The Pact Page 8

And Daisy knew just how to acknowledge. Instantly, I’m struck with the regret of taking a shower this morning, effectively rinsing off her scent and replacing it with my own.

  “Sophie’s adding it to the queue now, Flynnbot,” Jude announces with a toothy grin. “Not to worry.”

  I shake my head in amusement.

  “See, Flynn, this is why all the ladies flock to us,” Ty interjects. “Just like last night, you insist on being, like, the world’s greatest mime or something. I don’t even think I heard you say one thing last night.”

  Jude scoffs. “Like you remember anything about last night, bro.”

  “Hey, man, I was just celebrating you! My baby brother is getting married! That’s huge.”

  “Come on,” Remy announces, his face completely pinched in annoyance and all of my brothers’ bags hanging from his shoulders. “They’re boarding our flight, assholes. Time to get home and not drink for an eternity.”

  I smile a little at Remy’s pain. He’s two years older than me, so I know, at his age, he has to be feeling this shit pretty good.

  “Bullshit,” Jude denies. “You’re drinking at my wedding, bro, because that’s what you do at all weddings. You dance, you celebrate, and you drink like a fish in the name of the happy bride and groom.”

  Not all weddings end with a happy bride and groom, I think to myself, and when I look over at Rem, I note his face has already shifted. No doubt going to a dark, nearly fucking morbid place as he remembers his almost-wedding of nearly a decade and a half ago, and all three of the rest of us see it. It’s like a pin in a shrieking balloon—just like that, pop, all the shit-talk is done.

  Jude and Ty step forward and take their bags, and without a word, Remy stalks in the other direction, headed for our plane.

  “All weddings? Why’d you have to say it like that?” Ty whispers harshly to Jude as we all hustle along behind Remy toward the gate.

  I smack Ty on the back of the head and pass them. “Just drop it.”

  The last thing we need on this long flight home is to spend all our time reliving the absolute hellfire of witnessing Remy getting ditched at the altar. That might’ve been over a decade ago, but the memory still holds some serious power.

  All we need right now is to get home, sleep off this wild weekend, and get back to normal.

  And that we… Well, thanks to a certain woman with emerald eyes and wild curls, it definitely includes me.

  Daisy

  What a day.

  From the instant I took an Uber from Flynn’s house and met Damien and my coworkers at brunch, my schedule has been jam-packed with all sorts of work shit. From meetings with potential furniture and fabric distributors for future staging projects to a big conference at the Wynn where Damien and Thomas updated us on the firm’s goals and plans for the next two years, I barely managed to get back to my room, pack my stuff, and make my evening flight back to LAX.

  You were so busy that you almost forgot about the craziness of last night’s wedding bells.

  I sigh and look out the window of the plane, watching as the world below passes me by. The sun is setting in the evening sky, and clouds and desert and a weekend of actions I never expected cross my vision.

  It feels big and uncontainable, and I feel as small as this view of the world suggests I am. I’m just a tiny speck of life, and all the hugely consequential things I’m hyperventilating over right now are barely even a blip in the universe.

  Thankfully, though, for as anxiety-inducing as it all is, the result is an otherwise unattainable level of peace. My life here in the United States will be safe. My job is secure. My dreams have the room to breathe, to fly, to go on.

  I must be lost in the tangled web of my thoughts because the gentleman next to me taps my elbow to get my attention and smiles when I turn around. He’s a sweet-looking old man, likely in his eighties if the worn skin, knowing eyes, and scraggly gray hair are characteristics to go by, and I look to him expectantly.

  He smiles bigger then, pointing above his own head to the looming flight attendant and drink cart that I’ve completely failed to notice.

  “Oh!” I say, a little startled. I have no idea how long they’ve been trying to get my attention. “I’ll just take a water.”

  The flight attendant smiles, her white teeth shining through a pink-lipped smile, and I don’t know what it is about the poised, calm manner of her expression, but it sets me off like a firecracker.

  “You know what, make that a vodka with cranberry. And…well, and the water too.”

  The old man to my right glances toward me briefly before going back to his book. The flight attendant makes my drink after going back and forth to the front for the nip of liquor, and I fidget in my seat so much that the old man leans away from me slightly.

  My knee bounces, and my hand thrums out a rhythm on the newly abandoned armrest.

  Okay. Okay. Everything is fine. Totally and completely fine, but like, better. Because my problems are solved, I’ve officially cleaned out the cobwebs from the inside of my vagina, and I’ll have a story to tell my future grandkids one day that will officially make me the favorite grandma. All is well.

  I try to smile as the flight attendant hands me two plastic cups, one with booze and one with water, but I’m pretty sure it comes off a little psycho for her taste, because she quickly kicks the release at the bottom of the cart and moves on—all the way to the back of the plane after flagging the other attendant behind her to pick up where she left off.

  “Great,” I murmur to myself before turning to the old man next to me. “I’m running people off now. I bet I’d run you off too if there were any empty seats on this plane.”

  “What was that, dear?” he asks, placing his bookmark in his paperback and glancing toward me.

  I shake my head as the heat of my embarrassment rushes my cheeks. Jesus, Daisy. What are you doing? Running your mouth to strangers now?

  “Nothing, sir. I’m sorry for bugging you,” I apologize. “Just ignore me.”

  “Oh dear. You were the victim of a mugging?” he asks, horrified understanding seeping into his eyes as he takes a look at my stiff drink with sympathy.

  A mugging? What?

  “No, no,” I emphasize with a shake of my head, realizing he must have misheard me. Safe to say, my cheeks have stoked a permanent flame at this point. “Not a mugging. Just…well…just a little issue with work that led to me marrying a stranger.”

  “A strangler?” he asks, aghast.

  “No! No strangler!” I rush to explain. “Lucky I did not come in contact with a strangler. Although, I guess, I probably could have in my mental state last night. But Flynn’s not that. He’s actually a good guy. At least…I think. I mean, he’s pretty dirty in bed, as it turns out, but that’s neither here nor there. He was nothing but nice to me from the moment I met him. He’s just…a stranger.”

  Mr. Old Man looks perplexed, and I can only fucking imagine what he’s doing with that overshare of information. Christ, what’s wrong with me? Even with the awareness of that little self-reflection, for some reason, I keep going. I don’t know why. Maybe because I don’t feel like I can tell anyone I actually know because of all the shame and humiliation and legalities, but venting to this guy feels like a much-needed exercise in emotional expulsion.

  “It’s a little weird that we got married by a drag queen Marilyn Monroe, but I have the marriage certificate and I’m pretty sure it’s legal, so that’s all that matters, right?”

  “I can’t say that I know a whole lot about Justin Trudeau. I’ve never had a chance to get to Canada.”

  The irony isn’t lost on me. Of all the things for him to mishear in the midst of my immigration mess, it’s about my home country of Canada. I laugh. “I’m from there.”

  “Yes, I have been to Delaware. My wife June and I vacationed there once in 1970. The Bridge Swallow Resort,” he remarks, his face transforming at the fond memory. “I’ve no idea if it’s still there or not, but you should go.
But not with the strangler, dear, I beg of you. Find a nice boy.”

  My man, we are having two very different conversations here.

  I look back out the window to swallow my laugh and, inevitably, think of Flynn. The idea of him as some sort of psycho serial killer is…well, it’s comical. I’m not even sure why, what with the completely limited amount of information I actually have about him, but he just doesn’t even remotely strike me as the type.

  He’s quiet. Calm. Assured. His character actually speaks of the kind of inner peace I’ve never known. It’s settled. It’s confident. He doesn’t need all the flashy recognition from being a public figure. He doesn’t need the spotlight. He’s content to just be.

  I mean, I’ve never met a man so willing to let me spew my word vomit all over him for hour after hour without losing his cool or begging off or talking over me so he can take control of the conversation. Flynn listened—and not just in a superficial way in an effort to be polite. He paid attention to every word I said, I could tell.

  I turn back to the old man and do my best to enunciate clearly for this part of the story time. Partially because I want to make sure he hears me, but mostly because I want to make sure I hear myself. “Don’t worry. My time with him has officially come to an end. Just a crazy story from Vegas that’ll live in my history book forever.” I nod, resolute. “It was one night, and I’m leaving here in a better position than when I came. Period. That’s it. The end.”

  Technically, I still have paperwork to file with USCIS, but that’s just semantics at this point. Pretty sure the hard part—finding a willing man to marry me in the name of saving my ass—has been achieved.

  The old man nods sagely, his eyes full of wisdom and agreement and the perfect amount of kindness I need to take a full, uninhibited breath.

  “You’re exactly right, dear,” he says then, making the corners of my mouth turn up with a smile. “Some stories are meant to teach you—the heart is a muscle that doesn’t bend.”

  What? No, that’s not what I—

  “Don’t back down. If you really love him, that man’ll be yours in the end.”

  All I can do is smile through nervous tears as they bust their way out of my eyes of their own accord.

  Come on, Daisy. He’s just talking nonsense. He’s not even having the same conversation as you. You can’t seriously be considering anything he says as valid…can you?

  I look straight ahead and lift my vodka cranberry up to my lips and take a gulp. Now that my subconscious is asking the tough questions, my plane neighbor isn’t the only one hard of hearing.

  I hold out my left hand in front of me and inspect the gold band intently. It shines beneath the overhead light above my seat, and I silently wonder why I’m still even wearing it.

  I mean, it’s not like this is a real marriage.

  Eventually, I take the ring off my finger and slip it into my pocket and lean back into my seat.

  Home, I tell myself. Just get back to life as usual. Normal. Day-to-day. And put Flynn Winslow in the only place he belongs—front and center on the immigration paperwork.

  And that, my friends, is that.

  Tuesday, April 9th, Los Angeles

  Daisy

  I am back in the land of Hollywood, where the views are beautiful, the smog is never-ending, the sun is always shining, and your odds of spotting a random celebrity at every Starbucks in the city are surprisingly good.

  It’s been over a year since Damien Ellis offered me a job and I packed up all my belongings and traveled across the border to move in to my new home-away-from-home—Los Angeles. Growing up in Canada, Vancouver to be specific, I never thought I’d call a big American city like LA home, but here I am, living and working and thriving.

  Well, I was thriving, until I managed to put a prominent snag into my American dream dress and sew it up with a marriage pact patch, of all things. I mean, what world am I living in, and is it financed by the Hallmark Channel?

  Ha. Not likely. The Hallmark Channel doesn’t showcase movies revolving around immigration fraud, and they certainly don’t include men who dirty-talk like Flynn.

  I’ve been back from Vegas for less than forty-eight hours, and to say I’ve yet to wrap my mind around what went down in Sin City would be the understatement of the century. I’ve been like the Energizer Bunny, just pacing back and forth while I beat the same dang drum of truth over and over again.

  I’m married now. I’m someone’s wife. Wedded. My knot is tied, my chain has a ball on the end of it, I’m as hitched as one of Gwen’s past flavor-of-the-month’s fifth-wheel camper.

  Married. To someone I hardly know and who just so happened to make a pact with me that ended in us saying “I do” in front of a drag queen Marilyn Monroe.

  And all of that doesn’t even consider the fact that we had the hottest sex of my life before parting ways.

  I let out a sigh. Nope, not going there. No way in hell am I going to step foot in that minefield of sexual confusion.

  Because, technically, I’m still illegally living and working in the United States, and correcting the type of problem that involves Uncle Sam definitely takes priority over the Flynn-inspired charley horse in my vagina.

  There’s no time for excuses or procrastination. I have to do what I need to do to rectify my expired-visa situation, and I have to do it now—even if it has nothing to do with what I should be doing on a Tuesday in the middle of my workday.

  Somehow, I’m going to have to pull a rabbit out of my hat and fit in my actual work to-do list, which is a mile long, at the very end of the day. It’ll be tough, but I’d look like shit in an orange jumpsuit and I’m certainly not photogenic enough to make a mugshot look good, so there’s really no other option.

  Goodness, what has your life come to that prison is a potential outcome?

  The mere idea of living a real-life Orange is the New Black situation urges my lungs to seize and short pants of air to burst out of my throat. Mentally, I feel as if I’m holding myself together by one single, already-shredded thread.

  Knowing I need to talk to someone before it severs entirely, anyone who might be able to rationally talk me off this ledge, I grab my cell phone and call the one and only person who could fulfill that role—Gwen.

  It rings four times before the line clicks open.

  “Daisy!”

  Oh, thank goodness. Relief fills my chest, but that’s quickly squashed when static hovers over the rest of her words.

  “Darling! I’m…you…call…”

  I squint and hold the phone as close to my ear as physically possible. “Where are you? I can hardly hear you.”

  “…here…I…trip…it’s…”

  “What?”

  “I said…”

  And then, nothing.

  A few seconds later, the line clicks dead. Immediately, I try to call her back, but it goes straight to voice mail.

  Well, shit. This certainly isn’t helping me work through my existential, I-got-married-for-a-green-card crisis. I try to call her back another three times, but eventually, I give up when a text message from an unknown number chimes through on my phone.

  Unknown: Daisy, darling, it’s Gwen. My phone isn’t working on the boat. I think we’re too far out to sea for me to get service.

  Too far out to sea? What the heck is she talking about?

  Me: Huh? Where are you?

  Unknown: Me and the girls found a half-off Groupon for an Alaskan cruise.

  Me: You’re on a flipping discount cruise right now?

  Unknown: Don’t worry, darling. It’s a Norwegian.

  Like that’s supposed to make me feel better?

  Unknown: I’ll be back in two weeks.

  Oh, for Pete’s sake.

  Unknown: Is everything okay?

  Um, no. Everything is not okay, but there’s no way I’m going to unload all my drama on her while she’s supposed to be enjoying a cruise with her friends. And I’m certainly not going to do it via text message
.

  Truthfully, this is all so crazy that I don’t even know what her reaction will be, but it looks like I’m going to have to wait to find out.

  Me: Everything is fine. Have fun and be safe! Love you.

  Unknown: Love you too, Daisy.

  On a sigh, I set my phone back down on my desk and try to get back to finishing up what I’ve spent the majority of my workday on—getting a damn green card.

  Let me tell you, the application process to obtain a green card through marrying a United States citizen is anything but the simplistic process I imagined it to be. Several forms, over fifty pages of information to read through, and a bunch of other shit that my brain is having a hard time comprehending are what I’ve been sorting through since I sat down at my desk in my small office inside the EllisGrey downtown LA building.

  Just…forget everything else and focus. The sooner this gets done, the sooner your life won’t feel like such a clusterfuck.

  As I scroll through the mostly filled-out application I downloaded onto my laptop, I try to pinpoint the areas of weakness. Apparently, when you want to obtain a green card, they want to know everything they possibly can about you. It’s all understandable, but it’s nerve-racking as hell when you’re doing it under the pretense otherwise known as my-marriage-is-an-immigration-fraud.

  Racing heart. Shaking hands. Erratic breathing. Is this what criminals feel like?

  Pretty sure, legally, once you send in this application, you are a criminal…

  Oh, for fuck’s sake. This is why criminals have to find a way to remove their conscience. I roll my eyes at myself, ignore all the red flags my yet-to-flee inner voice is throwing my way, and refocus my attention on the application.

  Part 1: Information About You

  I scan the long section closely and verify that I’ve dotted all my i’s and crossed all my t’s. It’s pretty standard stuff, and I take heart in the fact that it doesn’t require even a single lie.

  On to the next.

  Part 2: Application Type or Filing Category

  Welp. I married a US citizen for a green card.

  I cringe over the reality, but I bite my lip and check off the box that applies—immediate relative of a US Citizen. You know, because, as of a few days ago, I have a husband. I also remind myself that he offered to marry me. Not the other way around, so if anything, this is all my husband’s fault.