Where Happiness Begins (Evermore #3)

4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

“ T his is insane.”

“You’re the one who suggested it.”

“But I wasn’t serious.” At least I think I wasn’t.

I let my forehead drop onto the greasy melamine table. I’m too tired for this. After spitting my drink in his face and proposing a sham of a marriage, it’s too late for me to be acting proper in front of Carter.

When he dropped his bomb in the bar’s parking lot, I think he realized I was too shocked to be able to hold a conversation right then and there, so he suggested we drive to a nearby twenty-four-hour diner to “hammer out the details.”

As if the details are the important part here.

I can’t believe I’m even considering this. It’s insane. Dangerous. So freaking stupid. And yet, I still followed him here.

“There are so many reasons why this is a bad idea.” I lift my head and rub my eyes with my palms. Around us, the fifties-themed diner is empty, save for the two of us and Maggie, our waitress, who looks to be in her seventies and who’s set up behind the counter to read a magazine after she brought us each a cup of coffee.

“So? ”

“So?” I say loud enough that Maggie looks up. I send her an apologetic smile. Meanwhile, Carter looks cool as a cucumber, his long legs stretched out under the table and resting against my own bench of the booth, forcing me to sit with my legs crisscrossed. “So we’re not talking about a day at Disneyland here. It’s a marriage .”

His only reaction is a lift of his brow and a repeat of the most annoying, “So?”

“So it’s illegal, first off.” Not the actual marriage part, but the part where we do it as a scam. It’d be considered insurance fraud, and I’m pretty sure that can send us to prison if we get caught, or at least earn us a fine that’d be the nail in the coffin of my poor finances. It’s not like I could ask him to pay for my insurance out of his pocket either—that’d be unaffordable with my condition. It’s either through his job or nothing.

He opens his mouth, and I lift a finger. “And please, for the love of all that is good, don’t say ‘So?’”

His lips pinch back together.

“I am not a criminal,” I say, probably more to myself than to him.

That earns me another one of those single nose huffs I realize are probably his version of a laugh.

“What?” I ask.

He does a show of looking me up and down, from the scrunchie I used to tie my hair in a messy knot when getting out of my car to the pink puffer jacket I still have draped across my shoulders. “Somehow, I could’ve guessed that. ”

I grit my teeth. He’s only agreed with me, and yet he found a way to do so in the most annoying manner possible. There’s no winning with him, I’m starting to see.

“What I mean is, I don’t normally do stuff like this. I’m not a good liar.” The most illegal thing I ever did was steal a Ring Pop from a drugstore as a kid, and I’d felt so bad I went and put it back five minutes later.

“There’s nothing normal about this. I don’t go around marrying people either.” He shrugs as he crosses his arms. “Plus, it’s not like you’re robbing a bank. You just live in a fucked place where you can’t be healthy for free.”

I guess he makes a good point with that.

On another note, I say, “If we meet someone and want to get married later on, we’ll need to tell them we were married before.” Not a bad thing, per se, but our lie will follow us for the rest of our lives. This is more than a temporary thing.

“No risk of that happening,” he says, head cocked, eyes right on me. It’s hard being under his stare, like he’s even bigger than he actually is and I’m utterly exposed.

“It won’t be some private thing. If this is to be believable, you’ll need to meet my family and friends and vice versa. Do you really want me to tag along to your family dinners?” I ask. That part, to me, is not a problem. If Mr. Ray Of Sunshine here gives any indication, his parents might not be the type of people I usually hang out with, but I love meeting new people and I’d die to eat home-cooked meals with a full table around me every once in a while. However, he might not feel the same way .

“I don’t have those, so problem solved.”

“Have an answer for everything, don’t you?”

He lifts a careless shoulder.

I trudge on. “We don’t know each other.” Or more like, I don’t know him and he could be a serial killer for all I know.

“So? It’s not like it would be a real marriage.”

I swallow against the sudden dryness in my throat. I think out of all the reasons I’ve just named, this is the one thing that makes me the most hesitant. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always dreamed of marrying someone I loved. Even during my harder days during dialysis, when I’d get bouts of sadness at the thought that this was not what life was supposed to be like, I’d comfort myself by thinking of the life I might one day have, waking up with a man who loved me and maybe a few kids around. I didn’t mind that it was cliché. I wanted it so much I ached for it. A life surrounded by love.

And now here I am, living my future life, but instead of marrying for love, I’m thinking of marrying someone who could not care less about me, me as a business transaction.

It kind of makes sense, though. I’m not the same na?ve little girl I was when I lived that Barbie doll dream. I know that loving someone means being at the mercy of their own feelings toward you. I know how it feels to crave someone’s attention and never feeling like what you are is enough. I know what it’s like to be with a man who pities you instead of loving you .

Even though I still have a pinch of disappointment at the thought of not having a love marriage, deep down, I’m not sure I even believe in such a thing anymore, at least for me.

“ If we are to consider this, we need to set some ground rules.”

He nods once, all business-like.

“First, we can’t get caught, ever. I’m not getting a criminal record anytime soon.”

At that, I’d swear his face blanches, or maybe it’s just the lighting in the bright diner.

“We’d need to keep our arrangement a secret,” I continue.

“The band already knows we’re not together,” Carter deadpans.

“Right. I guess they can know, then, but you need to make sure they keep quiet about it. And we don’t tell anyone else.”

“Fine by me.”

“All right.” I tick another point on my fingers. “Then we need to set up an end date. Like…” How long is long enough to be believable and to give me enough time to profit from his insurance? “In two years, we get a divorce.”

“All right,” he says.

Look at us, agreeing on things. My shoulders loosen as we continue going through the terms, from prenups—not a problem for either of us—to my responsibilities as the band’s promo worker. I’d have to mention publicly how I’m married to the band’s producer to explain why I’m spending so much time with them, and then post at least three times per week to feature them and their music. Not too bad. I might end up losing followers who usually expect a different type of content from me, but it should mostly be okay if I continue to intersperse my own posts in between subtle promo.

“Great. Anything else?” Carter says, circles shadowing the underside of his eyes. I probably have the same, if not worse. Outside, the sky is starting to pale, the stars long gone and slowly getting replaced by hints of daylight. I need to go find my bed, and soon.

Maybe fatigue is the only reason I’m even thinking of going through with this insane plan. Maybe I’ll wake up later today and realize how dumb I was. I almost wish I would.

But when I look at the pros of this, I can’t pretend it’s not a great deal. Short of robbing a bank, I don’t know how else I’d be able to keep on going. Just two years. That’d give me respite for my medical bills and allow me to take on fewer shifts at The Sparrow. I could use that time to figure out how to get a job with insurance so that by the time we divorce, I’d be fine. A buffer of sorts.

“Yes,” I say. If I want to actually consider this, I need a clear plan in my head that includes all possible questions that would arise. “We need to figure out where we’d live.”

“What do you mean?”

“If we wanted our marriage to be credible, we’d need to live together,” I say.

His jaw tightens as if he hadn’t ever considered that possibility before. Or as if the thought of living with me disgusts him.

To be fair, I’m not that keen about living with a total stranger who’s stoic and rude most of the time, but at this point, I don’t have the luxury of shopping around for a better fake husband .

“I have a house,” I say. “You could have the basement if you wanted.” There’s a second bedroom on the main floor, but I think us having our own spaces would be for the best. I don’t know the man, after all. I don’t think we’re at the level of sharing a bathroom in our relationship yet.

He rubs his lips with his thumb as he studies the table for a moment. “I guess that works.”

“Okay.” I might not be writing down a contract—I don’t want any more incriminating proof than there already is—but I fully plan on typing all of our conversation down on my phone once I get home so neither one of us can forget our agreements. I tick through all the things we discussed in my head, and the longer I go on, the less sense this deal makes to me.

I lay my hands on the table. “Are you sure you really want to do this?” Out of the two of us, I’m clearly the one benefitting the most from the situation. He’s putting himself at risk of going to jail for committing a felony, and for what? Publicity for a band that’s not even his? “It doesn’t make sense.” I might be shooting myself in the foot by arguing this with him, but I don’t want to go into this unless there’s at least a semblance of fairness.

Carter shifts in his booth. “If this goes according to plan, the band’s success might put me on the map and launch my career. That’s more than enough for me.”

“Your career’s that important to you?”

His gaze flits to mine. “It’s the only thing I have. ”

I want to refute, ask him about his family, his friends, his pastimes. He must have more than a job, and yet there’s something in his stony expression that tells me he truly believes this.

I nod just as our waitress comes by to pick up our empty cups of coffee.

“Thank you, Maggie,” I say, while Carter makes an inaudible sound—I’m not a hundred percent sure that man is able to speak in more than two sentences at a time.

“Of course, honey,” she says, then throws me a knowing grin, all the while glancing at Carter. I have to agree that by looks alone, she must think I’m lucky as heck to be on a date with a man like him. She might find him a tad less charming if she had a conversation with him, though.

I turn back to Carter when I remember something we definitely need to discuss.

“Oh, and one last thing.”

He simply looks at me, totally done.

“If we want to make this believable, we also need to look faithful, so if you decide to see someone else, can you please be…discreet?”

Even if I can’t see myself, I know I must be red as a beet. I can’t believe this is what my life has come to. Asking my future husband to be subtle when he cheats on me.

It’s not a real husband. I just have to keep reminding myself of that .

I know myself. I fall fast, and I can easily imagine scenarios where someone is interested in me when deep down, they couldn’t care less. If I want this arrangement to work, I need to be careful.

“And of course,” I add, “I’ll do the same.”

“Not a problem.”

“Good,” I say.

A bell rings at the front of the diner, followed by two men in work boots and dirty jeans walking in. The morning is truly here.

In front of me, Carter stretches his back, sucking me in with those eyes that remind me of a morning in early fall, when the leaves have just started to change color and are in that murky zone between a darker green and reddish-brown.

“It’s a deal, then?”

This is insane. Absolutely insane. If I do this, it’d be so out of pocket for me. I’ve never done anything this reckless. But has being careful brought me where I wanted?

Live life to the fullest. If I want even a chance at it, this is the way to go.

With a deep inhale, I extend my hand, and only once he clasps it with his, warm and firm, do I say, “It’s a deal.”