“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I tell her seriously.
“Try me.” Her tone is one hundred percent challenge, and she knows me well enough to know that I never turn down a challenge—it’s either one of my flaws or one of my favorite personality quirks, depending on my mood. Now that she’s issued one, I have no recourse but to accept.
I tell her everything. From walking in on the dead bride, to finding out about the arranged marriage, to the groom coming in and telling me to marry him if I didn’t want to find myself six feet under, pushing up daisies.
Halfway through my tale of woe, Michelle stops me. “Wait, I think I need a drink if you’re going to keep going.”
Grabbing a nearby throw blanket and pulling it over my lap, I adjust myself to sit crisscrossed on one half of the love seat. “Grab me one, too, please!” I call over.
“Mimosas?” She looks back.
“Duh!”
Michelle pops the fridge, grabs the two-day-old bottle of sparkling Moscato from the grocers down the street, and pours two half glasses with a splash of orange juice in each before coming back over. She hands me my drink and then hooks her foot into the side of the beanbag tucked half under the metal spiral stairs that lead up to her loft room. Dragging it a bit closer, she drops into it and then we both take long gulps of the bubbly, tart liquid. As one, the two of us sigh. Mimosas always make life better.
“So,” she says after a beat, “you’re telling me that you’re a married woman now?”
I hold up my left hand, the ring that Giulio placed on my finger glimmering in the dim morning light. “Holy fucking shit.” She leans forward. “Is that real?”
“He’s in the mob,” I tell her. “What do you think?”
Her eyes flash from the ring to me. “Do you think it’s a blood diamond?” she whispers as if she’s too afraid that someone might hear despite us being alone in our apartment.
I shake my head. “If it is, it doesn’t matter. I’m giving it back the first chance I can.”
“What?” she squawks. “Why?”
Lowering my hand, I frown. “Why wouldn’t I? It’s not mine to keep.”
“Uh, yeah, it is,” she says, staring at me like I’ve lost my mind. I mean, to be fair, that’s pretty much her usual way of looking at me, but I digress… “You married him, right?”
“I guess, but it wasn’t like… real, though.”
“Did you or did you not sign a form after you said your vows?”
I think back. The whole thing had been kind of a blur, but I distantly remember a dark-skinned man in a pinstriped suit approaching Giulio and me after the ceremony and shuffling paper after paper in front of us. Giulio told me to sign, and I was full of so much panic and fear that he’d change his mind and decide to get rid of me anyway that I did so.
Shrinking into the love seat, I lift my glass back to my lips and down half of the contents.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Michelle deadpans.
My attention falls to the ring on my left hand, and I lift it to stare at the clear surface of the gem. The glittering diamond is cut into the shape of a teardrop set into a silver band—or maybe it’s white gold. I’m no jeweler. All I know is that it’s pretty and sparkly. “I’m married.” Even saying the words doesn’t make them feel true.
Michelle grumbles. “I was supposed to be your maid of honor, you bitch.”
I look up in time to see her polish off her mimosa and grimace as the bubbles hit her throat.
“It wasn’t like I planned it,” I remind her.
She cuts a hand through the air. “Oh, I know,” she says. “That’s the only reason why we’re still friends.”
“You couldn’t live without me,” I tell her honestly. “No one else would hold your hair back while you puked the rainbow.”
Michelle’s gasp, followed by the familiar struggle of her trying to get out of the beanbag too fast, is accompanied by her annoyed huff of “It wasone time!”
With a giggle, I jump up out of my seat, down the rest of my mimosa, and rush past her to my room. I get inside and slam the door shut just as I hear her body thump off the beanbag and onto the floor.
“You’re not getting away that easily!” she shouts.
