Page 64 of My Dead Wife's Ex Will Do
I smile at her and tap the folder. “Just, you know, getting in the zone. Making sure I don’t accidentally marry you to the wrong person.”
“Ha,” Adrienne says drily. She takes another sip and her glass is dangerously close to empty. “I never thought I’d do this, you know.”
“What, get married?”
She nods and lifts a finger at the bartender, who glances at me. I shake my head and she turns away to pour Adrienne a second whiskey.
“Yeah. It’s such an outdated, heterosexist institution, you know? So many ridiculous traditions that all stem from when women were given as property from one man to another and children had to carry their father’s name in order to be accepted as legitimate.”
Kelsey doesn’t have my name and Leah and I weren’t married when she was born. After a second, Adrienne realizes what she just said and winces. “I’m sorry, Vic?—”
I wave my hand. “Don’t worry about it.” It used to bother me. That Leah’s father convinced her to keep her pregnancy a secret from me and pressured her to change both her name and Kelsey’s when she married Jason. But what’s that Shakespeare quote? A rose by any other name…
Kelsey is my daughter, as well as Jason’s, and whatever other feelings Jason has or has had about me, he upheld my right to a relationship with Kelsey the entire time he’s known her. That she has his last name doesn’t matter.
“Are either of you changing your names?”
Adrienne spits the sip of whiskey she just took across the polished bar top. “Oh, fuck, no.”
I hand her a cocktail napkin and she pats gingerly at her painted lips. “Sorry, just…what a ludicrous idea. Not that I mean you’re ludicrous, but?—”
I raise my hands in mock surrender. “I’m sorry I asked,” I say with a teasing smile. “I’ve known some gay and lesbian couples who merged or hyphenated their names, that’s all.”
Adrienne snorts. “Kelsey suggested it once and I probably reacted the same way. I’m thirty-fucking-seven years old. I’ve built my entire career using this name; I’m not changing it and starting over with a new one no one will recognize.” She casts a sideways glance at me. “Would you?”
“Would I what?”
“Change your name if you ever get married?”
“Hell, no,” I say instantly.
“See?”
I reacted without thinking, and yeah, I see. My name is part of my identity and I can’t even fathom having a different one. Except that the name Victor Perez floats immediately to the top of my mind and, I gotta say, it has kind of a nice ring to it. Perez-Hendricks? Hendricks-Perez?
Christ, I feel like Kelsey when she was a teenager, scrawling practice signatures with the last name of whatever crush she had at the time all over her math notebook.
Anyway, there’s no chance of that happening. Not just no chance of me changing my name, but no chance of me getting married. Despite the number of weddings I’ve performed, I don’t think marriage is in the cards for me. I stand up before a couple and tell them that marriage isn’t just about the big moments, but about choosing each other in the small, everyday moments. About showing up, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.
Except that I’ve never been good at showing up when it’s hard. When things get heavy or complicated or uncomfortable, I pivot. I find a distraction, an exit. I’ve been doing it my whole life. With relationships, with jobs, with anything that starts to feel like it might pin me down.
I did it with Leah, even. When I finally found out that she’d had a baby, I panicked. I didn’t really step up to be a dad until Kelsey had a new dad in her mom’s new husband. When Leah got sick, I was there, but I kept things light, kept her laughing, because the alternative was drowning in the weight of losing her.
And with Jason…God, with Jason, I’ve been doing that for fifteen years.
Even this week—these stolen moments at the resort, the sneaking around before Kelsey caught us, the incredible sex—I’ve been treating it like an adventure. A fun, temporary escape. Nothing serious.
Nothing that would follow us home.
Except that somewhere between the hot springs and the way Jason whispered my name last night while fucking me, it stopped feeling temporary.
Which scares the hell out of me.
Saying goodbye to Jason the day after tomorrow is going to be harder than it was fifteen years ago. Not that it was easy then, or at any of the other times over the years when our paths almost crossed. I just got good at pretending it was.
Adrienne downs the last of her whiskey and checks the delicate silver watch at her wrist. “We should probably head down.”
I close the leather folder and tuck it under my arm. In less than an hour, I’m going to stand in front of everyone my daughter and her fiancée have gathered here and talk about commitment and forever and the courage it takes to choose love.
