Kiss Her Once for Me (17)
Below that, there are little xes next to lines on which we signed our full names. Because apparently our drunken selves were formal as hell. I’m about 90 percent sure a drunk napkin contract is not a legally binding document, but that remaining 10 percent is wreaking havoc on my anxiety. My stomach heaves, and I think I might be sick right here in Andrew’s monochromatic bedroom.
“This is not good.”
“This is worse.” Andrew is staring down at his phone. “I think I’ve managed to reconstruct a partial timeline of our evening.”
His phone contains the horrifying photographic proof: a selfie of the two of us doing shots at the upscale bar; dancing in a circle of half-naked clubgoers; purchasing a ring at what appears to be the City Target; me, posing with the ring while Andrew kisses my cheek. I’m so drunk, I don’t even look like myself. That isn’t even my face.
Also, this ring is clearly cubic zirconia.
“Oliver,” Andrew says, sounding worried for the first time all morning, “I posted all of these to Instagram. I have hundreds of comments. Thank God my parents are spreading my grandfather’s ashes in Bordeaux and my sister doesn’t have social media, but shit. I have thousands of followers!”
“Um, good for you?”
“I mean, thousands of people have seen these photos and liked them and commented on them.” Andrew joins me in pacing the carpet. “Okay, okay,” he says, mussing his hair with one hand. “Hot take: maybe this is actually a great thing.”
“It’s not.”
“No, listen.” He does a quick search on his phone. “To get a marriage license in Multnomah County, you just have to apply at the courthouse and wait three days before getting married. We can go this Thursday on my lunch break and then get married the week after Christmas.”
My head is spinning, and I drop it into my hands.
“Seriously, we could do what the napkin says. We could pretend to be happily married for a while, separate after a few months, and have the divorce paperwork fully signed by next Christmas.”
“I can’t be married to you for the next twelve months, Andrew.”
“Why not?” He looks me up and down. “It doesn’t seem like you have much going on.”
I snatch up the rest of my clothes and begin frantically shoving my arms into my cardigan sleeves. “I have some stuff going on. And we’re strangers! How the hell would we fake being engaged? I don’t know the first thing about you!”
“We’d get to know each other!” he insists as I grab my shoes and trip my way into the hall. He follows. “And you’d come to Christmas at my parents’ cabin, and I don’t know…. I haven’t thought it all the way through, and I’m a bit hungover.”
“What about your parents? They’ll be fine with your getting married just to claim your inheritance?”
“My parents don’t know about the addendum to my grandfather’s will! He only added it a few weeks ago, and the executor gave me the heads-up because we went to Stanford together. That’s why this is such a brilliant plan!”
I scoff.
“Think about it, Oliver. No one would know the truth but us. We would tell everyone we’re in love, and then—”
The anxiety in my stomach turns to acid burning its way up my throat. I need to get out of here before it also turns to a fresh wave of hot tears. I shake my head. “Goodbye, Andrew.”
* * *
It isn’t until I’m outside Andrew’s apartment building that I realize I have no idea where I am or how to get home. I end up paying twenty bucks for a rideshare, and the fact that I don’t vomit on the floor of this Ford Fiesta is quite a life accomplishment.
By the time I’m home and have purged last night’s mistakes respectably into the toilet, it’s just before eight. My shift at Roastlandia starts at ten, so somehow in the next two hours I’ll have to figure out how to be a person again and not a wrung-out sponge of whisky shots and puke and shame. God, Greg is going to be cruel when he sees me.
On the tile floor beside the toilet, my phone starts to buzz. I groan.
“Put me on FaceTime, you little minx!”
“Meredith, what’s wrong? I’m sick, and I need to shower before work.”
“What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” I hear her slam down a pencil. “My best friend apparently got engaged last night, and I had to learn about it from Instagram. That is what’s wrong.”
“Oh. Fuck.”
I go ahead and take a little lie-down on the bathroom floor. “It’s not real. I was blackout drunk.”
“No shit. That barely looked like your face.”
“How did you even see the photos? I thought they were posted on his Instagram.”
“He tagged you, and then you shared them on your story.”
“Have I already said fuck?”
“I can’t believe I told you to find a himbo and you actually did it. And in a classic Ellie overachiever move, you took it a step further and got engaged. We should talk about your perfectionist tendencies at some point, but I’m honestly proud of you.”
“The engagement isn’t real,” I mumble. Everything starts spinning again as I tell Meredith about the two million dollars and the napkin contract and Christmas at his parents’ cabin.