“Maybe you need to find some way out of the contract,” my father insisted. “That’s exactly what happened to me. Your mother trapped me.”
“But I am actually your kid. We just did another paternity test last month,” I reminded him.
“Yes, she trapped me,” Dad yelled, banging his fist on the table, sending the shot glasses rattling. “This woman, this fake wife you’re marrying, is going to do the same to you, and she’ll steal your company and everything you’ve built.”
“You have to get me out of this contract,” I begged Josh and Eric.
“No way am I marrying that lunatic,” Eric scoffed. “You lost the poker match.”
I took another shot.
“It will be fine,” Josh assured me. “It’s not legal. Just make sure you don’t sleep with her.”
“And definitely don’t fall in love.”
“As if.”
7
Grace
“Going to the chapel!” Zeus shrieked right next to my ear early the next morning. “Gonna get married, bitches!”
I brushed him aside, wincing, and glanced at the clock. It was four forty-five. I still had fifteen more minutes until the alarm went off.
“Stupid parrot.”
“Stupid! Stupid!”
I lay on my back and stared up at the dark ceiling.
I was getting married today. Me. I had barely even dated! I hadn’t had my first kiss until I was nineteen, and I hooked up one and a half times in college. The half time was because the guy had been fumbling around down there, couldn’t get it up, then had burst into tears. I had spent the evening making him cookies and tea and listening to his life story, which revolved around his parents’ messy divorce.
I was not marriage material; I was not even relationship material! I still wasn’t even sure what had possessed me to go on that date with Chris.
“What a disaster! That will teach me. I’m never dating again for the rest of the year,” I promised myself as my alarm went off and I jumped out of bed.
“There’s the happy bride!” Gran said loudly when I walked into the tiny kitchen, trying to get in the wedding zone, except this time, I was going to be a bride.Gulp.
“Now sit down,” she said seriously. “We need to talk.”
I felt nauseous. Though Gran could be annoying and overbearing, she was all I had left. Was she sick? Was she moving to Florida?
I slid into the rickety kitchen chair as Gran bustled at the peeling kitchen counter.
“We need to talk,” she said ominously, “about your wedding night.”
She spun around and set a tray in front of me. A fourteen-inch-long white dildo wobbled in front of my nose, flanked by piles of pink-and-gold condoms.
“Gran, I’m not sleeping with him,” I said in horror.
“But he’s your husband!” she insisted, picking up the dildo. Except she couldn’t, because it was somehow suctioned to the tray.
“Get that off of there for me, will ya?” she said after tugging the thick piece of rubber. “My wrists aren’t what they used to be.”
“I am not touching that.”
Zeus hopped up onto the table and started attacking the dildo. The rubber bounced and smacked him in the face, and the bird let loose a shriek of obscenities.
