Page 49 of Just (Fake) Married
I looked over at Harmony. “Our feud made it all the way to Big Horn.”
“I grew up in the Gulch,” the woman said. “Forty years ago.”
“Always nice to reconnect with someone from the Gulch,” Harmony said over my shoulder. “Do you still have family there?”
“Got cousins there,” she said. “Name’s Mabel. So you two want to get hitched, huh?”
“Actually, we’re just here for the license,” I said, this weird tightness in my chest. Was it embarrassment because Harmony knew about my suspension? Not that I should care about her opinion of me. But I think, strangely I did. I felt like a schoolboy getting slapped on the hands, while Harmony watched.
Or maybe it was nerves that we were actually going through with this ridiculous charade of a marriage.
“So, what’s the waiting period before we can actually get married?” I asked her, as we handed her our driver’s licenses.
Mabel looked me up and down and then turned her gaze to Harmony. “You knocked up?”
Harmony gasped.
“No, she’s not knocked up,” I snapped. “We just need to get married. Want. We want to get married.” I even smiled to make it believable.
“Judge is free today,” Mabel said. She turned toward her computer screen and started typing.
“What does that mean?” Harmony asked, still bouncing behind me to see over my shoulder.
“Means, I can finish this paper work and the judge can marry you today if youneedto get married. Or, you can wait for the next available day, which is…” she lifted the page of a calendar on the wall. “March 5.”
Harmony frantically started shaking her hands and bouncing back and forth on her feet. “Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.”
“You’re doing that too fast if you’re trying to prevent a panic attack,” I warned her.
“You two sure you want to get married?” Mabel asked me, and I sensed some sarcasm in her voice.
“Give us a second,” I told her. I grabbed Harmony’s arm and pulled her away from the clerk’s window and deeper into the hallway. “Calm down.”
“Calm down? Calm down?” Harmony hissed at me. “We’re getting married today, aren’t we? Like today, today.”
“Yes, but isn’t that the point of all of this?”
“I just didn’t think it was going to be today! Did you?”
“No.” But oddly enough, I had come prepared with a ring. I’d just planned to give it to her later. An engagement ring, not a wedding ring.
“Mabel doesn’t think we’re serious about wanting to get married,” I said softly.
“That would make Mabel an astute judge of character,” Harmony fired back.
I closed my eyes, pinched the bridge of my nose, and tried again. “Mabel,” I said slowly, “knows about the feud and has cousins who live in the Gulch. Maybe Mabel talks to these cousins, or maybe she doesn’t, but we’re supposed to be an epic love story. Not two people who just found out they can get married today and are having seizures about it. So, are we doing this, or what?”
I looked Harmony dead in the eye. This was it. It was deep breath and steady hands on the scalpel, or we gave the surgery to someone else.
She let out a long, slow breath and then nodded once. “I’m ready.”
“Good. Now pretend you love me,” I instructed her.
“You pretend you love me, first.”
This time when we approached the clerk’s window, we had our arms wrapped around each other’s waists and I had a hopefully convincing smile plastered on my face.
“Mabel, we would love to see the judge today if that’s possible. We’re just in such a hurry to start spending the rest of our lives with each other.”
