MARRIAGE SWAP CONTRACT

Chapter 2

When we arrived at the reception hall they hustled me inside. Girls in black dresses rushed me up a velvet staircase and shoved a hanger into my hand before I’d finished catching my breath. “Quick, we need to get you changed,” someone instructed, and I changed in a flurry of fabric and perfume until the barn girl felt like a memory folded away in a pocket.

They dressed me in a black dinner gown that sat like a second skin the sort of dress meant to be ogled and remembered. It hugged my waist and fell to the floor in a river of satin. The neckline cut low but tasteful; along the back, a row of tiny buttons drew a line I wasn’t used to anyone following. Heeled shoes clicked unfamiliar rhythms against the marble as I walked out, hair pinned high, only a few stray strands escaping to ghost at my neck.

Someone whispered that my husband was waiting at the doorway.

He was there, hands in his pockets, every inch the man in the photographs, only closer and somehow more real. He looked at me like a man who wanted the night to end. He leaned in, barely audible, and said, “Let’s get this over with.”

Relief and irritation tangled together in my chest. Good. I wasn’t the only one who hated this charade. Maybe that made us even.

Our arrival was announced with a flourish, lights shifting so that we stood at the top of a wide staircase while the rest of the world remained below. A spotlight hit us like heat.

I hated being the center of attention with the kind of animal, prickling hatred I’d usually reserve for wasps. He took my arm and we descended, each step a tableau for cameras and the empty praise of strangers.

A toast was raised words about unions and futures and then people dissolved back into their own conversations and flutes of champagne.

That’s when a man and a girl approached. She didn’t resemble “his wife” at all; if I’d been asked to pair them as father and daughter, I would have believed it. The girl was small, laughter fluttering from her like a bird. The man’s hand rested possessively at her waist, a casual ownership I felt in my bones.

He introduced himself with a smile meant to charm, then said something that made the blood in my ears run cold with the smallest prickle of jealousy. “Alex sure has an eye for choosing,” he said , as if announcing some public triumph. “You’re pure eye candy.” He exchanged a few idle words with us meaningless polish then turned his head as he left and, I swear, winked at me. My stomach curdled.

It hit me like cold water: I knew nothing about Blaire’s life. Nothing beyond what she had told me in jokes and gossip at the kitchen table. I had no idea who frequented her world, who courted her, who said things like eye candy and meant them with real intent. Had she been here, would he have winked at her? Would she have laughed? Would she have stayed?

A deep voice slid into my side like a ribbon pulled taught. “Pay him no mind,” he said, low and fierce. “He’s all talk and no bite.”

“He wouldn’t be stupid enough to come after what’s mine,” he answered, and the possessive laugh in his mouth made something tighten in my throat.

“What’s yours?” I managed to blurt out before I realized how loud my own voice sounded in my ears. The question hovered ridiculous and desperate. We’re already married, aren’t we? I could feel the word married like a stone in the bottom of my stomach.

His smile was a practiced thing. “Yes,” he said, as if confirming the obvious. “We’re married. You should relax.”

I laughed too loudly, the sound brittle against the soft clink of glasses. “Umm excuse me,” I said, because I needed air and because I didn’t know how to hold my breath anymore. I lifted my champagne glass, drained the rest of it in one swallow, and walked away before I could do anything worse like ask where Blaire used to sit at these tables or whether she had been courted by men who winked, or whether she had ever been this small, this swallowed up by other people’s hands.

Outside, the cool night hit my face and I let it remind me who I was for a minute, at least: Claire Carter, with dirt under my nails, standing in

borrowed silk, and suddenly very, very alone.

I can still smell the barn if I close my eyes. Hay sweet and sharp, the low creak of the rafters as the evening wind slid through the slats. That was my life: early mornings, calloused hands, denim worn soft at the knees. Blaire used to call it my “forever uniform,” teasing that I’d end up marrying the land itself.

I began to wonder how my life became like.