Charli and I had been their loud, drunk friends who’d commented on everything and everyone in the room. We’d gotten a marriage license as a funny kind of Vegas souvenir.
But then I’d had another two glasses of whiskey. And woke up with a wife.
“You’re sure you went through with it?” My lawyer sounds skeptical.
“Uh, yup. Got the witnessed certificate and the bill.”
He sighs. “Okay, I have a couple of preliminary questions. Please tell me the name of your bride.”
“Charli Higgins.”
Another pause. “You married a man?”
Charli snorts. “Charlotte Fern Higgins.”
“Aw!” I break into a smile. “You were named after two characters in Charlotte’s Web!”
She gives me a death glare.
“Where are the two of you right now?” Witherspoon asks.
I look out the window. “Somewhere over the great plains, I think.”
“Wait, you’re not in Vegas anymore?”
“No way. I have practice this afternoon. I had to get back.”
My lawyer groans audibly. “That was a mistake. If you’d gone right back to the clerk’s office, you might have talked your way into a quick annulment.”
Charli pales right before my eyes. “Oh my God. I knew it.”
Shit.
“Well, we’re on the jet,” I say levelly. “We’ll have to fix this another way. That’s why we pay you the big bucks.”
“One last question,” the lawyer prompts. “Did you sign a prenuptial agreement?”
Charli and I let out twin snorts of laughter. “No,” I say. “Have you met whiskey?”
“I had to ask.” I hear the sounds of rapid typing in the background. “And the date of your wedding was…”
“Yesterday.” I say.
“No, today,” Charli corrects. “It was past midnight.”
“We can still fix this, right?” I press. “Even though I’m not in Vegas? Should I call a divorce attorney? People who don’t want to be married don’t have to stay that way. It’s a rule. Ask my father’s first wife.”
“Calm down,” my asshole lawyer says. “Location matters in a courtroom. But let me do some digging and see what I can learn. By any chance could you get back to Vegas sometime in the next seventy-two hours?”
Charli buries her face in her hands, because she already knows the answer.
“I have three games this week, none of them on the West Coast.”
“And you can’t skip just one? This seems important.”
“There is no way I can skip one. It’s not high school! And Charli has four practices and two games this week, too.”
“Fine. Let’s talk about annulments versus divorces, anyway. Technically, you need grounds for an annulment but not for a divorce. I think your grounds for an annulment would be—”
“Inebriation,” Charli offers.
“Yeah,” the lawyer agrees. “And we’d throw in Neil’s disability.”
“Hey!” I argue. “It’s not disabled. Usually it works.”
“He means your diabetes,” Charli corrects. “Not your penis.”
“But we can also use the penis,” the lawyer says. “I’m writing that down.”
“Do not write that down,” I roar. “Please just find out if we can get an annulment in New York.”
“Right. I’ll call you in a couple of hours,” he says. Then he hangs up.
When I look at Charli, she’s laughing for the first time all day.
“What?” I bark.
“Nothing,” she says. Then she giggles.
“I knew he meant diabetes,” I lie.
She braces her head in her hands and laughs until her shoulders shake.
FOUR
IF A UNICORN SNEEZED
Charli
Cornelius Harmon Drake III feels guilty. I can tell because he insists on dropping me off at my apartment even though it’s in a far-flung corner of Brooklyn he’s never seen before.
This is not okay with me.
“It’s way out of your way. You might be late for practice,” I argue. I really don’t want him to visit my apartment. There’s a reason that none of my friends have ever seen it.
My objections are shouted down, though, so I let him put my hockey bag into the trunk of a gleaming sedan. And when the female chauffeur opens the back door, I climb in and sink into the buttery leather seat.
“Liz, we’re making a stop before I head to the rink. Charli, can you tell Liz your address?”
Oh boy. This isn’t just a car service. It’s Neil’s driver. I tell her my address.
“What are the cross streets?” she asks.
Even when I provide the answer, she types it into the GPS. She’s probably never seen that corner of Brooklyn.
I don’t blame her.
“Okay, let’s figure out our game plan,” Neil says as the car heads east. “We’ll need to talk to the lawyer again tonight. Or tomorrow. I could come into the diner after practice.”
“It’s hard to carry on a private conversation at the diner,” I point out. I’m a waitress at the Orion in the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn, which is a pretty good gig. The hours are early, and everything there costs a fortune. Neil and his teammates often come in for breakfast or lunch and leave me fat tips. “Although maybe you could use a plate of fried oysters. Just saying.”
It takes a beat before he realizes I’ve made a dig at him. Oysters are supposed to make men virile. “Charli!”
“I’m sorry. But come on, you walked right into that one.”
He scrubs a hand over his face as silence falls over the backseat. “This is a crazy thing to say, but I’m glad it was you.”
I run that sentence backwards and forwards a few times before deciding that I have no idea what he’s talking about. “You’re glad what was me? The whiskey dick? The legal trouble?
“The whole mess,” he says. “If I’m going to make an ass out of myself, I’d just as soon do it in front of you.”
“Why? Because I’m so easy to impress?”
“No, dummy. Because I trust you.”
Oh. That shuts me up for a second. I honestly have no idea what to say. Neil and I haven’t known each other that long. The first time we met, he offended me, and I let him know it. Since then, he’s been much more courteous. Friendly, even.
But I still don’t know what to make of Neil Drake III. He grew up with more privilege than most people dream of. He’s exactly the kind of person who made my teenage years hell at the fusty private school I attended on scholarship.
Neil and I are acquainted because our circle of friends overlaps. But I trust about three people in the whole world. On a good day. My heart is like a skittish kitten. It runs away at the first sight of danger.
Still, it could always be worse. “You’re right, Drake. If I must be needlessly shackled to a man or ask him to remove the ugliest ring ever made from my hair, it might as well be you.”
He gives me a sweet smile. Like I’ve just paid him the best compliment. And my inner kitten crawls a little farther under the sofa. Now is not the time to think sentimental thoughts about Neil Drake. I’ve got enough problems, and that was before I accidentally got hitched.