Fifteen
“When did you get so much stuff?” I said, looking around our living room. Well, what used to be our living room before it had been infested by a plague of boxes that were stacked nearly to the ceiling.
“I’m not really sure. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but then you put it in a box, and I think it multiplies.” Cara said, panting a little from walking up the stairs. The movers had left and now it was up to us, and the friends that would be here in an hour, to get all this shit from boxes to not boxes.
Then there was the added complication of having to put all of her bedroom items in my room, since, you know, we were a couple and getting married. It would be strange if we didn’t share a bedroom. Later, we would move everything back to her room ourselves.
“Where do we even start?” I said, starting to panic.
“Lo, it’s fine. I have a system. I color-coded and labeled everything.” She pulled a folded piece of paper from her back pocket.
“She has a spreadsheet, everyone,” I said, and she smacked me in the shoulder with said spreadsheet.
“Who are you talking to?” she said, unfolding the spreadsheet and glancing at it.
“No one,” I said as the doorbell rang. I almost tripped and died about three times before I made it downstairs to get the door open to find Ansel, Jason, Anh, Jamie and Cedar.
“Our bodies are yours,” Jason said, spreading his arms out.
“What the hell are you wearing?” His outfit consisted of a blue polo shirt and black yoga pants, but the real oddity was the sweatband on his head.
“These are my moving clothes,” he said, looking down.
“Fair enough.” Everyone else piled into the house.
“I brought candy,” Ansel said, holding up a bag.
“I didn’t know we were supposed to bring anything,” Jamie said. “I would have brought something if I’d known I was supposed to.”
“No, no, we didn’t need anyone to bring anything. Other than themselves,” I said, hoping to stop Jamie from panicking. He had a hard time in social situations if he didn’t know what the expectations were ahead of time.
“Okay, good,” he said, leaning against a box. “Don’t scare me like that, Ansel.”
Ansel looked sheepish and held up the bag.
“Chocolate?”
“Absolutely,” Jamie said, sticking his hand in the bag and then noisily unwrapping one of the candy bars he unearthed.
“So I’ve assigned you all certain rooms that I’m calling zones,” Cara said, and we all looked at each other.
“Care, we don’t have to –”
“Ansel, you are red, which is the kitchen zone,” she continued without even noticing me, “Anh, you’re blue, bathroom zone, Jamie and Cedar, you are yellow which is bedroom zone, Jason, you are green, which is living room zone.” We all saluted her.
“And what about me?” I asked, a little sad to not be assigned a zone.
“You’re green with Jason,” she said, not looking up from her spreadsheet. I needed to get her a clipboard one of these days. She definitely needed a clipboard.
“And you?” I asked, and she finally looked up.
“I’m head supervisor,” she said, flipping her ponytail over her shoulder.
“Oh, are you now?” I said.
“Damn right. Who else is gonna manage this mess?” As if they’d heard her, there was the sound of a box being dropped none to gently on the floor in another room and a loud “ooops” that followed.
“Remind me why we invited them over?” she said as she dashed off to see what had happened.
“Because we needed the help?” I called after her, but she didn’t hear me.
“Hey, Jason, you ready?” He flexed and let out a grunt.
“Let’s do this,” he said in his Batman voice.
“Please don’t do the voice. I can’t take you seriously when you do the voice,” I said as we looked at the array of boxes.
“You just don’t appreciate the voice,” he said in his regular voice.
“Okay, we need to get started or else Cara is going to come back in here and crack the whip.” Jason sighed.
“I’m guessing not in the fun way.” I snorted and bent down to read what was written on the closest box to me in Cara’s immaculate penmanship.
“No, probably not,” I said. I didn’t want to think about Cara and whips in that way. It was too weird.
“Okay, this one is blue,” I said, trying to pick it up, finding it far too heavy. “Jesus, what does she have in here?”
Jason closed his green eyes and put his hand on the box, and then froze, as if he was trying to listen or something.
“I’m going to say books? I’m feeling books. Definitely a books vibe,” he said, nodding.
“You are such a dork, but could you lift that for me?” I asked. Jason was a total doll, good-looking as hell, and nice on top of it. If I liked men even a little bit, I would want to date him.
“Of course,” he said, easily hauling the box into his arms and taking it back to the bedroom. Cara was in the kitchen with Ansel and they were definitely having a debate about something. Good grief, they were quite the pair sometimes. They only ever pretended to fight and never actually fought. More often than not, one of their fake fights ended when they both started laughing at the same time.
I went for another box and found another for the blue zone, but this one had sheets and pillows in it, so I was able to move that one myself.
Under Cara’s watchful eye, we got the everything out of boxes, and in their proper places in less than three hours.
“You have a lot of stuff,” I said, looking around the living room. True, it had been just about empty when Lisa had left, but I didn’t remember seeing all this stuff in Cara’s tiny apartment.
“I had to put a lot of this stuff in the basement because I couldn’t fit it in the apartment,” she said. Uh, I hadn’t known about that. No wonder she had so much stuff.
“You little sneak,” I said, poking her shoulder.
“Hey! You had the room, and my stuff is really nice.” She was right. Most of my decorating style was “Ikea Chic” or had come from yard sales and thrift stores. Cara had actually shopped at antique stores and the kinds of places that had home furnishings. I’d never even been into one of those places.
“We still need a couch,” I said, staring at the very empty space where a couch should be.
“And a coffee table, a few side tables, another chair, and some better curtains and we’ll be in business,” Cara said.
“Oh, is that all?” That wasn’t one or two things.
“I don’t think that’s a lot.” I made a sputtering noise.
“Aw, you two are the cutest couple. I’m so glad you’re married,” Cedar said. “I wish you had a show so I could just watch you together all the time.”
“Little creepy, Cedar,” Ansel said.
“Why is it creepy to be happy for my friends?” That sparked a long discussion about reality TV and whether real people were actors and then privacy in the internet age and then that somehow evolved into discussing whether we would want to know what thoughts animals were thinking if we could.
Ansel passed around the candy, and it was gone pretty quickly.
“Well, I feel like we owe you all food, so who wants pizza, and what kind?” Before anyone could say anything, Cara stood up from where we’d been lounging on the floor.
“Freeze. No one say anything until I write this down.” She whipped her phone out of her back pocket and then turned to me.
“What do you want, Lo?”
“Mozzarella sticks. And pepperoni.” Cara nodded and took that down, pivoting to face Cedar. She went around the room and figured out how to order pizzas with who wanted what, sometimes just on half, and enough appetizers to go around, and drinks. And then she split the bill so I could send her the exact amount, since we’d agreed to share the cost.
“You should just get beanbags,” Cedar said, leaning against the wall.
“Maybe,” Cara said in a way that meant we were definitely not even fucking considering beanbags as suitable for our living room.
“I didn’t know you were such a decorating dictator. I’m learning so many things about you now that we’re married,” I said as she sat down after putting in the pizza order and rested her head on my shoulder.
“And you’re going to learn so many more. Good and bad.” I knew she was going to figure out things about me that I might have hid from her, sometimes without even intending to. You could never really know someone fully until you’d lived with them and had seen what was under the veneer they showed the world. I’d seen what was under Lisa’s veneer and it was pretty rotten underneath. I was so glad to be rid of her, even if it meant that Cara had taken over the entire apartment. I still had my room to myself. She wouldn’t go in and decorate it when I wasn’t home. Would she? Surely not.
“You’re making me want to get married,” Cedar said with a dreamy sigh. “And I never thought I could get married.”
“Why not?” I asked.
She shrugged one shoulder.
“I don’t know. Just didn’t think it was for me.” Cedar didn’t talk a lot about her life before she moved to Boston to go to school for makeup. I’d known her for years, but still, she didn’t like to talk about her past, so I let it go. If she didn’t want to talk about it, she didn’t have to. Cara was the same way. When people asked about her parents, she shut right up and then ran away from the conversation as quickly as she could.
“My parents only got married for financial reasons, so I never really saw marriage as anything romantic. Huh,” I said, just now realizing that.
“Well, you two are sure as hell romantic,” Jason said. “You’re so cute my teeth are hurting.”
I blushed and Cara removed her head from my shoulder. We kept getting comments like that, so we must be fooling everyone. I glanced at Ansel, but he was fiddling on his phone.
The pizza finally arrived and we gorged ourselves until we could barely move.
“Okay, this has been a long day,” Jamie said. “I love you all, but I need to go home and not be around people for a while.” He got up and took care of his trash and then headed out. Everyone else but Ansel trickled out after him.
“You’re still going with lying to everyone, huh,” he said as we cleared up the last of the pizza mess.
“I mean, what are we going to say? We got married for money? Surprise, I had inheritance money all the time? I don’t want them to know,” I said. I couldn’t tell him the real reason I didn’t want to tell everyone: I didn’t want them to think less of me.
“You know they wouldn’t judge you. If they were in your shoes, they would do the same fucking thing in a heartbeat.” I glanced at Cara, but she was definitely avoiding looking at me.
“It’s just complicated, Ansel. I have my reasons and Cara does too.”
“Well, I supported it at first, but honestly, I think you need to tell everyone. I won’t betray your trust, because that would be a dick move, but I really think you should tell everyone. At least after you get your annulment. People are going to wonder. Plus, they’re also going to wonder when you suddenly have a ton of money. I think you’re underestimating what they’re going to notice and not notice.” Shit, I hadn’t really thought about that. I guess I just assumed we could play this off, get the annulment and then sort of... not tell anyone and then we could break up but remain friends. Obviously moving in together changed all of that, but the plan could still work. This could still happen without telling our friends we were both greedy gold diggers.
“I can always tell them that I inherited the money and Cara got financial aid. We don’t owe anyone explanations, Ansel.” Cara was still quiet and I kind of wished she would jump in and defend me. She was my best friend and fake wife, after all.
Ansel sighed and put his hands up in surrender.
“I know, I know. I’m not trying to be an asshole, I swear. I just think you should give your friends a little more credit than you are right now.”
I probably should, but I’d chosen this path and Cara had agreed to it with me and I wasn’t going to change things up on her, unless she decided that she wanted to. I stole a glance at her, but she was looking at the floor.
Ansel gave us both hugs, and after he left, things were a little weird.
“What do you think? About what he said,” I asked her after several minutes of silence.
“I don’t know, Lo. I really thought the best thing was not to tell everyone, but now it feels like we’re putting on a show, and I don’t like it. I don’t like pretending to be really married. It’s dishonest, Lo.” Of course it was, but that was the price we were paying for getting the money.
“So are you saying that you want to tell them? What do you think the reaction is going to be?” I had no idea how that would go, and I didn’t particularly want to find out. This plan had been fine so far, with just the side effect of some guilt, but I just didn’t want to see my friend’s faces when we told them that this was all a lie for money.
“I don’t know, Lo. I just... I don’t know.” She got up and walked back to her room and shut the door. This was the most tension we’d had in ages and it made me completely sick to my stomach. This had been the longest fucking day and part of me just wanted to go into my room, watch something frivolous, and go to bed, but I couldn’t leave things this way with Cara.
So I crossed the room and knocked softly on her door.
“Care?” I heard her turn off her music.
“Yeah?” she said.
“Can we talk?” She was silent for a few moments.
“Yeah,” she said, opening the door.
“If you want to tell everyone, I support you. It just seems like things were going fine and you suddenly changed your mind.” I had missed any signs that she was uncomfortable with everything.
She stood back to let me in her room and then flopped on her bed.
“I just don’t know. I feel like I never know if I’m doing the right thing. Do you ever feel that way?” She squinted at me as I sat down beside her, leaning against her mountain of pillows.
“Uh, all the fucking time. You’re not the only one that feels that way. I’m pretty sure everyone does, Care.” She huffed.
“Well, I don’t like it. I want to know what the right thing is and then do that thing. Preferably plan out the next five things in a row and then do those things as well.” I smiled. Cara and her planning.
“I mean, you could do that, but life tends to ignore plans. And sometimes your plans no longer work, so you have to make new plans. Like fake marrying your best friend so you don’t end up on the street.” She laughed at that one.
“I guess you’re right. We can stick with the plan, but I do get moments of intense guilt. Sometimes I wish I didn’t care about things as much. If I didn’t care, this would be so much easier.”
Story of my life. I cared far too much about all the wrong things, and didn’t care about the right things. Well, except for Cara. Caring about her was the most right thing I had ever done or would ever do.
“It’ll be different when the money gets here. Then you’re going to be so busy with school that you’re not going to have time to worry about that stuff. And I’ll be doing... whatever I end up doing with my time. I haven’t decided yet. I need you to help me make a list.” I swear, I couldn’t make a huge decision (even an impulsive one) without her input.
“I can help you make a list. Might take my mind off things.”
“Yeah?” In response she pulled out one of her myriad notebooks and a pen. Cara lived for notebooks. She had dozens and dozens of them, all filled with lists and ideas and schedules and things she’d done. They were almost a form of journal for her, and she kept them all, going back to when she was a kid and scribbled her lists in crayon and colored pencil and did doodles of flowers and faces.
“Okay, hit me with what you might want to do.”
We spent the rest of the evening making a progressively more silly list of potential jobs or hobbies for me to try.
“Why don’t I just sit around wearing lots of scarves and drinking tea and reading too many novels?” I said.
“I mean, you can. What about becoming a book blogger? You don’t get paid, but you get to read books, and that’s almost the same thing.”
“Put it on the list,” I said.
I ended up falling asleep on her bed and waking up in the middle of the night, too tired to go back to my own. Cara hummed in her sleep and snuggled closer.
We were going to make it. We were going to be fine, I knew it. Even if we kept one tiny secret from our friends.