He passed me his opened bottle and pulled another out of the fridge, opening that, glancing at me every few seconds as if he was checking that I was still there.
“What is it?” The tension between us was taut.
“You’re nervous. I’m not looking forward to this either.”
“Shall we sit down and get it over with?”
“Sofa?”
“I need my blanket fort.”
He laughed, but not for long. Maybe now wasn’t the time to refer to things from years ago. Maybe that was the problem.
He sat in the opposite corner to me, sipping at his beer, silence filling the room like a dripping tap.
“What’s the story with you and Laurie?” I broke it first.
He didn’t answer straightaway, looking around the room, avoiding me.
“You said you were single, but you weren’t available. Is it to do with her?” I needed to know now; staying happily in the dark was no longer an option.
“Yes, but it’s temporary. Can you remember what happened last Easter?” He sat back, resting in his hand, balanced on his knee.
I thought for a moment, the months feeling concertina’d together, events blending into the next because time went by so very very quickly.
“Last Easter, I met Laurie. She was dating a man who she was expecting to propose. This was important, because she was having difficulties with her family, who’d financed her businesses with family money linked to her trust. For the trust to be signed over to her, she had to be married. The expected fiancé ghosted her – I met her the night he’d not turned up to a family dinner.” He looked out of the floor to ceiling window that afforded us views of London, the Thames in the distance.
“I remember. I didn’t know that was Laurie, but I remember you telling me about what had happened. Not about the trust though.” A prickle of dawning heated the back of my neck.
“So in July, I offered to help her out,” he continued, managing to look at me. “We’d get married for the purpose of her trust fund. We’d sort a pre-nup so I wouldn’t have claim onit and we apply for annulment straight after. The trust stipulated Laurie was married, but nothing about how long for.”
The body can have a physical response to stress. Some people will go into fight or flight mode, others may go into freeze. My freezing didn’t involve numbness, but dizziness and the world lost colour. Stress impacted my pulse rate and my world would turn upside down.
That was what was happening now.
“You’re married?” My mouth was dry and I couldn’t move.
“Not yet. We get married in three weeks. Laurie’s family will be here for it. We’ve already prepared the documents for the annulment.”
“Oh.” I felt my nervous system begin to regulate, my breathing steadied, the fizzing of my skin subsided.
He didn’t say anything, he didn’t add any more words. I remembered the times when I’d been in school and something had upset me, mean girls or a situation I wasn’t sure of. Carter, mainly because we used to walk to and from school together most days. He had been the one to hear first about my day, the retelling so I could process and make sense of it. There had been times when I’d just needed to cry and I’d sat in his bedroom, talking it all out and he’d given me space, listening, not adding more sentences for me to have to work out.
“Are you together? Like a couple?” Because if they were, and he’d kissed me – even though it was only a kiss – would change how I saw him.
“No. We went out on a date after I’d offered to help her out and we had no chemistry. That’s why the fake marriage seemed like a good idea – we weren’t going to suddenly catch feelings.” He put his beer, still half full, on the coffee table, straight onto a mat because Harriet had us all well-trained.
“Oh.” My breathing had slowed. “Carter, why the fuck did you think that was an okay favour to give? Who in their rightmind does that as a favour for a friend? What were you getting out of it? That’s insane.” And that was anger. Frustration.
“It wasn’t my best move.”
I stood up, the room feeling too small. “I’m going to go for a walk round the block for half an hour. Will you still be here?”
“Do you want me to still be here.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be here.”
