Halloween
LAINEY
I don't even have to open my eyes to know I'm a thousand percent hungover. My head’s pounding. My mouth feels like cotton. My stomach’s rolling. And the only thing my aching brain has the strength to ask is, what the hell happened last night?
The more the question rolls around in my brain, the more my stomach churns, which doesn’t bode well. I open my eyes and I'm in a dark room I don't recognize. Hints of sunlight peek around the blackout curtains, so it's daytime. Where am...oh, shit.
Vegas. Hotel room.
Ben.
As soon as he enters my thoughts, I realize I'm not in the same bed as the night before—and there's a distinct weight across my waist. Oh my God. Did we have sex? I lift the sheet and find my breasts are bare, but I have on panties. That's a good sign, right?
I drop the bed covers and that’s when I see it. A gold band sparkles around my finger. I grab my hand and realize gold’s an overstatement. The ring’s probably one step up from plastic. Suddenly, a memory of snagging it from a gumball machine comes into focus. A barrage of images hit but only two stick out: a marriage license and Elvis.
I jackknife in bed, grabbing the sheet to keep me covered. "Ben! Ben!"
He startles awake, shooting straight up like I did, a mixture of confusion and pain on his expression as he presses a hand to his forehead. "What?"
I hold up my hand. "What the fuck did we do last night?"
He stares for what seems like hours, blinking as if he's trying to get his brain to work. "Um...I think we got married."
My heartbeat roars in my ears.
"It was a joke for your sister. Mischief Day. Remember?"
His recollection slows my thundering heart as it all comes back to me. I wanted a picture with a marriage license at a Vegas chapel to send to Harper. That was all we were going to do. Just take a picture with Pastor Elvis.
"We're not really married, right?"
Ben runs a hand over his face as he shakes his head.
"And we didn't have sex?"
He looks at me then, noticing for the first time I'm topless under the sheet. He's shirtless too and I hope he's wearing boxers. He lifts the sheet. "I have underwear on, and we were so plastered, I would have had whiskey dick."
"You sure we didn't try? Drunk people do stupid stuff."
He looks around the room. "No, I kinda remember you taking off your top. We got in bed. I think we kissed goodnight. That's it."
Goodnight, husband.
The sudden memory spikes my heartbeat. Okay, focus on the positives. Not really married. Didn't have blackout sex. I glance at the clock. It's 6:00 a.m., which is way too early for me to be up, considering how late we probably went to bed. But there's no way I'm falling back to sleep. Not when I leave for the airport in less than three hours.
"I'm going to shower. Will you, um, turn around?"
He falls back onto his pillow and slings an arm over his face with a groan. I get up, grab my things, and take a shower. Twenty minutes later, I emerge feeling a smidge better, but no amount of hot water will cure this hangover. Ben’s up and the curtains are pulled back, the room filled with natural light. He's standing at the table in a T-shirt and sweats, looking down with a furrowed expression.
"I'm done."
His head snaps up and he’s blinking like he’s not fully functioning. "I went to the vending machine and got some Gatorade." He points at the nightstand.
"Oh, bless you." I go grab it as he gets his stuff to shower. I start packing because I don't know what else to do with myself. I'm afraid to look at my phone, but I eventually find it and plug it in. Of course, it's dead. Did I send pics to Harper? Surely not, or she'd be knocking down the door. Though to be fair, it is only six-thirty in the morning.
I sit on the bed and drink my Gatorade, willing my brain to remember. There was an Elvis. I was adamant about getting a picture. I remember laughing a lot. And…we kissed.
My wife.
My heart starts going crazy again, and I don't know what it means. Am I excited he called me his wife? Does it terrify me? Maybe a bit of both? Hell, did he even say it at all? My brain’s so full of fuzz I can’t be sure of anything.
Well, except for the ring on my finger. I look down, unsure why I didn't take it off while I showered. Ben steps back into the room and notices me looking at the ring. I glance at his hand, and he has a band around his ring finger too—that he also didn’t take off. I jerk my gaze away and take a big drink of Gatorade .
He drops off his stuff at his suitcase and sits on the bed across from me. The past twenty-four hours seem to replay as we stare at each other, and next thing I know, we’re laughing. I mean, how ridiculous are we?
As we calm down, he says, "Look, we need to—"
Suddenly, there's a pounding at the door. We both freeze.
“Lainey! Open the damn door now!” Harper’s voice comes through.
“My phone was dead, and I was too afraid to look at it,” I tell Ben.
Harper pounds again.
He winces. "I would be, too."
We sit there for another beat before I force myself to answer the door. Time to face the consequences of my actions. I open it with a big smile on my face. "Hey, sis."
My chipper and dressed state definitely throws her off. She's wearing a hotel robe with a serious case of bedhead. Chandler’s behind her wearing clearly thrown-on clothes, looking miserable.
"What the fuck did you do last night?" She shoves her phone at me, the screen displaying a crisp picture of me and Ben smiling with Elvis between us. I'm holding up a marriage license. She bulldozes her way into the room, and Chandler gives me a frustrated look. The fact he's not amused tells me I might have crossed the line.
"Couldn't y'all have just hugged and called it a day?" he says as he passes me to follow his wife. Yeah, the joke is officially over.
"Calm down, Harper. We didn't really get married. It was a joke."
"Lainey, there's a marriage license in this picture." She points to her phone.
"Yeah, that's what makes it funny. "
Her expression is incredulous as she screeches, "That's what makes it legal!"
"But we didn't really get married. We only took the picture with it."
Harper blinks a few times. "You got a license but only took a picture with Pastor Elvis? He didn't actually marry you?"
"Right."
"Um, Lainey..."
I look over at Ben, who appears a little ashen, his expression possessing an edge of panic. My stomach immediately knots. "What?"
"That is what I was about to tell you. The license...is signed."
"Yeah, we had to sign it to get it."
"No, it's signed by the chapel ." He picks it up from the table and I realize that's what he was looking at earlier. He holds out the white paper and I snatch it from his hands. Sure enough, it's signed.
"But...but we just took a picture."
He runs a hand down his face. "I think we did more than that."
I shake my head as I try to unlock my memories through the haze of alcohol. “We kissed, but it was for the picture. There were no vows."
"I'm not so certain about that."
"No, I would have remembered if we'd gotten married. We laughed with the Elvis. We took a picture with him. He told us to kiss. He..." I look at him, and my words fall away.
"Lainey...I'm pretty sure we got married."
"Okay, stop. This isn't funny." My throat’s getting smaller and smaller as I stare at Ben. This is a joke. I couldn't have gotten married in Vegas. How stupid is that? "There’s a video. Didn't we take one?"
I go to my phone and power it on. No one speaks a word as I wait. I ignore the barrage of messages popping up from Harper and go to my pictures. Among the many drunk candid shots of us and Elvis, there’s one video. I click it and hold out my phone for us all to see.
Ben and I are giggling, clearly not sober. I have a bouquet of fake flowers in my hand and a cheap veil on my head.
“We need a picture wedding,” I tell Elvis. “Quick and easy.”
“You want to marry this man?” Elvis asks.
“I definitely do,” I say, and burst into giggles.
Elvis turns to Ben. “You want to marry this woman?”
“Yes, thank you very much ,” Ben replies in a horrible Elvis impression and we’re laughing all over again.
“Under the state of Nevada, I pronounce you man and wife. Kiss your bride.”
We both look at him, then each other, and burst into another round of laughter.
“We need a picture!” I say way too loudly.
Someone says something off-camera. I wrap my arms around Ben’s neck and kiss him. At first, it’s awkward as I knock him off balance, but he quickly gains control, and holy hell, the kiss turns hot as fuck. Ben's hand slips up to my acnestis, and my hands dive into his hair, tugging him closer. Elvis says something unintelligible, we break apart laughing, and the video abruptly ends.
I look at Ben. "That could not have counted."
"Of course, it counted," my sister shrieks. "You both said yes! It's signed. You're married!"
Oh. My. God. I married my stepbrother.