Good Time(65)

“I’d legiterally like nothing more.”





Epilogue





Vince



Happy wife, happy life.

I’m an intelligent man so I live my life by this philosophy. Luckily for me, it’s not hard because if the name Payton had a definition it would be ‘happy.’ Characterized by joy and delight.

I’m not sure what I’ve done to deserve her, but I’ll spend forever keeping her. I worried in the beginning that she’d grow bored. That she was too young. That she couldn’t possibly be as serious about me as I was about her.

Ridiculous as it was to feel serious about someone you’d known two weeks.

I met her at noon on a Saturday.

Within twenty-four hours we were married, and she’d left me in the honeymoon suite we’d only partially christened. Without a word or a phone number or a note on the nightstand.

I wasn’t in love with her that morning.

I went to her apartment anyway, just to talk. To make sure she was okay. To make sure she ate. I slept with her because she was sober and because she asked. The bossy way she told me exactly how she wanted me to fuck her, but then stripped out of her clothing with no finesse at all was so beguiling to me.

The Tennessee driver’s license in her handbag was the first inkling I had that something was happening between us, for me at least. Don’t go, I thought. Jesus Christ, whatever you do, do not leave the state. Not because it would make the annulment difficult, but because I hated the idea of her being so far away. Yet less than an hour later she was bolting again, running out the door of her own apartment with her bra in her hand and some ridiculous talk of having to be somewhere other than postcoital with me.

I wasn’t in love with her by Sunday afternoon. Or hell, maybe I was. I was still grappling with what had possessed me to marry her in the first place. I was casual drunk, not stupid drunk. Yet when her eyes lit up with the idea of getting a tiger tattooed onto her ass there was no way I was allowing that. “What’s the B?” I asked. We’d spent the entire evening making choices based on A or B options, surely there was a B to getting a tattoo. When she quipped, “Getting married,” somewhere in my normally practical and orderly mind a voice whispered, Yeah, do that.

I love a good deed. What better deed could there be than rescuing her ass from a tiger tat?

Weak. It’s a weak excuse. It was always a weak excuse. Temporary insanity is the only thing that justifies marrying her that night. Temporary insanity, or fate.

I was leaning towards temporary insanity on Monday morning when I started the annulment paperwork. Paperwork so irrelevant I passed it off to Gwen to handle. Gwen, ex-girlfriend so irrelevant it hadn’t occurred to me that it might be improper or offensive to have her handle it. She was always more of a friend than anything else. She completed it without judgement, bringing it discreetly to my office and placing it on my desk while rubbing her pregnant stomach with her free hand. Gwen was a nice girl but I was never in love with her. We had some charitable work in common, law and not much else. Our relationship hadn’t been much more than co-workers with benefits, which wasn’t enough for her, so she’d dumped me and found the tax attorney she’d married. Nice guy. I’d felt nothing but happy for her, the way you’d be happy for anyone.

On Monday night I left work with the annulment papers, intent on stopping at Payton’s to discuss them with her. I could’ve let her figure it out when she got served, but I’m not an asshole. I could spare an hour to explain the process to her so she wasn’t blindsided. That’s all it was. The weekend of revelry and foolish choices was over.

So why did I stop for groceries so I could make her dinner while we talked? I’ve got no idea.

Fate or insanity?

When she swung the door open with a huge grin and a joke about how I’d been avoiding her, something shifted in me. She’d already changed into pajamas—the least sexy or seductive set of pajamas possible. She wasn’t expecting me, or if she was she wasn’t planning a seduction. Or possibly this was just Payton. Possibly this was how she always was.

In that moment it’d been easy to imagine a lifetime of her—just like this. Welcoming me home without makeup, her hair gathered messily on her head, wearing pajamas and teasing me.

I didn’t hate the idea of it.

She questioned why I was bringing her dinner and I nearly answered, “Because I liked talking to you,” but the thought surprised me so I made a deflective comment about multitasking instead.

I’m not sure I can pinpoint the exact moment in the evening that I stopped wanting to talk to her about those papers and started wanting to know more about her instead.

She was such a mystery to me at that point. Was she just looking to have a good time? Or was she looking for something more? She’d propositioned me for sex, married me and then run out on me. Twice. But that night, sitting at her kitchen table in a pair of cotton pajamas, she bit her lip and offered me health insurance—as an incentive to stay with her. Offered me some kind of marriage of convenience, as if she wanted this to last in whatever form she could get it. She was such a contradiction. Confident with a hint of insecurity. Aggressive with a dash of adorable. Crazy with a silver lining that was all heart.

So I stayed. Talked to her. Slept with her again.

Every night.