He wanted a chance at making the nationals. Winning them, even. Without Noah, that chance was gone. He wasn’t just the best jammer on the team, he was really theonlyjammer. Everyone else was too big, too slow. Noah was lithe and fast and fearless. He was everything a jammer needed to be.
They might as well give up all hope of even winning the finals if Noah was leaving. It took a special person to be a good jammer, and Noah was the only one Jace had met.
Besides that, Noah was his best friend. He was about to leave a person-sized hole in Jace’s life, one that wouldn’t be easy to fill.
“Sorry.” Jace played with his beer bottle. “Just a thought.”
Noah sighed and rested his head against Jace’s shoulder. Jace liked him like this, when he was a little tipsy and his usual inhibitions faded. He was cuddly. Jace regretted not getting more hugs from Noah.
He was going to miss this. Just thinking about it made his chest hurt.
“Your heart is in the right place,” Noah said.
To Jace, it didn’t feel like it was. It felt as though Noah was about to take a piece of it with him. The derby team was family. Not everyone turned up to every bout or practice session, but they were still important to him. They had each other’s backs, and he knew he could rely on all of them in real life as well as on the track.
Especially Noah. And now Noah couldn’t—or wouldn’t—lean on him when he needed it. Jace might have been straight, but no one would really question him and Noah getting together. Anyone who knew both of them knew they were close. It was a good plan, and he didn’t understand why Noah was saying no.
“I’m gonna miss you,” Jace said.
“Yeah.” Noah sighed, draining the remainder of his beer. “I’m gonna miss you, too.”
A moment later, Noah stood, pulling his coat on and grabbing his laptop bag. “I gotta go home. Start looking at apartments and stuff. I guess I’ll… see you round.”
“At least let me know when you’re going. Let me drive you to the airport,” Jace said. The thought of doing it made his stomach turn, but he didn’t want Noah to leave without getting to say goodbye.
The offer made Noah smile. “Thank you. I might just take you up on that.”
Jace watched Noah go, swallowing thickly as he disappeared into the crowd. He couldn’t just lose his best friend, but it looked like he was going to.
Chapter Three
Noah had been through enough in life to know that last days were boring, unproductive, and generally unpleasant. Today, to make matters worse, there were a lot of people on their last day, and none of them were inclined to cooperate with each other. Noah couldn’t blame them. The move had come as a shock to all of them.
He didn’t even have the heart to blame the company for it. Business was business. It was no secret that Caldwell Holdings, their parent company, was struggling, and while Page Perfect Web Solutions was only a small, newer branch of the company—an experiment, people had said—they still felt the effects of a falling share price. Last in, first out. That was what the email had said, and that was clearly what was happening.
Noah couldn’t help but feel that he’d been singled out, though. People at work complained about his lack of teamwork in anonymous reviews, which was stupid. He was clearly good at teamwork. His derby success proved that. He couldn’t control how bad everyone else was at it, though.
Maybe he’d be better off without this place. No, he’ddefinitelybe better off without this place. If it didn’t also mean losing his friends and the city he’d come to call home, he would have been celebrating his last day. As it stood, they were taking everything he loved away from him, and he was bitter about it.
By the time lunch rolled around, Noah had resigned himself to playing endless games of Solitaire until it was time to go home. The huge sheet cake in the break room was also appealing. He didn’t really need to worry about keeping at least moderately fit for roller derby anymore, since even if he signed up with a new team the moment he landed, there was no way he’d see any game action this season.
Which was fair. He’d be the new guy. Again.
He hadn’t been in Baltimore long, but it felt more like home than anywhere else Noah had lived. He didn’t want to go.
Halfway through his second piece of cake, he remembered the offer Jace had made last night. Noah hadn’t been sure at the time whether or not he was joking, but now that he looked back, he suspected Jace had been serious.
Now that he was thinking about the reality of leaving, Jace’s idea seemed like a better one than it had initially. On the other hand, he didn’t want to trap Jace in a marriage that wasn’t real, or risk being found out.
People would believe it, though. That was the thing keeping the idea in Noah’s mind. People wouldbelievethat he and Jace had a thing that wasn’t just friendship. They’d always been close. Jace had taken him under his wing, looked after him when they first started derby together.
Jace had always been there for him. He was trying to be there for Noah now, as well. But it was a stupid idea, wasn’t it? People would fake marriages all the time if getting a green card was as simple as that.
He turned to his computer to look up how green cards and marriages worked. It couldn’t be that easy. He couldn’t just sign his name at the bottom of a form and be allowed to stay, as long as someone else signed it with him.
The wall of information his search returned made his head spin, but he’d gone as far as searching now. With nothing better to do, reading up on US immigration law was as good a time-killer as any.
It was simpler than he’d imagined. Everything he read told him that as long as he didn’t overstay his visa by too much, marriage was basically a golden ticket to permanent residency and eventually citizenship, as long as they passed the two-year check and stayed together for three. They could do that. Three years wasn’t so long to pretend to be in love with someone.
