“I wasn’t thinking,” I told her.
“Obviously,” she stated, swallowing hard. “God, I’m so thankful you called. The idea of going another night without hearing from you—I hope you never have to experience such a thing when you have a child someday, Journey. That was terrible, what you did.”
“I know,” I said.
“When are you coming home?”
“Today.”
“Thank God. We will talk about this more when you get here.”
“Mom,” I said.
“What is it?” Every word she spoke was short and sharp.
“I met someone. He won a three-million-dollar jackpot, and we eloped. I made a mistake.”
There was so much silence, I thought she hung up the phone.
“Journey.” The tone of disappointment was the worst sound in the world. “If I had been able to reach you, I could have given you some good news last week.”
“What good news? What is it?” I asked, pressing my palm against the wall of pay-phones to support the sudden heaviness in my body.
“Journey, Adam came out of his coma.”
We skipped dinner because we fell asleep watching the Kardashians, but Brody woke us up around three in the morning. “Oh, man,” Brody says, seeming disoriented as he pulls himself up on the couch. I lift my head from where it had been resting all night. “What were you dreaming about? You were talking in your sleep—something about Vegas. It woke me up.”
“It was more of a nightmare,” I tell him. “Sorry for waking you up.”Please don’t ask any more questions about Vegas.
“That’s where you got married, isn’t it?”
I lean back into the couch and pull the blanket up to my neck. “Maybe.”
“Did you go there to get married or go there and end up getting married?” Brody asks through a hoarse laugh.
“It was when I ran away. The guy who picked me up from hitchhiking took me to Vegas for my twenty-first birthday. We gambled, he won a massive jackpot, we got drunk, and woke up married. End of the story.”
“Wow. That’s one hell of a story,” Brody says, running his hands over the sides of his face.
“Did you just take off or something?”
“It was more complicated than that, but kind of.”
“You got a divorce, though, right?” Suddenly, Brody was wide awake and focused on me, though we were sitting in the dark with just the glow from the TV.
“Yes, I’m divorced,” I confirm.
“But, you must have been able to get the marriage annulled, at least, right?”
I close my eyes, wishing I could go back to sleep. “The thing about acting reckless at twenty-one is the lack of life knowledge. Not exactly. It ended with a full-fledged divorce.”
“Holy shit, Journey. Wait, so that means you inherited over a million dollars from this guy?”
“I didn’t want the money,” I tell Brody.
“Yeah, I would have sent back the million too,” Brody says, looking around the room, avoiding eye-contact to let me know how crazy he thinks I am. “No offense, but it takes two to get married. He was the idiot for not giving you a prenup.” I stand from the couch and flip on a lamp.
“It was complicated.”
