Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 73699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
But let me tell you, when your own mother tells you not to come home—ever—it takes a little while to get over.
About ten years, in my case. And I’m still working on it.
“So, okay, we covered work stuff,” Meghan says, propping her chin on her hand and looking at me with the fuzzy smile of someone a few drinks in. “You’re doing amazing, like I always knew you would. Your parents are healthy. Now, onto the good stuff …”
Her face contorts, and I laugh. “Are you trying to waggle your eyebrows seductively at me?”
Meghan laughs along with me. “Blame it on the booze, and give me a break. It’s been forever since I’ve had a night out!”
“But mommyhood suits you,” I say, affectionately waving a finger around her face. “Raphael is nearly three and you’ve still got your new mom glow.”
“I do,” she says with a little smile. “Though to be fair to Camden, some of the glow is the newlywed glow. I didn’t think we needed to be married to be good parents, and I’m sure that’s true, but there’s definitely something extra special about making it official.” She bats my arm. “Well, why am I bothering telling you! You’ve been married longer than any of us.”
I give her a wry look. “Colin’s and my situation is hardly anything like yours and Camden’s.”
Like me, Meghan settled down from her wildest teen years, but she still knew how to break a few of the Upper East Side rules. For starters, she’d nearly given her conservative mother a heart attack by doing the whole family thing out of order: baby, then husband. And like me, when Meghan and Camden finally got married last year, it was in a small civil ceremony at the same courthouse—by the same judge, no less, that had married Colin and me.
Unlike Colin and me, however, Meghan and Camden are very much a love match, and together with Raphael, they’ve made the world’s most adorable family.
“So, what’s going on with you two?” Meghan asks, reaching for the menu to peruse our next wine option that I don’t need, but I’ll probably drink anyway, because it’s been a long time since I’ve done irresponsible, and it feels delightful.
“I still don’t understand how you did the whole long distance thing for so long,” she continues. “Weirdest marriage ever.”
You have no idea.
Although, she probably has some idea. For obvious reasons, Colin and I have always maintained we’d reveal the true circumstances of our marriage only when absolutely necessary, which means we’ve only told a handful of people the truth.
Even still, I’m pretty sure most of the people closest to us, Meghan included, have a fairly good idea why we got married. They’re just too polite to say so.
“So?” she presses, a touch impatiently and a lot curious. “Are you guys like … together now? For real?”
“We’re trying to make it work,” I say slowly, testing out the line Colin and I agreed upon. It’s a hell of a lot easier than trying to explain that for the first time in our marriage we have to actually spend time in the same state, all so we can get divorced.
It’s a bit much to explain to a friend I’ve barely seen in ten years.
“I’m so glad,” she says, sounding genuinely excited. “I don’t know Colin all that well, but he knows one of Camden’s coworkers, so we’ve ended up at some of the same holiday parties. He’s so … hot.”
I let out a nervous laugh, knowing she means it as a compliment, but since I’m new to this wife thing, I’m not entirely sure how to act. Smug? Possessive? Proud? Humble?
Why yes, I did bag the hottest Irish import since Guinness made it to the States!
I decide to infuse a bit of honesty into the situation as much as I can, without putting Meghan in a weird place on the very off-chance she were to get interviewed by Immigration Services about the nature of our marriage.
“He is hot,” I say. “He’s also impossible to read.”
“Well, yeah,” she says, unsurprised. “He’s a man.”
“No, this isn’t your run-of-the-mill, closed-off alpha stuff. I mean he’s like a whole other level of unreadable,” I insist. “I have no idea what he’s thinking, and the only time I get a glimpse of what might be going through his head when he looks at me, I’m pretty sure he’s thinking about how much he dislikes me.”
“Could be,” Meghan surprises me by saying. “But I guarantee there’s at least one other thing he’s thinking about when he looks at you.”
“What’s that?” I ask warily.
She leans forward and gives me a grin I recognize well from our teenage years. “Sex, darling. Obviously.”
She looks so tipsily scandalized by her own assessment that I don’t have the heart to tell her that’s so not a factor in Colin’s case.