Page 2 of The Loophole

As I used a napkin to dry the back of my head, I heard a soft, defeated sigh behind me. Surprisingly, he was still sitting there.

Then I started thinking. Assuming he’d been telling the truth about all of that, a hundred grand was a hell of a lot of money. It was life changing. I currently had twelve dollars in the bank and seven in my pocket. I’d had no business coming here and buying a small hot chocolate, but I’d been depressed about getting fired from yet another job and really needed a pick-me-up.

It wouldn’t hurt to ask a few questions, so I grabbed my cup and moved from my table to his. He was cute, maybe in his mid-thirties with a big build and clunky, black-framed glasses that made him look nerdy. He’d been dabbing at his short, dark hair with a napkin, but he paused when I sat down and asked him, “Can it be a guy?”

“Can what be a guy?” He looked thoroughly confused.

“The person you’ll marry to get your inheritance. I was sitting right behind you while you were blowing it with Theresa, so I heard the whole thing.”

“Oh. No, it can’t be a guy because I’m straight.”

“Okay, but work with me here,” I said, as I leaned back and swirled the dregs of my hot chocolate in my nearly empty cup. “You’re talking about a fake marriage, right? Like, nobody’s consummating anything.”

“Yes. There would be absolutely no sex. But I’d still have to convince my family it was a real relationship, and they know I’m straight.”

“A lot of people discover their bisexuality later in life. Why not you? Or, you know, the fictitious version of you that’s trying to get people to believe you suddenly met and married the love of your life, right before your December twenty-second deadline. Today’s already the third, by the way, so tick tock.”

He slumped in his chair and muttered, “Fuck, I know. I’m running out of time.”

“Your family’s pretty hardcore to give you less than a month to get married or else.”

“This is my grandfather’s doing, and he actually gave me eight years.”

“Come again?”

“He came up with this ridiculous idea when I turned thirty. I’d never been in a serious relationship, and he thought it would ‘encourage’ me to get out there and start dating.”

“So, he wanted you to get married by thirty-eight? That’s random.”

“He wanted to make it thirty-five, I argued for forty. We split the difference,” he explained. “Really though, I never planned to take him up on it. I expected to be a huge success by now, and in a position to tell him where he could stick his manipulativebullshit. But life didn’t go according to plan, and now I really need that money.”

“So, beggars can’t be choosers, right? Unless you’ve got a few more Theresas cued up, I’d say I’m your best bet.”

“I don’t even know you.”

I stuck my hand out. “Embry Jayne.”

He shook it and said, “Bryson Baudelaire.”

“Now you know me.”

“Do I, though?”

“As much as you knew Theresa, and you were willing to marry her, weren’t you?”

“But this is different.”

“Because I’m a guy?”

“Yes.”

“Are you homophobic?”

“Of course not!” He seemed legitimately offended.

“Just checking. Explain your deadline to me. Why December twenty-second?”

“I’m turning thirty-seven that day. In order to meet the deadline of being married for one year by the time I turn thirty-eight?—”

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