“Care to join me?” He asks quietly.
I stand and we move to the back of the plane and shut the door behind us. Becca has her head against the side of the plane and her eyes are closed, and the same for the other two guys now.
I turn and Devin is sitting on the bed, with his back against the wall separator. I take a seat beside him.
He hasn’t put any moves on me since we woke up, even though I’m fairly sure that last night, there was a lot of moves between the two of us. I’m still trying to understand the guy who crawled into bed this morning naked behind Devin, but he hasn’t broached the subject and therefore neither have I.
Did he bring me to the back of the plane, so we could mess around?
“Do you prefer to be called Constance or Connie? I realize I never asked you and I’ve been calling you Connie all day,” he asks.
“Connie is fine.” I say. “My full name is really only used by my parents or when someone is angry with me.”
“Good. So, Connie, we are married. We discussed last night’s topics and there’s been plenty of time for you to freak out, but you haven’t. What’s on your mind?”
I look to him, as the plane begins to move.
“Crap, we should be wearing seatbelts, where are the seatbelts on this bed?” My hands frantically grasp around the bedding.
Devin snickers. “We’re good,” he says patting my hand.
It takes a moment before my brain registers his words and my body relaxes.
How do people do the nasty in a plane? I don’t know if I could even handle that. What if you were mid-pump and boom the plane goes down? What if you were giving head and turbulence happens? The mile-high club is not something that my paranoid mind can manage. God, I hope that isn’t what he’s expecting.
“What are your thoughts about this whole being married thing? About everything we discussed this morning.” He asks again, “now that it’s the day after?”
I take a moment before responding. What are my thoughts? Am I capable of being married to him, someone that I barely know aside from what the news reports on him?
“I vaguely recall that we discussed the potential move from the dinky place that I work for now, to my dream job, how would that work?” I ask him.
“We have dinner with a few people who work there, I talk up my lovely wife and then they ask you to work there,” he shrugs. “I know several high-powered folks at General.”
“I doubt that it’s as simple as you’re saying,” I shake my head.
“And what if it is?”
“You can’t make that promise,” I tell him.
“And what if I can. You being married to me, and shitty as it sounds, means that you are someone. I’m not trying to degrade who you are, by any means. I’m just saying that now you have someone powerful behind you, beside you, and cheering you on. People will take more of a notice now.”
“I get that names make business easier in some terms, I’m just not sure that’s the right way of doing things.”
“People do it on a daily basis, there’s nothing wrong with it,” he replies with a wave of his hand.
“And what does that mean for me, that I couldn’t get the job without you?”
“It just means that I helped you get noticed for your skills.” He shrugs, “nothing more.”
“And out of this, you get your name cleared of the party status and your parents off your back?”
“Amongst other things,” he says with a smile.
“What kind of other things?” I ask.
“Let’s go over everything first; then we’ll talk about those other things. So, we stay married, maybe for a year to make it look like we tried—”
“We’ve been married for a day, not even and you already want a divorce?” I ask, unsure where my reaction came from.
“I mean, we can stay married, if that’s what you like, but we don’t know hundred percent whether or not we’re compatible. Anyways, if we go the route of divorcing—we stay married, we do the standard dog and pony show, which means events, appearances, and the whole lot. We get you the job of your dreams, the reporters begin to report me in a better light, my family gets off my back and then we determine that we had irreconcilable differences and boom, we divorce.”
“How long have you been planning this? Just waiting for the first drunk chick to manipulate?” I ask angrily.
Why am I angry? Oh yeah, it’s because he’s using this—whatever it is—to be to get his ass out of the dirt. Even though, I could get a better job, it still stinks. I never planned to get a divorce, truth be told, I haven’t even thought about getting married anytime soon.
But now, here I am….
Chapter Eight
Devin
She’s angry and it happened out of nowhere.
I will never understand women. Must be why I’m partial to men as well. My fluidity between sexual partners is one thing that reporters have hinted at in the past, since they’ve rarely caught me with a woman on my arm. But that doesn’t mean that I’ve paraded men on it instead.
No, instead, the men that I sleep with leave my home after we fuck—same can be said for the women as well. I don’t do relationships, and that’s something that has been troublesome to my parents.
I’m thirty-two and should start to settle down.
I should be at least dating someone steadily and be on the road to marriage, according to my mom.
I should strive to be higher in my father’s business, than sitting in the marketing department comfortably.
I should do this. I should do that.
The ‘shoulds’ from my parents never stop. But I am hoping that’s something that will happen when I bring Connie to meet them.
“Help me understand, I can tell that you’re upset, care to talk about it?”
“I’m fine,” she says quietly.
“Bullshit. I know women better than that. I’m fine is universal chick language for I’m anything, but fine. Do you want to annul everything? We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.” I offer her the out. “I don’t want to put you in any situations that you’re not okay with.”
She looks over at me, and I’m not sure what she sees, but her features soften and she shakes her head.
“You really think that this whole charade of a marriage will help you? And ultimately help me?”
I turn my body into her, “I want it to.”
“What makes you so sure that everyone will go along with believing this?”
“Because I’ve never introduced anyone to my world publicly.”
“Aren’t you a little too old to be under your parents’ thumb?” She asks.
“I think once you meet my parents, you might understand a little better.”
“Oh shit, I’m going to meet your parents, one of whom is the freaking mayor and we’re going to have one huge lie, how will we keep this all straight?” She puts her head in her hands.
“Well, we don’t necessarily need every factor to be a lie,” I allude. “We slept together after all.”
“Are you saying that we should continue to do that? Sleep together?” She asks. “Wouldn’t that be blurring the lines?”