4
Ilay in bed, the flat champagne in my hands, straining my ears so hard, I thought they might burst as I tried to make out the conversation happening in the courtyard below me. I knew it was useless, that I couldn’t hear a thing, but I wanted to know what his nonna was saying to him. It would have been comical that the tiny little woman was coming to tell off her fully-grown grandson if it hadn’t meant that everyone in that family would know about our fake wedding.
The thought of them knowing the truth at last made my stomach hurt. But maybe it was for the best? The truth had come out in all sorts of ways these last few days, and perhaps peeling it open like this was the only way any of us could move forward.
I placed the champagne on the bedside table and stared at the ceiling. The last thing I had expected when I came home from work was to find Kristo with flowers and champagne, suggesting we spend the evening together on the balcony. He could be romantic, sure, but he usually wasn’t romantic in this pointed a way, especially considering what we had just found out from his lawyer. What was I supposed to make of all of it? Was this his way of trying to build a marriage out of the wreckage of our old one? Or was he just trying to let me down easy? My mind ran in a hundred different directions, and I did a terrible job stopping it as I waited for him to come back upstairs and tell me what the fuck was going on.
Eventually, I heard the door to the apartment open, and he let out a long sigh as he came inside. I couldn’t hear his grandmother. He’d probably sent her home already. He made his way to the bedroom, grinning ruefully at me, and then took a seat next to me, clutching that bottle of champagne we’d opened downstairs. He took a swig and then handed it to me. I drank deeply from it, grateful for the alcohol to take my mind off whatever the fuck was happening between the two of us.
We sat there for a long time in that companionable silence, drinking from the bottle and trying to let the reality of the day slide off us. I wanted to ask what his grandmother had said, but I knew he probably didn’t even want to think about it any longer. He had gotten rid of her, and that was all that mattered. We exchanged swigs of the bottle until the expensive bubbles had me bold enough to actually say something.
“So …” I began, looking over at him as the evening light began to fade outside. “That happened.”
“Sure did.” He chuckled, and I giggled back.
“You looked so ridiculous with her coming after you like that.” I sighed and shook my head. “She’s a scary woman when she wants to be.”
“And trust me when I say she always wants to be,” he muttered, and I laughed again. I was loosening up, the champagne helping a lot. I put the bottle down next to me and sat up, and he propped himself up with a pillow and let out a long sigh, as though he was already exhausted.
“So what did she say?”
“It doesn’t matter.” He waved his hand. “She knows. That’s the long and short of it. And she was mad at me for not telling her sooner.”
“What were you supposed to do?” I wondered aloud. “Walk in there with me on your arm like ‘hello, this is Amaya, my very fake wife’?”
He laughed out loud, and I liked the sound of it, the comfort of knowing we could still just talk like this when we wanted to. He glanced at me for another moment, and I could see something in his eyes, something that ran a little deeper than just the booze and the flowers.
“Yeah, I guess.” He shook his head. “And besides …”
He trailed off and stopped himself.
“Besides?” I prompted him. I could feel a prickling running along the back of my neck, as though something in my body was telling me that whatever was about to come out of his mouth next was going to be momentous.
“I was actually going to ask if you wanted to stay married to me,” he finished up. My heart felt as though it had dropped into my feet, and my mouth went dry.
“What do you mean?” I pressed. He shrugged. Playing it cool, the way he always did, but I could see the nerves in his eyes, the worry that I was going to say no or turn him down. As if I ever could have.
“Get married, I suppose.” He glanced up at me. “I was going to ask you tonight. See if you would do it, and we could actually do it properly this time around.”
“You’re serious.” I stared at him, blinking. How long had I dreamed of hearing something like this come out of his mouth? It was hard, so hard, the pain churning in my stomach. He still wanted me to go through with this charade, even though his family knew the truth. What did he get out of it? I didn’t understand.
“Of course, I am,” he replied, and he took my hand. I tried to ignore the zing of energy that ran down my arm as soon as he touched me. Some part of me wanted to shake him off, to remind him I couldn’t go through with this fake marriage any longer. But I couldn’t take my eyes off his, and I needed to know why the fuck he was bothering to play this game any longer.
“But why are you doing this?” I asked nervously, not sure if I wanted to hear the answer. “You don’t believe in love, remember?”
He grinned and raised his eyebrows at me, and I chuckled when I realized how melodramatic that had sounded.
“Well, maybe things have changed a little.” He shrugged as he gazed into my eyes. “Maybe I’ve changed my mind.”
It felt as though he had punched the breath out of my body. There was no other way to describe the feeling as I waited for him to throw his hands in the air and announce the whole thing a joke and me a gullible idiot for falling for it. But he didn’t blink. He didn’t look away. Somehow, this was real.
“You mean it?” I asked, my voice comically tiny as I looked at him. He nodded.
“I want to marry you,” he told me bluntly, and all the feelings I had been doing my best to clamp down on these last few months came flooding up and over me in an instant. It was ridiculous, but I couldn’t keep them in any longer. Maybe it was the intensity of the last few days or maybe it was something else, but I needed to blow off some steam. And, the champagne mellowing my inhibitions, I knew exactly how to do that.
“Kiss me.” I moved into him and breathed the words into his ear, and he didn’t need telling twice. He guided me on top of him, spreading my legs as though it came easy to him, and kissed me hard, our tongues meeting at once. I tasted the expensive champagne on his lips, and the words he’d just spoken pulsed in my ears, loud and nonstop. He wanted me. To marry me. At last. Everything I’d been waiting to hear from him all this time, and all I could think to do was fuck him.
I ground against his dick, moving slowly, taking my time. The booze had sensitized every part of my body so even the mildest touch felt incredible. He skimmed his fingers over my bare thigh, the back of my neck, my cheek, as though he was prepping me for his touch, letting me get used to the feel of him close to me again. It hadn’t been long since the last time the two of us had been together in this way, but the craving for him still ran as deeply as ever. Maybe even deeper than before, now that I’d heard those words come out of his mouth at last. Marry me, marry me, marry me. They pulsed in my brain until they felt like they were seared there.