“Probably because dad spoils her rotten.” I flopped on the futon and aimlessly flipped through TV channels. “She's totaled two cars; he bought her a new one both times. She wants to remodel the bathroom or do some dumb project she saw on Instagram, he'll pony up thousands without batting an eye.”
She sighed and doused her hair with some kind of chemical-smelling spray. The fumes coming from the bathroom threatened to choke me if I didn't open a window quick.
“He spoils her because he loves her, duh. That's what being married is all about.”
“Letting a woman walk all over you? No wonder I'll be single for the rest of my life. Anyway, what do you know about marriage? You're dating three guys at the same time.”
“It's called comparison shopping, obviously. How am I supposed to make my decision if I can't sample the goods first?”
I swore that my sister was so much like dad, it was almost scary.
“Well, I hope you find someone to settle down with in college. Maybe then dad will get off my back for once.”
“He'll still be worried about you. You're like the black sheep of the family,” she shouted over the roar of her hair dryer.
“All because I like to have a good time. You ask me, I say the old man must be jealous.”
He was saddled down with a family to look out for, a hefty mortgage on the mansion mom just had to have, and a high-stress career that took him around the globe.
To me, that was far more a prison than being locked in any jail cell.
Right now, I was a free man. No children crying for the latest toy, no wife nagging me or tying me down. I could go where I pleased. Sleep with whoever I wanted.
But even knowing that, I couldn't get Sarah's face out of my thoughts. Ever since she glared at that lipstick on my collar, I hadn't so much as touched another woman.
Hell, I didn't even want to. The only one who held my interest these days was her.
She was nothing like my usual conquests, loud and flashy as they were. Sarah was sweet, quiet, and even a bit what you might call plain – but in my eyes, she seemed to grow more beautiful every single day until I could hardly resist her anymore.
What had gotten into me?
“But what are you going to do?” Macy emerged from the bathroom, all dolled up for her first class of the day. “You don't get married in a month, you lose your store.”
“I'll come up with something. Just you wait. I'm not losing a thing.”
It was a bluff. Right now, I had no plan. No direction. Honestly, I woke up every day filled with dread, wondering how in the world I could possibly pull this off.
Sarah said she'd help me. Unless she could pull a miracle out of her ass, then I very much doubted that there was anything she could do.
“I might be able to hook you up,” Macy said. “I'm friends with this girl in my biology class, Rosa. She's desperate for a green card so she can stay in America permanently. And you know how to get one of those?”
I was about to say no, I didn't – but then it clicked.
“Marry an American citizen,” I muttered. Why hadn't I thought of it before?
Macy showed me a picture of the girl on her phone. She was clearly a lot younger than me, but a pretty girl with big, dark eyes and curly black hair.
“She doesn't care about marrying for love. In fact, she has a boyfriend down in Mexico who she's waiting on to move here.”
“A boyfriend? And he'd seriously be okay with me marrying his woman?”
“Both of them have been talking about it for some time, or so she said. They're aware it wouldn't be a real marriage; it'd just look like one on paper. But as you can imagine, she's been having some trouble finding a guy to agree to the charade.”
A marriage on paper only... That was exactly what I needed to satisfy the contract, right? This chick already had a lover, so she wouldn't give a crap if I kept on the way I lived now. She got her green card; I kept my store. Everyone would win.
Sarah, too. Wouldn't she be thrilled to know Hazel's Curiosities would remain standing? I pictured her joyful reaction and smiled.
The other day, when I watched her cry over the possibility of losing her job, it almost made me sick. I'd felt so helpless. Responsible, in a way, for taking her family business away from her.
But this could be a chance to fix all of that.
“All you have to do is prove to the government you're a real couple. As soon as she gets her card, you can even get a divorce,” Macy added, a bit too cheerfully. “Then her boyfriend Marco will come, and she gets to be with her true love at long last. It's sweet, isn't it? Just like a fairy-tale ending.”
“Uh, I wouldn't go that far.”
What would dad have to say about it, I wondered? Surely, I couldn't let slip the real reason I was marrying a foreign woman I'd never met.
He wanted me to settle down, to have a wife and kids. That wasn't gonna happen, but so what? All I had to do was keep up the act until January. Then Slicker Image would be mine, and there wasn't a thing he could do about it.
“So, what do you say? Should I tell her you'd like to meet?”
A dark cloud of emotions hung over me. Nervousness was one of them. What surprised me most of all, though, was that I felt sad.
There was
