Page 9 of Fall For You

“I’d say, ‘it’s okay. She’s my wife,’ and I’d show them mine.”

“And if Cash were there with us and he ordered a beer…?”

“He’d be shit out of luck, unless he were to find an older woman who was willing to marry him.”

“God, can you imagine the look on his face?” Jo smiled blissfully. “It would be worth doing it just for that.”

“If you say so.”

“So, how does it work? What do we have to do?”

“All we really need is to do is apply for a marriage license,” I explained. “Ideally, we’d find someone to sign it—although that might not even be necessary. But if it’s signed, by someone who’s actually ordained, that’d be a lot harder to refute. It’s also possible they might insist we have a ceremony. But, strictly speaking, I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“And that’s it?”

“Pretty much. We’d keep the license with us, obviously, in case anyone needed to see it but, like you said; everyone around here knows us already, so we probably wouldn’t even need to pull it out more than once or twice.”

Jo looked at me strangely. “And…when we don’t want to be fake married anymore, what then? Do we have to get fake divorced or something?”

“No. Don’t be silly. That’s not a thing. We just run out the clock.”

“What clock? What are you talking about?”

“Technically, if the license isn’t filed, it expires after a couple of months. But once you turn twenty-one, we wouldn’t need to pretend. So, we just…wouldn’t anymore.”

“Okay, but…if it’s an actual license and an actual official actually signing off on it. Where’s the fake part? How are we not actually married?”

“That’s the beauty of it. None of that matters. If the license never gets filed, the marriage isn’t legally valid.”

“But…”

“I don’t think there’s an easy way to check to see if itwasfiled. Because most of the time we’d be drinking after office hours, right? So everyone will just assume that it’s valid.”

“Okay. So, for the next three years we go around pretending to be married to each other—but we’re really not. Is that it in a nutshell?”

“Pretty much. I mean, it’s not like we’d be moving in together or announcing it to our folks, or anything. The only difference is when you want to go out and have a drink. Otherwise, we act the same as ever.”

“Which is how…exactly?”

“I don’t understand what you mean,” I told her, knocking back my beer and reaching for another. “We do what we’re doing now. You hit me up when you wanna go out for a drink—likeyou did tonight. Only we don’t have to sneak around like we’re doing now. Then you go off to college in the fall, same as you’re planning to do, right? I probably won’t be going back myself, but I could maybe drive up there some weekends, if you wanted, and we could hang out.”

“Or I could come home,” she suggested, using her thumbnail to scratch the label off her bottle. “Once a month, or so. If you wanted me to.”

“Sure,” I agreed. “That could work, too.”

“Right. Okay, but what about dating?”

“Dating?” I blinked at her in surprise.

“Don’t you think it’ll be hard to sell other people on the idea that we’re married if we’re both dating other people? Or, conversely, don’t you think some people might object to dating us if they think we’re off the market?”

“I guess? I dunno. I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Really? Not at all?”

“Well, I…”

“So are you telling me you don’t plan on having sex for the next three years? Is that what you’re saying?”

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