tray in front of him. An employee on his lunch break.
Slipping out of the booth, I asked Heath, “You got cash on you?”
“I have a couple twenties, why?”
“Be right back with a witness,” was all I said while my future husband stared at me, wary and wide-eyed. Deer in the headlights.
In less than five minutes, I returned with our new “witness” who I instructed to squeeze into the booth beside my bewildered spouse-to-be. His nametag read Rob, so I introduced him to the other two.
“I gotta be back at work in fifteen,” Rob said in a tight, high-pitched voice. “You said there’s forty dollars in it for me?”
“Yup! Heath will pay you when you sign. This shouldn’t take that long, right?” I arched my brow at Heath, silently demanding he agree with me.
Heath blinked a few times, mouth opening at least half a minute before he spoke. “Uh, yeah, sure, sure. Fifteen minutes for the long version. You can split after you sign.”
Rob glanced between the three of us while tucking a longish strand of dark blond hair under his red cap. “Okay, then.”
Heath’s gaze flicked to me. “Do you, Katharina Rose Ellis, take Lucas Walker—” Heath squinted at the name I’d squeezed into the form. Until yesterday, I had no idea that my husband-to-be had another last name and Walker was his middle name. And that last name, it was a doozy. I’d run out of space in the blank while filling in the surname box, the letters spilling out into the margin.
“Lucas Walker van den Hoehnsboek van Lynden,” Lucas rattled off.
“That’s enough names for four people.” Heath snorted.
Lucas only responded by rolling his eyes and making a gesture that clearly meant, Let’s get on with this.
Heath’s gaze flicked back to me. “Okay, so Katya, do you take Lucas to be your legal husband?”
I couldn’t look Lucas in the eye, even knowing that he had his own good reasons for helping me. Things just got weird, so I stared at the tacky plastic tabletop and croaked out a quick “yes.” If I could’ve gotten away with a mere nod, I would’ve.
Heath moved on to the next question. “And Lucas, do you take Katya as your wife?”
His hands on the table, where they were laced together, seemed to tighten, the knuckles turning white. Other than that, he made no movement. He gave a sharp nod and an even sharper, “Yes, I do.” He stated with the same tone he might use for announcing that he’d contracted an STD.
Heath nodded, satisfied “Okay so… by the power invested in me by the state of California, yadda, yadda, yadda, I now pronounce you husband and wife—”
“Number ninety-three, your order is ready!” came a disembodied voice over the overhead speakers.
“Ooh, that’s us.” Heath offered the pen to Rob. “If you’ll kindly sign right here…” He dug out his wallet to pull out some bills.
Rob had slid out of the booth, checked his watch and then with a sigh scratched his name out on the table. “Weirdest thing ever, but yeah, witnessed it.”
Shit, what if immigration asked for Rob’s testimony for whatever reason? I reached out and covered Lucas’s large hand with my own, squeezing it. “I’m sorry. We’re just so desperately in love that we need to be married immediately.” I sent a warning glance to Lucas, who grunted and nodded along with what I said. Yeah, he’d never be in danger of winning an Academy Award, for sure.
Rob handed the pen back to Heath and as he scooped up the cash, his phone bleated out the cheesy synthesized beat of Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up.
Heath pushed out of the booth. “Gotta go procure the wedding feast. You two sign here while I’m gone.”
The rick-roll was the pièce de resistance to add to the surreal list of this strange day. The semi-hostile bridegroom. The yadda-yadda-yadda-ing of our marriage vows. The interruption over the loudspeaker. To say nothing of the imminent marriage “feast” of Double-Double burgers, milkshakes and skinny fries.
Our witness, Rob, answered his phone, sauntering away without a further word of congratulations or thanks for the easy forty bucks. And I was left to stare awkwardly at my bridegroom.
Shit. He was my husband now. Didn’t feel that different, though. He still glared at me with the same nonchalant annoyance as before.
With almost robotic jerks, Lucas reached over, dragged the form in front of him. He signed with quick, decisive flicks of his pen scratching across the surface of the table. He then