Page 11 of The Marriage Blunder

I had bigger things to deal with. Big, beautiful, six foot two inch things.

I put my head in my hands and exhaled for a long time. My heart was racing in a way that had nothing to do with the hangover and everything to do with the fact that, somewhere in all of this, I had gotten exactly what I wanted and now had to pretend I didn’t.

Kenneth stirred behind me.

I waited, because it seemed right to let him be the first to speak. If I spoke, I would say the wrong thing, and if I said the wrong thing, I would never be able to take it back.

That was the law of words, and I respected it.

He didn’t speak. Not right away. Instead, he sat up, sheet around his waist, and blinked at the room like he, too, was performing an audit. His eyes landed on my back, then followed the line of sight to the certificate. He picked it up. He read it. He read it the way he probably read contracts, slow and steady, as though every clause contained a hidden liability.

Then he put it down.

He looked at me, at my hand, at the ring.

Then at his own.

Then at me again.

I tried to push my glasses up my nose. I wasn’t wearing them. I had no idea where they were. This was, objectively, a minor crisis stacked on top of a major one, and I decided to treat it as a sign from the universe that I was not required to see anything more clearly than I already did.

I said, “So…”

He said nothing.

“It looks real,” I said.

“It is real.”

I nodded, because of course it was, because I had never once in my life done anything halfway.

He said, “How are you feeling?”

I considered the question. I considered telling the truth, which was that I felt as if every bone in my body had been replaced with glass, and that if I moved too quickly I would shatter. I considered a joke, because that was the default, but the joke didn’t come.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t decided yet.”

He made a sound, not quite a laugh, not quite anything else, and then flipped the sheets back and stood up. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth as I watched him walk naked across the room.

This was why I was in trouble.

He moved with a kind of deliberation I could not emulate. He went to the minibar, poured a glass of water, drank it, poured another, and brought it to me before climbing back into bed and pulling the sheet over his lower half.

I was honestly disappointed by that. I glanced away and took a small sip of the water, trying not to spill it.

“Do you remember last night?” he asked.

I remembered. I remembered more than I wanted to, and less than I probably should.

“Some of it,” I said, trying to avoid looking at the incredibly sexy naked man standing in front of me.

He watched me. The silence was comfortable for him. He was a man who had spent years in rooms where the first person to talk lost, and he was perfectly willing to outlast me.

I drank more of the water. “Carolyn’s going to kill me.”

He said, “She’s going to kill both of us, but she’ll start with you.”

“That’s fair.”