Wardrobe Malfunction(76)

Because she has.

“Then, we have nothing else to talk about.” And I turn around and walk out of there to the sound of her crying out my name.





Charly

Four years ago, I made the best decision of my life.

I married my best friend, Nick.

Not because we were in love—though I do love him. I love him like a sister loves her brother. But I married Nick because he needed a visa to be able to stay in the country.

Nick is from Canada. He was here in the US on a student visa. When he finished studying, he couldn’t find a company to take him on permanently. He was temping, going from job to job. He applied for a temporary work visa, but because he couldn’t get a job with a fixed time period, it was denied.

So, he was either facing deportation or staying as an illegal.

He didn’t want to do either.

You see, like me, Nick is alone in this world. Nick’s parents were deeply religious. When he took the risk and told them he was gay, they rejected him. They threw him out of the only home he’d ever known. Nick couch-surfed for a while, staying with friends. Then, he made the decision to come to the US. So, he applied to some colleges and was accepted into The Art Institute of New York City. After being accepted, he was granted a study visa.

So, he bought a plane ticket to New York and left for the US.

I met him a month later.

I guess that’s why we gravitated toward one another when we met. Two lost and lonely souls looking for something…looking for a home.

We found that home in each other.

From the moment I met Nick, he became my family, and I, his.

When it was looking like I could possibly lose him, I panicked. I couldn’t lose Nick. He was all I had. I loved him. And, selfishly, I didn’t want to go back to being alone.

So, I came up with the idea of Nick and I getting married. That way, he’d be able to stay in the country. When I told him about my idea, he shot me down. He said he wouldn’t let me do that for him.

But I argued that it was no big deal. I was twenty-one, so it wasn’t like I was going to be getting married anytime soon. And we just needed to stay married for two years until he got his permanent residency visa.

Okay, we were breaking the law. But keeping Nick in New York was more important. For me, the reward far outweighed the possible consequence. And, like I said to Nick, we were practically married. We lived together. Spent all of our time together. Knew each other inside and out. We were best friends.

We just didn’t have the physical aspect that came with a relationship.

It would be easy for us to convince an immigration officer that we were in love. I adored Nick, and he adored me. We knew everything about each other. Convincing someone we were marrying out of love wouldn’t be hard because we were. It just wasn’t the kind of love that people usually entered into marriages for.

So, after a lot of talking and me convincing Nick, we decided to do it.

We also agreed to stay married for four to five years to make it seem more real to the authorities. And we decided to keep our marriage to ourselves.

We were both temping at different jobs, so it wasn’t like we had work colleagues that the immigration office could interview to find out about us. And we didn’t have any other close friends, so it was easy to pass off.

A week later, we bought some cheap plane tickets to Vegas, left, and got married.

Nick got to stay in the US. He applied for permanent residency two years later and was approved.

We could have divorced then, but like we had agreed, to make it appear real to the authorities, we decided to stay married for another two to three years.

There wasn’t any rush for us to divorce. Neither of us had met anyone special. We dated other people, of course. It was probably risky. But we figured, if we did get found out, then we would pass it off that we were swingers or had an open marriage. There’s no law against that.

So, the time passed, and everything was great. We were actually approaching the time when we had agreed to get divorced, but it wasn’t something that was at the forefront of my mind.

And then I met Vaughn.

And everything changed.

I didn’t expect to fall in love with him. Or for the press to find out about us and expose my past before I had the chance to tell Vaughn the truth.

It was naive of me. I know that now.

I just didn’t know marrying Nick all those years ago would cost me the love of my life today.

I don’t regret marrying Nick. I wouldn’t change what I did. I would marry him again in a heartbeat.

What I would change is telling Vaughn. I would have told him sooner. The moment I realized things were serious between us.

Because keeping it from Vaughn is ultimately what caused me to lose him.

I guess my only excuse is, apart from my cowardice, that being with Vaughn felt like a fairy tale. Too good to be true. Especially for someone like me.

But it was real, and I’ve lost it. I’ve lost him.

And, even now, he still doesn’t know the whole truth. He left before I could tell him.

I felt trapped in that moment with Jack and Alex there. I couldn’t tell him the real reason I was married in front of them and risk putting myself in jail and having Nick deported.

So, I had to let him believe the worst. I had to watch him walk out the door and leave, thinking that I’d betrayed him in the worst way possible. Just like Cain had.