Page 75 of Dr. Fellow

DIVORCE ME!!!!!

Nothing I haven’t heard before.

The answer is still no.

There are over fifty iterations of this exact conversation with my “husband” over the past month. Sometimes I offer sexual favors in exchange for a divorce. Sometimes I send depressing paragraph-long pleas, hoping he’ll take pity on me. And sometimes I simply resort to pictures of my middle finger.

Unfortunately, nothing has been successful with the most stubborn man on planet Earth.

“Morg,” Cassidy repeats, finally getting my attention.

I look up at my best friend. She’s leaning over the tall triage desk, looking irritated.

“Yes?”

Her hazel eyes soften. “Are you okay?”

I should be the one asking her that because she looks like she’s been through the ringer, and it’s only nine in the morning.

“Are you okay?” I echo, taking in the mystery liquid staining the front of her scrubs and the disheveled nature of her ponytail.

“You know what I mean.”

I take a slow, steady breath to ensure that I don’t say anything I’ll regret. Being a filterless queen is one of my best character traits, but great power comes with great responsibility, and I have to be careful when I’m speaking to people I really care about.

But that’s really hard at the moment because Cass is on my last nerve. She’s been constantly checking in about my relationship status and won’t leave me alone. Sure, I might be legally wed, but nothing in my life has changed since Las Vegas other than the fact that I’m officially celibate again. It’s kind of funny, actually, because I’m pretty sure marriage is supposed to go the opposite way—with all of the life-altering sex happening after your vows, not before. But until Walker agrees to end things with me under the eyes of the law, there’s no damn way he’s getting back in my pants. Regardless of how much I miss him.

“I’m dandy, Cass,” I reply, stretching my arms above my head casually. “Just like I was when you asked me yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that. What my blackout-self did in Las Vegas is none of my sober-self’s business.”

Her voice lowers in concern. “Have you talked to Walker yet?”

I yawn to signify my indifference, though inside, my feelings are anything but calm. Other than the daily spats on our marital status, Walker has left me completely alone. Which, to be fair, I did ask him to do as soon as we got back from the trip so that I could process the situation. But I don’t know . . . I expected him to try harder, I guess.

“What can I say? The three D’s get us all eventually.”

She looks at me like I have two heads, so I clarify. “Divorce, death, and disability.”

“Morgan.” She lets out a resigned sigh. “Is that really what you want?”

“What I want,” I reply, though my conviction waivers slightly, “is for this to have never happened.”

After Vegas, it only took me a few days to come to the conclusion that divorce was the logical answer. Yes, I recognize that a very small subset of the population gets their own happily ever after, but life doesn’t usually end like it does in the romance novels. There will always be fights, or lies, or lackluster apologies. And I don’t want that for the rest of my life.

I want what Walker and I have now—or what we had—just without the title of husband and wife. Because from everything I’ve seen, marriage is just a confirmed sentence for heartbreak.

And that’s not just anecdotal. If you view it statistically, more marriages end in despair than in blissful happiness. Just look at my parents—they’ve both been remarried several times. Hell, look at Walker—he married his high school sweetheart, and she left him for another man. So regardless of how our relationship, or whatever you’d call it, was going, we need to nip this in the bud before one of us gets really hurt.

“But it did happen,” Cassidy reminds me. “And you need to have an actual conversation with him.”

“Do I though?” I lean back in my chair and cross my arms. “It’s really not a big deal, I promise.”

The problem is—apparently it is a big deal in the eyes of the law. From the little research that I did before I frustratedly threw my phone across the room, not only do you both need to agree to the divorce, but you also need the physical marriage certificate. And since we meet neither criteria . . . we’re in big, fat, accidentally married limbo.

“You’re impossible sometimes,” she hisses, slamming her hands down on the desk so aggressively that the unit secretary looks over to make sure everything is okay.

I keep telling my friends that Walker and I will figure everything out once the paperwork comes through next month, but none of them seem to understand my reaction. Cass thinks I’m in denial, clearly. Claire is delusional and wants us to stay married. And Caroline, well, Caroline doesn’t say anything because she’s busy as fuck.

The reality of the situation is that it doesn’t matter what they think because this isn’t their stupid problem—it’s mine. And this problem is making me mad as hell. I’m mad that I finally gave in to Walker and let myself be happy. But I’m even more upset that I went and destroyed that happiness with the one thing that always fails—marriage.

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