Under the Lawyer's Obsession

Chapter4:City hall

She knew before she put her key in the lock.

The light under the door. The sound of the television. Rose pushed the door open and looked at her best friend sitting cross-legged on the couch like she lived there.

"Remind me," Rose said, dropping her bag by the door, "to get my spare key back from you."

Lily ignored this completely. She was off the couch in approximately one second. "I told you to call me the *second* you were out of that meeting. The *second*, Rose."

"I know. I'm sorry, I—"

"Liar." Lily pointed at her. "You forgot on purpose."

Rose didn't deny it. She crossed the room and dropped onto the couch with the full weight of the morning behind her, bag sliding to the floor, heels abandoned somewhere between the door and the cushions.

Lily sat back down, pulling her feet under her, watching Rose's face with the sharpness she always had when she knew something had happened.

"Why are you back so early? I thought you had that interview after the meeting."

"I changed my mind."

"Why?"

Rose stared at the ceiling. Then she told her. All of it. Lily sat through the entire thing without interrupting, which was the most alarming sign that she understood the gravity of the situation.

When Rose finished, the apartment was quiet for a moment.

"Are you actually going through with this?" Lily asked quietly.

"Yes. I've made up my mind."

"Rose." Lily's voice dropped. "What if you fall in love with him?"

Rose looked at her disbelievingly. "I'm not going to fall in love with him."

"With the way you described him, you sound attracted."

"I’m not going to. It's a temporary arrangement. One year." Rose pushed herself upright. "Lily, I already bought the equipment. Tables, chairs, the espresso machine that took me three months to save for. It's all sitting in a storage unit. I have everything except the building." She shook her head. "I just need to get in, get the building and get out. No feelings attached."

Lily looked at her for a long moment with the expression she wore when she disagreed but had decided to let it go for now.

"Okay," she said.

"Okay," Rose agreed.

Lily reached over and hugged her. “It's going to be alright love. I'm here and that's all that matters.”

The city hall waiting room had orange plastic chairs and a fluorescent light that buzzed faintly overhead, and Rose sat in a cream dress she'd bought three days ago thinking, ‘this is not how I imagined this.’

Not once. Not as a kid stacking pillowcases into a veil in her bedroom. Not as a teenager clipping magazine pages into a binder she still had somewhere in a box. None of those imagined weddings had fluorescent lighting.

"You look beautiful," Lily whispered beside her, and her voice cracked halfway through the sentence.

"Lily..."

"I'm fine." She was not fine. Her eyes were already glassy and she kept pressing the back of her hand under them like that would stop anything. "I'm just — this is a lot, Rose. This is genuinely a lot."

"I know."

"I still can't believe you are getting married." Lily glanced across the room where Cassian stood talking quietly to a man Rose didn't recognize. Tall, dark-suited, unreadable.

"There's no need to feel sad Lily. It's not a real marriage. I'm still going to have the marriage I've been dreaming about."

"Alright babe. Let's get this over with."

The man beside Cassian looked over briefly — a flat, assessing glance that took in Rose, the room, Lily, and returned to Cassian without comment. He hadn't said more than six words since he'd arrived.

"Who's that?" Rose asked as she saw Cassian approaching.

"Cole," Cassian said, as he looked her over. "My associate. He is standing witness."

"Oh Okay. Doesn't look like he talks much."

"Only when necessary."

Cole did not appear to find this necessary. He nodded once at Rose, the kind of nod that could have meant anything, and went back to watching the room.

The ceremony itself lasted six minutes.

Rose counted, because counting was easier than feeling. The officiant was a tired-looking woman with reading glasses on a beaded chain who had clearly done this several hundred times and had the cadence to prove it — vows recited more than spoken, the legal language flat and efficient, no pause for anything resembling romance.

Rose said her lines when prompted. Cassian said his without needing the card.

"Do you have the rings?"

The ring. Rosa hadn't given it much thought. She had never told Cassian her ring size, yet when he presented her with a beautiful gold ring, she was left speechless. It was exactly the kind of ring she would have chosen for herself, and it fit her finger perfectly, as though he had always known what she liked.

"By the power vested in me," the officiant said, already glancing at her watch, "I now pronounce you husband and wife." She looked up. "You may kiss the bride."

There was a pause.

Half a second. Maybe less. Rose felt it anyway — felt the moment stretch out longer than it should have, felt Cassian's eyes move over her face like he was deciding something.

Then he leaned in and pressed his mouth to her cheek.

Not her lips. Her cheek — warm and brief and careful, his hand coming up to rest lightly at her jaw as he did it. It should have felt like less than a kiss. It didn't. It felt like something considered, something he'd chosen instead of the obvious thing, and it landed somewhere in Rose's chest she wasn't prepared to examine.

Lily made a sound behind them that was somewhere between a sob and a laugh.

"Congratulations," the officiant said, already reaching for the next folder on her desk. "Next."