But she doesn’t look at me.

So, I say it again louder this time, “Charly.”

Her eyes snap to mine.

“Just tell me what the fuck is going on.”

“I’m married.”

The words drop in the silence of the room, and they hit me like a wrecking ball. I feel pain in every part of my body.

“What?” I breathe.

“She’s married,” Jack pipes up.

“I fucking got that!” I yell at him. My eyes swing back to her. “You’re married?” The words fall out of me.

“I’m sorry. I should have told you.”

She steps toward me, and I step back.

“Preferably before you let me fuck you!” I roar.

She visibly flinches.

“It’s all over the news, Vaughn. The press got pictures of you two together in Oregon. Intimate pictures. They somehow found out Charly’s name, and they looked her up. Digby exposed it on his show a few hours ago,” Alex says quietly.

“Oh no.” Charly covers her face with her trembling hands.

“I don’t fucking believe this!” My hands are in my hair, and I’m pacing.

Jack says, “We need to get on top of this, Vaughn. Put out a press release straightaway—”

“Stop! Just stop right fucking there.” I point at Jack, silencing him.

I turn back to Charly. “You’re actually fucking married?” I can’t believe I’m saying this when, moments ago, I was telling her that I was in love with her.

“I am, but it’s complicated.”

“Are you separated or getting divorced?”

She briefly closes her eyes, biting her upper lip hard. “It’s complicated,” she repeats.

My head explodes.

“There’s nothing complicated about the question! It’s a simple yes or no answer!”

I see her eyes flicker to Jack and Alex.

“Don’t fucking look at them! Look at me!” I yell, grabbing ahold of her by her upper arms, forcing her to look at me. “Are you separated or getting divorced?” I repeat.

There’s this awful, painful silence where her eyes fill with tears, and her bottom lip quivers.

She shakes her head.

And my heart breaks. I actually feel it break in two.

I drop my hands from her like she’s burned me.

Because she has.

“Then, we have nothing else to talk about.” And I turn around and walk out of there to the sound of her crying out my name.

Charly

Four years ago, I made the best decision of my life.

I married my best friend, Nick.

Not because we were in love—though I do love him. I love him like a sister loves her brother. But I married Nick because he needed a visa to be able to stay in the country.

Nick is from Canada. He was here in the US on a student visa. When he finished studying, he couldn’t find a company to take him on permanently. He was temping, going from job to job. He applied for a temporary work visa, but because he couldn’t get a job with a fixed time period, it was denied.

So, he was either facing deportation or staying as an illegal.

He didn’t want to do either.

You see, like me, Nick is alone in this world. Nick’s parents were deeply religious. When he took the risk and told them he was gay, they rejected him. They threw him out of the only home he’d ever known. Nick couch-surfed for a while, staying with friends. Then, he made the decision to come to the US. So, he applied to some colleges and was accepted into The Art Institute of New York City. After being accepted, he was granted a study visa.

So, he bought a plane ticket to New York and left for the US.

I met him a month later.

I guess that’s why we gravitated toward one another when we met. Two lost and lonely souls looking for something…looking for a home.

We found that home in each other.

From the moment I met Nick, he became my family, and I, his.

When it was looking like I could possibly lose him, I panicked. I couldn’t lose Nick. He was all I had. I loved him. And, selfishly, I didn’t want to go back to being alone.

So, I came up with the idea of Nick and I getting married. That way, he’d be able to stay in the country. When I told him about my idea, he shot me down. He said he wouldn’t let me do that for him.

But I argued that it was no big deal. I was twenty-one, so it wasn’t like I was going to be getting married anytime soon. And we just needed to stay married for two years until he got his permanent residency visa.

Okay, we were breaking the law. But keeping Nick in New York was more important. For me, the reward far outweighed the possible consequence. And, like I said to Nick, we were practically married. We lived together. Spent all of our time together. Knew each other inside and out. We were best friends.

We just didn’t have the physical aspect that came with a relationship.

It would be easy for us to convince an immigration officer that we were in love. I adored Nick, and he adored me. We knew everything about each other. Convincing someone we were marrying out of love wouldn’t be hard because we were. It just wasn’t the kind of love that people usually entered into marriages for.

So, after a lot of talking and me convincing Nick, we decided to do it.

We also agreed to stay married for four to five years to make it seem more real to the authorities. And we decided to keep our marriage to ourselves.

We were both temping at different jobs, so it wasn’t like we had work colleagues that the immigration office could interview to find out about us. And we didn’t have any other close friends, so it was easy to pass off.