Page 6 of Wilder’s Mistake

“It’s just enjoying the memory.”

She closes her eyes for one long second. “Okay, after the door, I have pieces. Not nothing, just no order.”

“Same.”

“You clearly have more than I do.”

“Some.” I smile.

She looks around the room, taking in her underwear hanging from the minibar handle and the marks on my shoulder. “How many times?”

“Let’s just say more than once.” I shrug.

Her mouth opens, so I give her the clearest fragment. “Second time, you told me to put both my hands on the headboard because you wanted to do the work.”

She pulls the sheet over her face, and I take the certificate off the bed before she crushes it.

“We both drank too much,” I say. “Neither of us was dragged into anything.”

The sheet lowers enough for one eye. “No.”

“You wanted me, though. You made that much clear.”

“You wanted me too, though,” she says, somewhere between a question and a statement.

“I think I made it quite obvious.”

She goes still and I nearly say the rest. That I have known the shape of her laugh across a crowded room for six years. That waking beside her with a legal certificate on the floor didn’t feel like a trap. It felt like the first honest thing either of us had done.

A horn sounds below the window before I decide how much truth her hangover can carry. We shower separately because the flight leaves in three hours and sharing the water would keep us in the room long enough to miss it. Lucy dresses in jeans and a pale blouse. I find a clean black shirt in my bag and leave the wedding band on my hand. She notices while packing.

“You’re wearing it home?”

“We’re married.”

“We need to decide what that means next. How we deal with this mess.”

“We can decide without hiding it.”

“People will ask, though.”

“Let them. I don’t care.”

She looks down at her own hand. After a moment, she folds the certificate and slides it into the padded section of her laptop bag.

“A souvenir?” I say.

“We’ll need it to untangle this.”

“Or to prove it.” Her fingers stay against the bag for a beat as she considers that.

Lucy calls Nora while I get coffee. When I return, my sister is on the phone from an airport gate, sunglasses covering half her face while Caleb sits beside her with two carry-ons at his feet.

Lucy holds up her left hand.

Nora stares at the ring. “What the hell is that?”

“Wilder and I got drunk and then got married.” Nora looks past Lucy and sees me setting down the coffees. For three seconds, she says nothing. Then she starts laughing.