On the ride down to the party in the elevator, she is nervous. I can tell. I know her nervous tics. I know that when she is nervous she chews her lip. I don’t know if it’s because she distracts herself with the gnawing on her delicate flesh or it’s just some physiological reaction to stress, but I know she does it.

I know that when she’s nervous she’ll roll her neck from side to side and clench her jaw a few times. I know she’ll crack her knuckles.

“You good?” I throw over to her, watching the floor indicator inside the elevator light up, counting down the floors as we speed down to the lobby.

“Yeah,” she says, “I’m good.”

“Nervous?”

“Yeah,” she replies, “a little.”

“Anything you need me to do?”

She looks up at me and her eyes find mine quickly as she bites her bottom lip.

“Yes,” she replies, “just keep doing what you’re doing.”

“Pretending to be the love of your life, or whatever?” I say, watching her as her face changes.

“Or whatever,” she says, throwing a warm, meaningful smile to me. I watch as she reaches into her purse and pulls out a sharply-folded piece of paper. “There’s actually something I was meaning to talk to you about.”

I watch as she unfolds the paper, recognizing it right away as the contract we both signed. Her hands are shaky as she smooths it out against the mirrored wall of the elevator. But as quickly as she pulled it out, we both notice that we’re about to land on the lobby floor of the hotel, and that piece of paper needs to get torched or balled up and swallowed before anyone sees it.

“Hey, you better get rid of that thing,” I say as the doors are about to open, moving to shield her from the elevator door. “Here, gimme. Let me swallow it.”

“Jason,” she laughs, “are you used to swallowing things for the people you’re working with? It’s not a baggie of drugs, it’s a piece of paper!”

“It’s contraband just like a baggie of drugs would be. Imagine this getting out. It would be worse than getting caught with drugs, I bet.”

“Yeah, no,” she says, slipping the paper into her purse. “I highly doubt it. It wouldn’t be worse. The same level of bad, maybe, but definitely not worse.”

“So you don’t want to go get high?” I tease as the door of the elevator slides open.

“I should have listened to my brother!” she shouts playfully, “you are trying to corrupt me.”

“Kidding,” I say, “I’m just kidding.”

Linking arms, we make our way through the hotel lobby. Around us are a cacophony of beauty queens and their escorts, and wait staff buzzing through the crowd with glasses of champagne and finger-foods. One of them stops near us and I grab two glasses of the bubbly champagne as Cassie takes two skewers with some kind of puffy thing on the end of it.

“This is nice,” I whistle, taking a sip from my glass. “Very nice.”

“This is nothing,” Cassie sighs, chewing carefully and in the most ladylike manner possible. I’ve seen this woman house an entire Domino’s pizza in ten minutes, and this whole taking small bites thing is new for her. “You should have seen the last one of these things I competed in. It was in Vegas. Out there, they really make a big spectacle. The entertainment at the gala was those sword-swallowing people.”

“That’s very impressive,” I say, raising my eyebrows. “Now, were they competing in the pageant or were they being paid to be there?”

“Paid,” she says, rolling her eyes, “though I’d like to see a girl with enough guts to try something like that on stage.”

As I’m looking around the lobby, taking it all in, out of the corner of my eye I see someone making a beeline toward me and Cassie.

“Just try to play it cool,” she whispers up into my ear.

“What do you mean?” I whisper back, bending down to Cassie.

The woman coming toward us is wrapped up in manic energy, a bigass smile plastered on her face and a hairstyle that looks like something out of a comic book.

So now I know what she meant by play it cool.

“You’re here!” the young woman squeals, throwing her arms around Cassie’s neck. I watch with a smirk plastered on my face and take another sip of my drink.

Now, this is kind of what I envisioned most of the girls here to be like. Hyperactive, super excited to be here, big hair, long nails, a southern drawl, and a genuine enthusiasm when it comes to all things poise and posture.

“Yeah,” Cassie says unsteadily, “I’m here. They haven’t kicked my ass out yet.”

“They wouldn’t,” she scowls, grabbing a bacon-wrapped shrimp from a waiter passing by with a silver tray.

“They wanted to,” I say, stepping forward and putting my hand out. “Nice to meet you. I’m some guy.”

“I’m Rebecca,” the woman says with a slight southern twang, her green eyes framed with a sophisticated smokey eye (or at least that’s what I think they call it). “And don’t be shy. You aren’t just some guy. I know who you are. We all know who you are.”

I shrug my shoulders and shove one hand into my pocket.

I could get used to this. Being a trophy husband doesn’t seem like such a bad thing. I could stay home and make sure the house is clean for when Cassie arrives so she can come home to a nice, copacetic environment, and I can have dinner ready for her every night.

Eventually, I could raise the kids. I mean, I could do my share. I’d wish I could do all of it, or even fifty-fifty, but even in the most progressive households, it’s not possible for child-raising to be split fifty-fifty between mom and dad. The mom is always going to have a bigger part in it, no matter what. It’s just something I feel makes sense.

Cassie and Rebecca fall into a natural conversation about the judges for this year’s pageant, but I’m hardly listening. They’re naming names, but I don’t know the who’s who on the pageant circuit.

What I am doing, though, is watching Cassie. Not in a fucking creepy way, though. I just can’t seem to keep my eyes off her.

“Jason,” she says, pulling me back into reality from the sweet daydream of imagining me and her making a home and a life together, “isn’t that interesting?”

I have no clue what the fuck she is talking about, because my hearing has been temporarily dulled by taking in her beauty, her presence.

Yeah, I just wasn’t listening at all.

“Oh yes, absolutely,” I say, making the least-smooth recovery in history. “Fascinating.”

“Maybe when you guys are ready to get married, I can perform the ceremony,” Rebecca says. She kisses Cassie on the cheek and walks away from us, on the prowl for another one of those shrimp skewers.

“What the hell was she talking about?” I lean down, whispering to Cassie.

“Her talent,” Cassie whispers back to me, “her talent is that she’s going to marry a real couple on stage at the contest.”

“That’s pretty cool,” I say, “but I always pictured us getting married in the church where we grew up.”

“The church?” Cassie says as we make our way with the big crowd through the lobby. It looks like there are ushers directing people into a room off the lobby. “I always assumed you’d want to get married at the courthouse.”

“Courthouse?” I say, pulling her hip toward mine, “no way. I mean, if it was any other girl I was marrying, maybe. But you? I know you’d want it in the church. And the wife makes these kinds of decisions in the relationship.”

“And what kind of decisions does the husband make?” she asks.

“Pizza toppings. Sunday night television.”

“Sounds fair,” she laughs, “all long as we both get a say in the really important stuff like who will actually preside over the wedding.” We finally get to the entrance to the room where they’re herding us like cattle, shuffling along amidst the din of laughter and slow jazz being piped in through the PA system. “You ready for some dinner and dancing?”

“I’m ready, baby,” I say, kissing her on the forehead. She’s by far the most beautiful woman here, and being on her arm is the only place I want to be right now - fake or not.