His hand touches me. You would never guess we got an annulment. “What do you want to do?”
I sigh. “I don’t care. I just want to do it with you.”
Ian
Even though it’s in the seventies here, I’m still bundled up in my suit jacket. I’ve lost the tie, though. Because fuck ties.
Kathryn takes it and wraps it loosely around her neck. The deep royal purple of my silk tie doesn’t mesh super well with her navy blue pantsuit, but what do I care? She could be wearing a yellow and green checkered suit and I would still think she’s the most beautiful woman in the world. That’s the kind of good drug love is.
A fountain occasionally splashes us with mist. Kathryn’s sitting on the edge of the fountain, and I’m sitting on a metal chair from the bistro we bought our drinks from. Italian soda for her and a latte for me. I’ve drunk more of her Italian soda than my latte, though. There’s something refreshing about carbonation when you’re sitting out in the sunlight.
“So how does it feel to be a free woman again?” I ask, intertwining my fingers with hers. “I mean, legally, that is. You’re still mine.”
She rolls her eyes, thin strands of hair falling from her twist and whisping this way and that in the light breeze. “I could ask you the same thing.”
“Well, I’ll never know what it feels like to be a free woman...”
“Shut up.” Kathryn leans in and kisses me. Not too far away, a young woman glances at us from behind a magazine and sighs. If this were not such a fucked up day, I’d smile at her and risk my girlfriend’s territorial wrath. Hey, I can’t help it. As my mother would say, I am my father’s son. “Remember, you were married for a whole week.”
“Uh huh. And you remember that I was your doting husband during that time.”
“Only if you remember that I was your perfect wife.”
I catch a shadow on her face. “What’s wrong?” Ever since she ran off crying at the courthouse, I’ve had a funny feeling that something is off with her. Does not help that my mother spent an awfully long time in that bathroom with her. God only knows what they were talking about. Nothing good for me, that’s for sure.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Katie...” I let my voice trail off, but we both know that my question still hangs in the air. The only look I can fathom right now is one of concerned husband, and I trust that’s not what she wants to see.
She glances away. Her hands squeeze mine tighter, as if trying to communicate with me when her words are failing. I don’t like seeing her like this. Kathryn is a strong, albeit vulnerable woman. The face she puts on in front of her family and the public is 24/7 toughass bitch, and while I realize it’s a privilege to see the human side of her as much as I do, it still unnerves me to see her come apart at the seams. Sometimes she cries at home. At first it freaked me out, because who wants to see their girlfriend crying at least once a week? Then I discovered that it was a combination of hormones and her trying to relieve the stress she always carried around with her. Personally, I prefer sex for such things, but having a girlfriend has got me coming around to this whole crying thing. Looks pretty cathartic. Just don’t tell the people I do business with. They might have to start crying with the rest of us, and pretty soon those business meetings will be nothing but a bunch of middle aged men in suits sharing their feelings and giving snaps for better business decisions and actually making an appearance at little McKaylynn’s dance recital. Am I digressing? I am digressing.
“Come on,” I say, prying my eyes away from the hypnotic mist wafting from the fountain. “You can tell me, lovely. We’ve only got two days in Vegas left. Let’s make the most of it, eh? We’ll start by airing out our feelings.”
I know. I said the F word. Fuck it.
Kathryn smiles, but she’s not looking at me. Eye contact is one of the toughest things in the world for her right now. “There’s nothing wrong,” she reiterates. Calmly, I might add. “It’s been a long week for the both of us. Now we get to breathe for the first time in a week. Even if nothing really happened... emotionally, stuff happened, yeah?”
“Yeah.” I lean forward and kiss her lips, like she kissed mine earlier. Two teen girls walk by, rolling their eyes at us. Oh, yeah, us gross grownups. Falling in love, eloping, having an annulment... just you wait, girls. One day you’ll know what it means to be in love and do stupid shit, if you don’t already.
I need more than two hands to count all the stupid shit I’ve done because of Kathryn, and that’s not my dick talking. My heart is the biggest fuckup of all, and I love it for it.