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Instantly I was irritated.
“Well, I don’t recall asking for your input. Do you?” I bit back.
“Okay, you do you, then. But I’m going to see about getting back to LA while you’re getting shitfaced. Again. And we can worry about living arrangements when we get home.”
“Living arrangements?” I laughed before tilting the bottle to my lips. After a hearty swig, I grimaced and shivered as the burn hit my throat and irritated my sinuses. Yeah…there had definitely been a vomiting episode recently.
He watched me poison myself with a second swig and shook his head.
“And I can do without the judgment. If you don’t like what I’m doing, don’t stand there and stare at me while I do it.”
Carmen let out a heavy breath before speaking. “Look. I’m not judging you or whatever. It’s just that we seem to be in quite a situation here”—he held up his left hand, and I thought for a moment that the green band actually looked nice against his skin tone—“and it would be nice to feel like we’re both working on trying to figure things out instead of having to take care of you while you’re drunk. Again.”
“Stop saying that!”
“What? Drunk?” He laughed. “With the amount you drink, and the frequency you do it with, how can the word describing the problem be what’s hanging you up?”
“No, the word again is the one I’m objecting to. And what do you know about how often I drink?”
“Here’s what I know. We’ve spent, what, a total of five days together since we met, give or take a few hours? You’ve been intoxicated at least four times in those five days! Looks like a problem from where I’m standing, girl.”
“And where is that? Up on your high and mighty platform of judgment? First of all,” I said, holding up one finger, “we met at my sister’s birthday party. It was a paaarrttteee. People over twenty-one often drink at parties. So what? Secondly”—I added my middle finger to the first—“we’ve been at a weekend-long destination wedding in Las Vegas for fuck’s sake! Vegas by its city charter says you have to drink while in the city limits!”
I scanned my brain for a third point but came up empty. Those swigs of vodka were fast tracking through my body, and the warm fuzzy sensation I loved most about consuming alcohol was setting in.
So I hit him with the time-tested oldie but goodie. “And three, who the fuck asked you?”
“Apparently the state of Nevada, for one. No wife of mine is going to be a lush. Especially at our age.” He paused suddenly and got that sheepish look on his face I was now recognizing as one of his go-tos. “How old are you, by the way?”
I burst out laughing. Or cackling, more accurately. My darling husband immediately cupped his hands over his ears.
“That’s a very unpleasant sound, wife.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“I don’t know…” He shrugged and casually strolled over to the small table arranged with two chairs. On top of the round surface sat a piece of white paper, folded in half, and then again. “Says right here”—he unfolded the sheet and tapped on the bottom portion—“that’s exactly who you are. As of”—he squinted as if reading very small print—“four o’clock this morning.” He looked at me and shrugged again.
“That’s bullshit, and you know it. There’s no way they can legally marry drunk people,” I insisted. And then was hit with a wave of sadness. I really thought I could like this guy before all this happened.
We certainly had a good time together. He was very handsome, and shit, now that I got a good look at his body, other parts of me wanted to really like him too.
“Let me see that,” I demanded, forgetting any form of manners. I could picture my mom’s scowl for that one.
Before saying anything, Carmen slowly shook his head. “No. I think I better hold on to this for safe keeping. With your current problem—oh sorry, not problem—who knows what will happen to it?”
“If you make one more reference to my drinking habits, I’m going to knee you in the dick. How does that sound?”
“Painful,” he replied dryly.
After glaring at him for a bit, I huffed and said, “I need to call my sister. We’re supposed to fly home today.”
“Wow, you were really out of it, weren’t you?”
“What did I just tell you?”
“Your family left this morning or at least were getting ready to leave when we stumbled into the hotel from our”—he looked heavenward as if the word he was searching for would be handed down by God himself—“excursion last night.”
I had zero recollection of seeing my family this morning. None at all. That should probably worry me, and on some level it did. But probably for the wrong reason. If we saw them earlier, that meant they knew two of their daughters were married this weekend, not just one. Cradling my face in my hands, I thought of all the shit that would rain down on me when I spoke to them next.
