos this morning, I distinctly remembered your suggestion that we get married.”
”That”s impossible because it didn”t happen.”
”We were in bed. We were naked. We were both drunk as snot from the tequila. I sounded like I was talking in cursive, and you took a header into the pillow when you tried to sit up.”
”Oh.” She scrunched her face up. ”Then I talked about how bad I want a solo career. Then?—”
”You suggested we get married. Look at us, remembering.” I used Pepper to do a high-five with Salt.
”But we don”t even know if we”re compatible because we know next to nothing about each other. So, it makes sense that we move on with our lives. I know, from experience, that if you don”t get an annulment quickly, it can be an entire problem with the legal system.” Maya held Salt and pretended she spoke to Pepper. ”Act on the annulment train fast, or it can get complex.” She continued miming a conversation. ”Sometimes, you have to go the divorce route. No one wants to go the divorce route. There”s tons more paperwork with that option.”
I reached for Pepper. ”May I?”
She nodded. ”Yes.”
”It”s a good thing I married you, Salt, because you”re a marriage expert.” I continued to talk through my Pepper puppet.
The edge of Maya”s knuckle pressed lightly against mine. Nothing other than platonic, but we may as well have been standing at the altar.
She”d touched me with her knuckle then. All smiles as Liberace read the vows.
I”d been happy as all fuck when she lifted her knuckles and ran them along the edge of my beard.
My phone buzzed near my hand on the table. I ignored it. Honestly, her headache was rubbing off on me, what with trying to keep up with the puppet show.
We sat there on opposite sides of the table with Salt and Pepper and a lot of awkward settling right there on the table between us.
”The thing is, I used to be in love with the idea of being in love. But I don”t feel that way anymore. This is not a love story.” Her eyes pleaded with me to understand. The thing was, I understood. I understood perfectly.
I pulled myself taller and said, ”All of this? It”s exactly why this marriage will work.”