Chapter Eleven—Sky
My head had started pounding before I even came fully awake, so by the time I opened my eyes and realized in a flash that I wasn’t in my bedroom, I was already aware of the fact that I had the hangover from hell. It was worse than the one I’d gotten a week before—worse by far—with my stomach pitching and twisting inside of me, and my mouth tasting like cigarettes. Had I smoked the night before? What could have possessed me to do that?
Images of my night out with Cassie flitted through my mind, and I finally remembered that one of the guys she’d convinced me to talk to had told me that nothing went with a good cocktail like a cigarette, and I’d let him give me one he’d lit, and I’d smoked it. At the time it had seemed great—but the dry, crackly feeling in my throat was more than punishment enough for the flirtation with vice. God, I’m such an idiot.
After a few more moments I realized why I wasn’t in my bed in my apartment. I remembered deciding to take a shower when I got home, and I remembered the blast of cold water, and standing in my kitchen to stare in confusion at my water heater. And then I remembered making out with Linc, and I groaned.
“I see you’re awake,” Linc said quietly, and I felt my humiliation as an almost physical thing, like a shaking down in my bones. If the couch could have swallowed me up, it would have been preferable to showing my face.
“I am such an idiot,” I wailed from underneath the blankets, and I immediately regretted it. My own voice was like ice picks stabbing into my brain, and I wondered briefly how anyone else in the world could possibly stand it.
“Less of an idiot than you might think. You had the intelligence to know when to call a halt to things last night,” Linc told me. He was keeping his voice low, and the baritone rumble of it was oddly soothing to me.
“You don’t think I’m some—I don’t know—stupid, gross...” I couldn’t even think of what I was trying to describe.
“I think you’re a smart girl who had too much to drink and who made the best of the situation,” Linc replied, when it was obvious I wasn’t going to finish my question. I took a deep breath and threw the blankets off of me; it was too warm underneath them, anyway.
“I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck,” I told him. “Are you sure there isn’t some kind of military remedy for a hangover?”
“Let me throw something together for you,” Linc said, sounding amused, and I wanted to hate him for that—but I couldn’t. I’d come onto him the night before and then backed off right when things had heated up. I didn’t think I had a right to object to much right now.
I covered my ears when I heard a blender running in the kitchen, but when I smelled coffee I was drawn to it like a magnet. I padded into the kitchen and the mixture of smells was almost enough to make me regret my decision: something vinegary, something fatty, coffee, something that smelled suspiciously like peppers. “Oh God, what is going on in here?”
“Friend of mine from my unit swore by this,” Linc said, gesturing to a reddish-brown liquid in the blender. “Don’t ask what’s in it—but none of it will hurt you.”
“Are you sure about that?” I looked at the contents of the blender and my stomach did a flip-flop inside of me at the thought of even tasting it.
“Sit down, and I’ll get you some coffee to have with it,” Linc suggested. I had to admit, whatever embarrassment I had suffered from being a drunken idiot, I could appreciate the kind, almost sweet Linc who had now appeared. I sat down at his table, in the same chair I’d used the week before when we’d had our little impromptu breakfast, and he poured me a mug of coffee and a big glass of the red, gloopy-looking stuff.
I took a deep breath and steeled myself against whatever it might taste like; but the first sip wasn’t actually that bad. “It tastes kind of like a Bloody Mary,” I said, frowning. I’d only ever had one—and I hadn’t been much of a fan—but the mixture that Linc had made for me was an improvement.
“It’s got tomato and some of the other Bloody Mary stuff in it,” Linc said. “And some other stuff you probably don’t want to know about, but which supposedly should help.” I wasn’t about to ask more questions; if it would help me then it would help me. I drank down about half of the glass before starting in on my coffee, and I actually was starting to feel better—at least, I was starting to feel more like a human being and less like a giant walking mistake.
“I am forever in your debt,” I told Linc, switching between the two drinks he’d prepared for me. He was sipping coffee, watching me intently.
“You seemed pretty interested in me last night,” he remarked, and once again I regretted the entire night with every fiber of my being.
“It was a bad idea,” I said. “I just—I was grateful for you letting me use your shower, and I was drunk, and... I don’t even know.”
“I thought as much,” Linc said with a nod. “But you are still a smart woman: remember that.” I smiled weakly.
“I appreciate that, after how stupidly I acted last night.”
“I wondered if I could pick your brain on a problem I’ve been trying to deal with,” Linc said. I blinked a few times, and realized that my headache was starting to go away; whatever was in the remedy he’d concocted for me, he should patent it.
“Sure,” I said. “Not sure how much help I can be, but I owe it to you—at this point—to at least give it a shot.” I finished off the last of the remedy and went back to the coffee.
“I think I mentioned I have a court date coming up,” Linc said. I nodded.
“Something big about your custody,” I said. I remembered that from our dinner together.
“Basically, my ex-wife wants to move my daughter to California, and my lawyer—Carol—isn’t all that sure that she can get the judge to see things in my favor, so that he’ll decide that they have to stay here, and that Lisa can’t get full custody,” Linc explained. I considered that for a moment.
“What do you need to pick my brain about on that? If a lawyer can’t figure it out then I’m probably not going to be much help,” I said.
“Carol thinks that if I get married, it will make it harder for Lisa to win full custody,” Linc explained. “I don’t know if that’s true, but she says the stable home aspect is important. I want to get more visitation rights, but if she goes to California, I’ll never get to see Jazmin.”
He had gone from being matter-of-fact about the situation to being outright emotional, and I felt his pain through his words. It was clear that he loved his daughter very much. I’d found that out the first time he’d talked about her and lit up like he did. I hadn’t thought much about having kids yet, but I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have one taken away from me. Just the idea of it was devastating.
“Then why don’t you get married?” It seemed so obvious to me.
Linc seemed surprised by the answer. “I’m not even dating anyone. Who am I going to marry?”
I bit my lower lip before the words that jumped into my mind almost immediately could fly out of my mouth. I knew that I needed to really think about the idea that had appeared in my brain, and I had to make sure I was fully capable of the kind of thinking that required. What I was about to suggest was not something that I’d ever planned to do. But I felt like I had been put into this position for a reason. I was starting to think that meeting Linc wasn’t coincidence, but more like fate. When I was sure I wasn’t just still drunk somehow, I spoke.
“Why don’t we get married? It would get my family off my back about being out here by myself, and then you would be married for your court date. It’s a win-win.”
Linc looked at me like I had grown another head, or maybe even two. Maybe I was totally out of my mind, but I wanted to help him. I didn’t know of that many good dads, and it just seemed wrong that Linc was doing his best to be a good dad and still might end up losing his daughter.
“Are you serious?”
I almost told him that I wasn’t, just because I couldn’t quite believe it myself. He hadn’t blinked in several minutes, and I was starting to worry about him. Was he in shock? I’d heard of that, but I’d never seen it happen. Maybe this was what it looked like.
“I know we don’t know each other well, but why not? It’s not like it would be a real marriage or anything. It would be in name only, and we could both benefit. We don’t even have to live together. A quick wedding and we could be done.” The words just kind of tumbled out of my mouth almost before I could fully think of them, and I kept talking until they ran out, probably almost as surprised as Linc was at what I was saying.
“You would do that for me?” Linc shook his head as if to dismiss the idea, and then just stared at me again. I wondered what he knew that I didn’t.
“Yes,” I said. “I would do it so that you have a chance in court. Besides, it’s not like we can’t get a divorce later when it’s all done. This is only temporary.”
He didn’t seem to like the second part of what I’d said, but that wasn’t all that important at the moment. I knew that I was going to fall for him, at least the way things had been going between us, so I had to remind myself that it was only temporary. I didn’t want to believe that this was real. It was all just an idea.
“Okay,” he said finally.
“Okay?”
“You know, I never really thought about it like that, but you’re right,” Linc said. “It’s only temporary, and it’s not any worse than her marrying a rich guy so she’d have the money to take me to court.”
“Huh?” I wanted an answer to that question, but he waved me off and told me that he would tell me about it another time. Linc wanted to talk about the wedding plans. I couldn’t even say ‘wedding’ out loud without getting a chill. Where had the idea even come from? Surely it hadn’t come from me, had it?
Here I had been worried about finally finding a love interest, finding someone I could lose my virginity to before I turned twenty-five. I hadn’t thought about this. Now I was going to get married? It was my idea, but it had all just fallen out of my mouth, and I’d been unable to take it back once it was out. It was the right thing to do; it felt right, but at the same time I felt as if I’d climbed to the top of some very high cliff and started looking down into the valley under it.
I told Linc that I had to go back to my apartment, and he made a token effort to get me to stay, but when it was obvious that I needed to be by myself for a bit, he relented. I thought, a little glumly, that he didn’t want to push hard enough to make me take back my offer to marry him. I went back to my apartment and for a while I just stared at the walls. How had this happened? That was what I couldn’t quite understand. One minute Linc had been telling me about his ex-marital woes, and I’d been sympathizing, and the next I’d been suggesting that we get married. My parents are going to be pissed, I thought, and started to laugh. I decided I needed another shower, some actual food, and some more sleep before I pieced together the strangeness that had just happened.