My Straight Husband by Spencer Spears
Gabe
“What?” I looked at Tanner in confusion.
“Prove it,” he repeated. “If it’s so easy.”
I barked a laugh. “By what, getting married to some rando in this bar?”
“And staying married for a year. Exactly.” Tanner’s eyes gleamed as his smile grew broader. “Except not to some random person. Marry Brooklyn.”
“Me?” Brooklyn blinked, looking back and forth between me and Tanner. “What did I do to get in the middle of this?”
“So you’re saying you agree with me?” Tanner arched an eyebrow. “You couldn’t stay married for a year. I see.”
“No, what I’m saying is that I think Jesse and Mark are gonna stay married for a year. For a lot longer. I never said anything about anyone else. Especially not me and Gabe.”
“Hmm. A pity. The compensation package for my last show was…generous. I might have been willing to put some money on the line. Make it a little more interesting. But if you’d rather admit that I’m right—”
“How much money are we talking about?” I broke in.
“How much would make it interesting for you?”
“Two hundred thousand.” I threw the number out there, expecting Tanner to laugh at me. I knew very little about the entertainment industry, only what I’d picked up in my MBA program. But Tanner was famous enough that even I knew about him, and successful enough that he was in talks about producing multiple shows. Two hundred thousand was a stab in the dark, but it seemed theoretically possible.
“Fuck no.” Tanner snorted. “Twenty-five.”
“You guys—” Brooklyn interjected, but I pushed ahead.
“Twenty-five? You want two strangers to uproot their lives completely, possibly suffer financially due to job loss, and get married for a year for a measly twenty-five thousand dollars?”
“What would you suggest is a more reasonable level of compensation?”
“A hundred fifty.”
“You’re insane. Fifty thousand.”
“You guys—” Brooklyn tried again, but I was too focused on the negotiation to stop now.
“A hundred twenty-five.”
“One hundred even, and it’s my final offer. Take it or leave it.”
My mind flew through a set of rapid calculations. Was a hundred thousand dollars enough for what I had planned? It was more than I’d expected Tanner to agree to, actually, but it wouldn’t make a difference if we didn’t get it for a year.
“Deal. But only if we get half the money upfront.” I stuck out my hand.
Brooklyn looked alarmed. “Guys, seriously, can we—”
“Deal.” Tanner reached out and clasped my hand. He shook it like it was some kind of competition, but I didn’t care. He’d agreed. That was what counted.
“No fucking deal, guys!” Brooklyn exclaimed. Tanner and I both turned to stare at him. “I don’t know what you two just think you agreed on, but good luck getting Gabe to marry me without my permission.”
“Brooklyn, think about it.” I turned so I was looking right at him, doing my best to box Tanner out of the conversation. “Ignore Tanner for a second and just think about this. Human Nature needs money. If we do this, you get fifty grand, like, tomorrow. You can keep the doors open, the lights on. Nothing gets shut down. It might not be enough for a full year, but it at least buys you some time to find new sources of funding.”
“That’s absurd. This whole thing is absurd. Married? Us? We barely know each other.”
“Well, my parents barely knew each other when they got married and they’ve somehow managed not to kill each other yet.”
“Yeah, and you spent a lot of time last night telling me how unhappy they are and how much you never wanted to settle down. Why would you do this? Especially after, you know, last night. I thought we were starting over.”
“What happened last night?” Tanner asked, his smile dangerously mild.
Brooklyn glared at him. “Nothing. Stay out of this.”
“We are starting over, Brooklyn.” I put my hand on his arm before I could stop myself, and he froze. Okay, maybe touching him wasn’t the greatest idea right now. I moved my hand away. “Starting over as friends. Who just happen to be in a legally binding relationship. It doesn’t have to be that big a deal. You don’t even have to see me that often if you don’t want to.”
“Hold it,” Tanner interjected. “There’s no deal if you two don’t actually ever see each other. We’re not talking about one of these marriages in name only. You two have to live together. Spend time together. Go no more than, say, three days without seeing each other. And no seeing other people.”
“How would you even know?” Brooklyn shot him a withering glance. “You’re going to be in LA, aren’t you?”
“Send me a picture. Or videos. Daily. That’ll be proof enough. The rest,” Tanner shrugged. “I’ll just have to take your word for it. But surely someone as obsessed with the moral high ground as you are wouldn’t lie to me, Brooklyn. Right?”
“Make it four days,” I said. “I travel a lot for my job, but I can make every four days work.”
Tanner gave me a long look, then nodded. “Alright. I’ll accept that, provided you furnish proof that you’re living together for the rest of the week.”
“What the hell would you be getting out of this anyway?” Brooklyn asked, his eyes narrowing. “What’s in it for you?”
“What on earth does it matter?” Tanner said. “It doesn’t sound like you’re in a position to turn this down.”
“I’ll turn down whatever I feel like,” Brooklyn snapped, “if I don’t get a straight answer out of you. What’s your motive? Why do I feel like this is all some ploy to get back at Jesse?”
“Must a man always have an ulterior motive?” Tanner asked. “There’s no ploy here. And Jesse doesn’t factor into it. I’m simply anticipating the great pleasure I’ll take in watching you tumble off your self-righteous high horse in a few weeks when you realize how wrong you were.” His grin turned malicious. “Especially since it sounds like things got a little ‘complicated’ last night. Yes, I believe I'll enjoy this quite a bit.”
“You’re not gonna enjoy anything,” Brooklyn shot back, “because we’re not doing it.”
“Tanner, give us a second, will you?” I tugged Brooklyn’s hand, getting him to stand up and follow me to the corner a few feet away. He looked at me like I’d lost my mind. Well, maybe I had, but the way I saw it, this could be a win all around.
“You wanna tell me what the hell you think you’re doing?” Brooklyn hissed. “Gabe, I met you yesterday. I’m not going to marry you.”
“Why not?” I crossed my arms and looked up at him. “I’m serious, Brooklyn, why not? This could be that miracle funding opportunity you were just telling me you needed. Am I that hideous that you’d rather let your charity fall apart than contemplate having to spend time with me?”
“That’s not it, and you know it. It’s just—it’s complicated. Fuck, marriage is just such a—I mean, I’m not even sure I believe in it.”
“Great, I’m not sure I do either. Which means we’re on the same page, and neither one of us is hung up on saving marriage for some happily-ever-after scenario.”
“Okay, well how about the fact that you don’t even live here?”
“Neither of us lives here here,” I pointed out. “Not on Summersea. You’re up in Savannah, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, but you don’t even live in Georgia. We both have lives in totally separate cities, and neither one of us can just pick up and move to the other.”
“Not true,” I countered. “I have a job, but I’m traveling four days of the week anyway, and a lot of the rest of the time, I work from home. My job wouldn’t care if I picked up and moved to Timbuktu. Like I told Tanner—I can make this work.”
“Well, maybe my life isn’t quite as flexible as yours. This is a crazy time for me, Gabe. I’m defending my dissertation in two months. I have almost no free time. And I’m applying for jobs, too, which means that come spring semester, I’ll have to move somewhere completely different. It could be anywhere.”
“I could still come with you. I’m serious, bro, that is not a huge sticking point. Logistically, this could work. You’re busy? Fine, I can stay out of your hair. Just stick me on an air mattress in the corner of your apartment. Or hell, let me rent us a bigger one so you don’t even have to see me. We can send Tanner our daily selfies and then go our separate ways.”
“This is insane.”
“No, it’s really not. It wouldn’t actually be that hard. So pretty much the only reason I can see to not do this is if you really just don’t want to ever have to see me again. Which, fine, if that’s it, just tell me now, and we can go tell Tanner we’re backing out.”
“Gabe…” Brooklyn sounded lost, and the look he gave me was pure confusion. “Doesn’t this all seem a little sudden? And bizarre? You don’t think you’re going to wake up tomorrow and wish you could back out of this?”
“I doubt it. Frankly, it sounds kinda fun. Definitely not boring. Think what a great story it would make.”
“I don’t want to be anyone’s story.”
“Fine, so we don’t tell people what we’re doing. That’s simple enough.”
“You don’t think this would be weird?”
“Weird how?”
“I don’t know, weird because we almost hooked up last night and then didn’t?”
“That was due entirely to a misunderstanding. There’s nothing to be weird about. Either we don’t hook up again and that’s fine, or we do hook up and that’s fine too.”
“Gabe, I’m not—I can’t—I’m just not looking for a relationship right now.” Brooklyn looked close to tears with frustration.
“Dude, I’m not either. This wouldn’t have to be that.”
“But you’re in the middle of exploring your sexuality.”
“So I’ll keep exploring. Quietly, if Tanner doesn’t want us seeing other people.”
“But I don’t know if I can—”
“Be my gay Mr. Miyagi, I know, you told me. That’s fine. Will you trust me to worry about my shit and just worry about your own?”
“Just answer me this, please, and be honest. Why? What’s in it for you? I know you keep telling me to think about the money and fine, I get that. It’s tempting. But I just don’t understand why you would want to do this.”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged, and Brooklyn threw up his hands. I tried to figure out how to explain it to him. “Really! It’s not like, one big reason. It’s probably mostly because Tanner seems like kind of a dick, and proving him wrong sounds fun. And maybe a little because whatever the next year turns out to be like, it won’t be boring. And even if you don’t want to hook up with me ever again, I like you, Brooklyn. I want to be your friend. Is it honestly that hard to imagine someone wanting to spend time with you?”
“You’d be surprised.” He said it so quietly I almost missed it. I wasn’t sure I was meant to hear it, actually. When he spoke again, he was louder. “You’re sure? You’re sure you’re not going to regret this?”
I smiled. “No one can be sure about anything. But I haven’t regretted getting to know you so far. So come on, whaddya say? You in?”
Brooklyn sighed. I watched his eyes dart over my head and I turned to follow them. He was looking at Tanner, sitting back at the bar, smug expression plastered all over his face. Finally, he smiled.
“Fuck it. Yeah. Let’s do this.”
I grinned. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, why the hell not? Tanner is a tool, and I’d like nothing more than to prove him wrong. Besides, he’s rolling in money, so I don’t feel bad taking some of his.”
“That’s the spirit! Let’s go back and tell him our good news. We can scribble him a save-the-date on a napkin.”
“Wait, how are we actually going to do this, though?” Brooklyn put his hand on my shoulder before I could walk away. Dammit, that still felt really good. But I probably needed to stop thinking that if I had any hope of getting through this year without going crazy. He’d made it pretty clear he wasn’t interested in hooking up with me again. “I mean, what does this look like? We just show up at a courthouse next week and hope someone takes pity on us?”
“Ummm…gimme a sec.” I pulled out my phone and searched, ‘How to get married in Georgia.’ “Actually, yeah? It looks like we just go to a courthouse together, bring our IDs, and they just give us a marriage license? No waiting period, no blood tests, or anything.”
“Even if you don’t live here?”
“Don’t live here yet,” I corrected him with a smile and, for what felt like the first time in about twenty-four hours, he returned it. “But yeah, it doesn’t sound like that matters.”
“And then what? Just mosey over to a judge and ask her to marry us?”
“Uh, yeah. That’s exactly what we do.” I did another quick search. “Or we find a minister who’ll do it on short notice. Or maybe we could make one of your friends get certified as a minister online and have them do it. Ooh, look, here’s a lady who says she specializes in gay backyard weddings.”
Brooklyn laughed. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”
“Neither can I. But you gotta admit, even if we don’t tell anyone else this story, it’ll be a hell of a thing to look back on, a year from now.”
“That much, at least, we agree on.” He laughed again. “Alright. Let’s go take some of Tanner’s money before he changes his mind.”