Page 16 of The No Try Zone
A wave of nausea rolls over me, but it’s not alcohol related. How in the world could I have done this to myself? Toher? I’ve spent my entire life doing everything by the book. Following every rule. I’ve specifically avoided too much drinkingbecauseI didn’t want something like this to happen.
Okay, waking up married in Vegas was actually never in my head as a possibility, but the point remains.
Closing my eyes, I make myself breathe in while I count to five. Then breathe out while I count to five. I have the willpower of a fucking saint. I’m on the verge of having everything I ever wanted: a head coaching position with a pro rugby team. How in the hell did I let myself do this?
Ice-blue eyes and a gap-toothed smile.That’show.
I groan and turn to the windows, still wide open and letting in the neon lights that never turn off.
Think, Colin. Think.
This needs to be fixed. I can’t roll into Atlanta with a brand new wife from a whirlwind Vegas romance. The president of the team made it crystal clear that he wanted someone squeaky clean, with no baggage and no relationships to “distract” me. The Granite almost won the league last year, and it’s my job to deliver a championship, period. He absolutely cannot find out about this.
I open my phone and nearly yelp. Photos. So many photos.
Oh, God. Proof after proof after proof. Smiling with mustaches plastered on our faces. Hopscotching down the sidewalk. Posing with white eagle jumpsuit Elvis, posing with black leather outfit Elvis, another with Hawaii Elvis. Kissing at the altar. Signing our names at a – holy fuck, is that aplastic folding tableon the Strip?
No.No.That wasn’t real. There’s no way that was real.
Except it was. I remember everything. In excruciating detail. Including the fact that this isn’t my actual room. The hotel comped this one because we were the fifteenth couple to get married last night. Fifteenth couple on fifteen coin flips.
I wish I were making this up.
But just in case…I pull up the county clerk’s website and scroll. You can get weddings annulled, right? That’s not just fiction. There has to be a way. Some sort of “get out of jail free” card for when people do this exact thing. It’s Las Vegas, for God’s sake. That whole “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” surely has to be rooted in this exact type of thing happening.
Then I find the words that chill me to the bone. Staring out at me from the screen in black and white.Getting an annulment is not easy. The judge…
I drop the phone and let myself fall onto the couch, pushing my fingers through my hair. No. This isn’t real life. There’s a way. I just need to get the right people involved. Like my agent.
Opening my eyes, I glare at the marriage certificate, practically lit up in pink neon. I won’t be beaten by a Vegas wedding. I’m going to fix this. I’ll fix it and Sam doesn’t have to worry about being chained to an idiot like me.
Fuck.Sam.
Will she remember last night? She said she only ever had one drink because otherwise she did things that were mischievous. I nearly choke on the word. Yeah, there’s nothingmischievousabout this.
Life-altering, maybe. Unbelievable, yes. Fuck around and find out, even. But mischievous? No. Wrong word for this particular situation.
I like her. Really like her. But that doesn’t help us – nothing about our circumstances works. She doesn’t even live in this damn country, and I don’t know where her home base is in America. The only reason I know her full name is because it’s on the license. She probably still thinks I go by Matthew.
I slump farther on the couch. I’m a Grade A asshole. I’ve never acted the way I did last night, but she was…God, she was amazing.Isamazing, I should say. She’s got her whole life in front of her, probably has dreams to do who knows what, and none of them include being married to a man whose entire wardrobe consists of khaki pants and polo shirts. The phrase makes me almost smile, because I remember her giving me shit about it.“How does a man as hot as you wear the absolute worst clothes?”she asked.
Because I’m boring,I told her. Predictable.
Except when I drink too much, toss all my closely held rules to the wind, and proceed to fucking hopscotch down the Strip and get married by an Elvis impersonator in his white eagle jumpsuit era. Christ.
Fifteen coin tosses. All landing on heads.
Shit. A pang of panic spears through me and I stand, shoving my hand into my pocket.
My fingers immediately find it, and I breathe a sigh of relief. My lucky quarter is still with me. I’ve had it since I was a ten-year-old kid, when Dad and I found it on a sidewalk back home in Vermont. He’d been sober that day, grinning down at me as my feet came to a stop in front of the silver coin, his head blocking the midday sun so that it looked as though he was ringed in gold. The quarter has seen me through three decades of living, and kept me safe through all of it. To lose it now might legitimately be worse than what I’ve already done, if that’s even possible.
I need to find a solution.
My mind races, searching for answers. What are the chances that Sam actually remembers anything when she wakes up? Does a wedding exist if the license doesn’t? Why in the hell was there a pop-up license and wedding tent on the Strip last night? How wasthatlegal?
I need to leave. I need to leave, and get this fixed. And when I do, I’ll reach out to Sam and tell her that I’ve handled it, and ha-ha, wasn’t that the funniest thing, hell of a story, but everything is handled, and it’ll be just fine. Sorry about all that, it was great meeting you, have a nice life.
Can I do that to someone?Can I really spend the most amazing night of my life with her and bail? I have to. What if she wakes up and wants this to be real? Impossible. If anything, she’ll wake up and want this gone as quickly as I do. Or she’ll spend time with me in the daylight and realize that my khakis are actually the most interesting thing about me and beg to be released from the marriage.
