“Yes, husband, I would be honored.”
We danced around like fools for a few minutes and then stumbled out of the building, laughing. After we took the subway to the East Village, I gave Grace a piggyback ride eight blocks to Senior House, where we passed out, eating tortilla chips in the lounge.
DARIA SHOOK MY shoulder. “Matt? What are you two doing down here?”
I looked up at her and squinted. My head was pounding and the small desk lamp on the end table in the lounge was like a powerful Vita-Ray blasting my skull. “Oh shit,” I said, holding one hand against my head and the other against my stomach. I had achieved the mother of all hangovers.
I turned to see Grace passed out beside me on the grungy couch. “Grace.” I shook her and she groaned and made a pained sound, whimpering like an injured animal.
Daria helped us get up, and we headed to our rooms. I worshipped at the porcelain altar of a vengeful god all morning before passing out again.
Later, I went to Grace’s dorm and found the door cracked. “You okay?” I asked as I walked in.
“Yeah, come in,” she said. I found her lying on the floor, her face pressed to the germ-y carpet. Her pallor had a greenish tint to it.
Swaying in the doorway, I dry heaved and then braced myself against her desk. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Ouch,” she said, sounding like E.T. She reached her index finger out toward me and said, “Eliot, phone home.”
Chuckling weakly, I pressed my hand to my forehead and buckled over. “Shit, don’t make me laugh, my head is killing me.” I moved across the room and sat on the edge of the bed, my head drooping between my legs. “We got so messed up yesterday.”
“We got fucking married, Matt.” She opened her bloodshot eyes wide for emphasis.
“I know.” Although a part of me hadn’t been totally sure until now.
I looked across the room at myself in the mirror. My hair was sticking up in every direction, and there was a mysterious stain across my white T-shirt.
“Holy. Shit,” she said.
“What?”
“What are we gonna do? Was that even really official?”
I pointed to her finger, where I had placed a ring made out of a gum wrapper. I held up my own matching gum-wrapper ring. “I mean . . .”
“Wait. Did you say ‘nanu-nanu’ when you put this ring on my finger?” she asked. I gave her a guilty smile and nodded. “Oh my god, I can’t believe you did this for a bet, Matt! What is wrong with you?”
“Wait, what? How did you know?”
“Tati came by this morning and proceeded to roll around on the floor, laughing her ass off, while I puked my guts out. She said she’d been bluffing and couldn’t believe you went through with it. All news to me, thank you very much.”
“That bitch,” I whispered. “She still owes us a night out.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Hold on a second. You stood there, right next to me, with Gary Busey as our witness, and said I do. I didn’t force you to do anything.”
She sat up and held her head. “I was fucking wasted, Matt.”
“Grace, wait, let’s calm down and go lay on your bed.”
“No. No way. We need to figure how to get this thing annulled. Like, today.”
“We can get it annulled tomorrow. Let’s just take a shower and go back to sleep, okay?” She sat there, rubbing her head for a few seconds. “Or, and this is just a thought . . . maybe we don’t have to get it annulled?”
She looked up, shocked. “What? Have you lost your damn mind?”
Her tone was like a knife to the heart. She wouldn’t even entertain the idea. Granted, it wasn’t exactly an ideal way to get married, but she acted like the idea of being married to me repulsed her.
“You want everything from me, Grace, and then you act like this? Like being married to me is the worst thing in the world? Why don’t you just go to Europe with Pornsake? What difference does it make? We’re so young, and we should get to do everything we want to do. Isn’t that what you always say?”
“You know what? I should get to do everything I want to do. Tati’s right; maybe I’m turning down a great opportunity just to stay here and wait for you. Maybe I will go with Pornsake after all.” As the words left her mouth, I felt both of us tense up. I waited for her to turn to me, to apologize, to take it all back. But she turned away. She wouldn’t even look at me. “Leave me alone. I can’t deal with you right now.”
I stood up from the bed, fuming. “Don’t worry. You won’t have to deal with me ever again.” I stormed out of her room and slammed the door. I didn’t know what had happened, but in the span of a minute, I felt like my whole fucking life was over.
I waited a day, hoping she would come to me and apologize.
Nothing.
I waited another day, resisting the urge to apologize myself.
On the third day, I slipped the annulment paperwork under Grace’s door, if only to get her to talk to me. I heard her crying that night through the wall and then she played the Bach suite on her cello for three hours straight. I fell asleep with my ear to the wall.
Still nothing. Not a single word exchanged between us.
Days turned into a week. A week turned into weeks. We didn’t talk. I didn’t even see her. I felt like shit. When I’d hear her door open or close, it took everything in me not to run out into the hall and grab her and say, What the fuck are we doing to each other?