Page 13 of Never Say Yes To Your Fake Husband

Curiosity is a killer, and I know it’s not right that she goes first. Not when I have a secret so huge. But I want to know. It’s not about being a coward and delaying. I try to say something, but speaking is suddenly hard. A low sigh comes out that sounds an awful lot like Beans.

“I’m uh…I’m not actually free to do this,” Weland blurts. “To do whatever we might have thought we were going to do last night, which was nothing. But there’s a reason, and I can’t go into detail about it other than to say my life is complicated right now, though I very much want to be the kind of person who doesn’t come with complications.”

Her baby blue eyes sweep up to my face, and bam, there’s the knockout punch. All the rest were nothing in comparison to this one. There’s so much emotion in there. So much soulfulness. And it makes me want to be like butter and melt all over her kitchen floor.

“My life is going to be complicated for a year. But that’s it. After that, and I know it’s a long time and a lot to ask—you’re probably going to laugh about this later, and I’ll die a little inside from the crazy amount of humiliation—but if you’re interested and in a year you think about me and remember this night, and you wonder to yourself whatever happened to the girl who had a drink spilled on her head and was forgotten by her friends, the weirdo girl with the farty dog and the baggage that’s going to take a long arse time to unpack and you think,I’d like to get to know that girl, and I have space in my life for a little bit of awesome craziness,then please, look me up. You know where I live, and I won’t move anytime soon, so…uh, that’s it.”

Wow, that’s a heck of a lot and not at all what I expected.

Some things about Weland are, but overall, she’s been one heck of a surprise, and am I sorry I’m here? No. No, I’m not. That’s not what the regret is about.

“I…holy farge on all the barges.” I rake a hand over my face and through my hair. This is it. I have to come clean. “I know.”

“I’m sorry?” Weland gives me the most direct stare, but only because she’s trying to figure me out. “What do you mean?”

“I know your life is going to be complicated for a year.”

“How?” She looks up and studies me, and I know the exact second she reads what’s in my brain and on my face. There aren’t any more secrets of that kind between us. “Oh my god! You’re a stalker. You’re a freaking creep, though you promised you weren’t! The rest of those homicidal jokes better have been just jokes, or you’re going down!” She rips open the kitchen drawer nearest to her and pulls out a carrot peeler. It’s carrot-shaped. Like an actual carrot with the peeler coming out of it. “Back off! I know how to use this!” She waves it madly, slashing it in the air with enough force to do some real damage.

I hold up both hands as she advances at me and swings wildly, her face flaming red. She means business, and I don’t want to be on the business end of that business. I backpedal big time, literally and metaphorically. So maybe she didn’t exactly read the right information in my expression the way I thought she did. “Wait! I’m your husband! Weland, I’m your actual wedded husband, and that’s how I know!”

She freezes, and her jaw drops open. Then comes more of the red. The red in her cheeks, the red creeping up her neck, the gritted teeth, the throbbing vein in her forehead, and the twitch in her left eye. She slams the peeler down on the counter. “You…you…you horrible, terrible man! I should have known Smitty would tell you, but this? Are you freaking kidding me right now? Why? Why would you do that? You what? Seduced me as a test? Came to that bar to keep an eye on me? Kind of really did stalk me? Why?

“You could have just, you know, been normal, shown up here, and been like, I’m your husband, Weland, and we need to talk things out because you said some seriously crazy things, and I’m just checking in to make sure everything is okay. And if you didn’t want me to know who you were, there’s this thing called a phone. You could have called from a private number or sent an email. There are a hundred ways you could have contactedme, yet you chose the extremely weird way you did? What in the actual tarnation was running through your brain?”

My brain is doing this thing where it shuts down, and I feel like I’m being boiled alive. I knew it was a bad idea and all sorts of wrong. It went way too far. She has every right to be mad. “You just threatened me with a carrot peeler!” It’s official. I am the world’s worst imbecile.

“It was called for!” she shrieks.

“You asked me to spend the night here. That means you had intentions.” I have no right to say that or get huffy, but it comes out hecking huffy. The dog chuffs from the couch like he’s telling me to get real.

“Are you kidding me? You spent the night on the couch. We didn’t even get close enough to make any intentions a thing. And you know what my intentions are. I just asked you if, in a year, you would think about picking this up because I couldn’t right now. I kept silent. I kept my part of the bargain, no matter how weird it was or how hard,” Weland hisses. Her eyes are getting big, welling up, and getting shiny.

Seeing that does something to my knees and stomach that I don’t like, but the not-liking is all me not liking what I’ve said and what I’ve done. Apparently, I still can’t stop being a turd. “But you invited me in.”

“I did. And then I let you sleep on the couch,” she grits.

“You told Smitty you were going to sleep with someone.”

Weland throws her hands up in the air, which is still better than reaching for the peeler to take a real strip off me. “I was just venting. I should never have said that. I was lonely. I was in pain. It was stupid. I have Beans now. You can’t just lay this on me. I haven’t done anything wrong. I took a lot of pains to make sure nothing happened after…yes, okay, after I invited you to stay over. But having you sleep on my couch isn’t the same as sleeping with someone.”

“Are you sure? Because if anyone found out that a man stayed the night here, anyone who could matter or bring something against me…”

“But you’re not just any man. You’reyou. You’re my husband, and you didn’t even tell me, which makes you a dirty liar and the worst sort of trickster. A…a monumental poo pants! And I hate to be all semantics right now, but you walking out of here and someone seeing you if you weren’t you and you were someone else isn’t the same as having sex with someone. Even if we’d spent the night in the same bed, it wouldn’t be the same thing. Which we didn’t. You can have a sleepover with your best friend and it’s not the same thing. It’s the intention that matters. You slept with Beans all night on the couch. I rest my case.”

“Too far,” I say, my voice low.

“It’s not too far.You’retoo far. This whole thing that you did? That’s too far! Lying to me, pretending to be someone else—”

“You’re the only person I have never pretended to be someone else with!” That’s too far. I didn’t mean to say that. Fuck. Fuck, shit. Fuck shit and a carrot peeler.

That knocks the socks right out of the room. By socks, I mean air, and by the room, I mean my lungs. I need to reach for the counter to keep myself upright. The kitchen was small before, but now it seems like a black hole ready to suck me up.

“I don’t know how to respond to that.” Weland reads the room, and her posture changes, softening out. She’s not on the attack anymore, and she’s not defensive. She sighs instead of saying anything else, but then, after a brief moment, she does, adding, “I don’t know where to go from here. I want things you can’t give me. Meaning a partner, a marriage, a child, a family, and a life. I’m tired of being in limbo. I get that I signed a contract, and whatever you might think, I’m not reneging on it, and I’m sorry for the worry I caused. Maybe I brought this all on myself by saying what I said, and for that, I apologize.

“I’m still offended by you tricking me when you could have just been honest, and it’s going to take me a hot minute to get over it. So, yup, that’s where we’re at. I’m not sure how to go from here to everlasting happiness, but I know it’s not together, and honestly, that feels like a shame because, in a year, I was really hoping you’d remember my dog and me and do the impossible. However, now I’m finding out I might not have to wait a year, yet it’s actually a hard no and a never because you’re not who I thought you were.”

“Maybe I’m not who you think I am in that regard either.”

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