“I think what we both need is to go to bed early.”
She nods, wrapped in a towel.
Climbs into bed with me an hour later wearing flannel shorts and a tank top, long hair dry and combed straight.
She sighs and lies facing me, resting her chin in the palm of her hand.
And.
She’s wearing her wedding band…
…which she’s done only a few times since we’ve been back.
“What? It’s pretty and I might never have a ring this beautiful again,” she said to me the night I caught her wearing it whilst typing a mass comm paper.
It glittered and sparkled under the light from the lamp on her desk.
I watched from the doorway and she put her hand out, turning it this way and that as it reflected prisms onto her bedroom walls.
“Your mom would like to meet me.”
I nod. “She does—they all do. I’m afraid she…” Let’s see, how do I put this. “Mum may have told a few people I got married. I’m not sure why, but I think she lost hope that I would.”
Georgia gapes at me. “Lost hope? You’re twenty-two!”
Her expression of horror makes me laugh, and I reach out to brush away the hair that’s fallen into her eyes.
“It’s just that generation,” I explain, to little avail.
Georgia is having none of it. “That generation? Your parents aren’t ninety years old, they’re what—fifty? Maybe? Why are they so consumed with getting you married off that they’d let you settle for someone they haven’t met?”
I pull her over.
She’s a feisty one.
“What else did Mum say?”
“She’d like to meet me, and she’d be happy to fly me over. First class, of course, so I’m comfortable. As soon as the semester is over.” Georgia pauses. “She wants to have a gathering.”
“A what?”
“Tea, she said, with a few friends.”
“Tea with a few…no. Absolutely not. She’s most likely going to ambush you with a hen night—probably invite Jack’s stuffy girlfriend Caroline, who you will be bored to tears of, plus she’s a raging bitch.”
Georgia’s mouth falls open. “Ashley! I can’t believe you just said that!”
“What? The part about the hen night or the part where I call Jack’s girlfriend a bitch?”
“All of it.” She laughs, and I relax. Phew, she isn’t going to be mad at me for cursing, though now that she’s pointed it out, I feel a hair guilty.
“Sorry, but—she is. Dodgy, that one, just after Jack’s last name.”
“At least she’s not the sort to get trashed out of her mind in Sin City and marry her roommate.” Georgia puts her head down on my arm and lets out a gigantic sigh. “I think going home with you would be a huge mistake.”
“Why?”
I mean—obviously, but I want to hear her reasons.
She lifts her head to look at me. “Because, your mom is going to get attached and get her hopes up, and then everyone will be disappointed when the marriage is annulled. We’re twenty-two years old, for crying out loud. This is insane.”
“Plenty of people get married in their early twenties.”
I keep forgetting the fact that Georgia and I haven’t said we love each other since the night we eloped. Drunken professions of love we’ve not repeated since.
Which…
Doesn’t bode well, does it?
But it can. My parents got married when Mum was eighteen and Dad was twenty-three, bound mostly by duty and all that malarky because of his title but also madly in love. It was a different time even though it was only a couple decades ago.
Plus, according to Dad, Mum wouldn’t put out until they were married, and he wanted to shag her.
“Did she say anything else?”
She must have—Georgia hardly got a word in edgewise.
My roomie-spouse kisses the tip of my chin. “Much of the same thing, how they want to meet me and they can’t believe we ran off without a proper wedding.” She giggles out a low laugh. “As if we were secretly dating to begin with.”
We weren’t, not even a little.
“I want to date you.”
She glances up, our faces inches apart. “You do?”
“Of course I do. I know it’s a bit late for it, but do you want to be my girlfriend?”
“Ashley…are you just saying that so I don’t feel bad for getting drunk and marrying you?”
“What? No.” What a weirdo. “No, I want to date you. Why do you think I went on that foolish trip to begin with? I was mad attracted to you—I didn’t see any other way to go about it, not with you living here.”
“You didn’t want to cross the line.”
“No, it would have been…bad form.”
“Bad form,” she deadpans before laughing. “God, you are so cute.”
“So what do you think? I can take you out tomorrow for a proper date. We can get dressed up, have dinner.”
Georgia dips her head shyly. “Okay, sure.”
“But don’t you think our first date was dinner in Vegas? That counted, yeah?”